Exploring the story—first draft
What’s the difference between a first draft and a revision? My students hate to revise they think it should all fall into place the first time pen goes to paper. Ok, they’re willing to concede that you need to go back and check on punctuation, grammar, spelling, but shouldn’t the story have all come out in the first draft?
I’m 2/3 of the way through the first draft of the 3rd book in the WP trilogy, tentatively titled, The Destiny Stone, DS for now. Somewhere just after 1/2 way and before 2/3rds, I realized the story had veered severely from my original outline. A character came out of a store on an icy street in Edinburgh and literally slid into Jessica knocking her down and sending her sliding into her friends Sarah and Timothy. The result was a nasty tangle of arms, legs and scarves, and a new and unexpected character in the plot line. A rangy ginger-haired boy in a camel coat, several years older than my main characters. He’s charming, funny and immediately likeable, but does he belong there?
I’ve had to ask my self some serious questions. What purpose will he serve in the story? How will he advance the storyline? Will he add further complications, and if so, do those complications distract from or add to the major conflict?
It also means I may have to change the order of events. That means going back and rewriting a few scenes. This is what first drafts are about. Finding your way through the maze of the story. And that’s usually through a moving story, full of unexpected twists and turns.
Revision is more settled. You take the long view of the whole story. Does it hold together, does it work? You look at voice, rewrite scenes, add and subtract, but you are working within the boundaries of an existing story. That’s one difference between the first draft and revision.