Steady On

I finished a draft!

Oh, man, does it have issues.

And that’s OK. It exists and that’s all it has to do.

There’s one whole scene that I, for some reason, wanted just to skip to the end while writing, and couldn’t be bothered to write the beginning, or the new character first introduction, or the description of the location (which we use again later!) or build tension, conflict, or show character … nope, just wanted to skip to the end and move on to the next scene. I left it a smoking ruin and just kept writing, knowing I had to come back and fix it later.
Well, now it’s time.
Then there’s that wrenching scene I imagined which resolves a side character … and I sort of just never found the place where it fit because it wasn’t in the original outline and so it just never got written. It’s missing entirely. Now, I know it happens somewhere in act II, so act III is written as if it has happened … but it’s not written down. I have to go and fix that.
AND of course, when I got into act III, all sorts of unexpected things happened that weren’t actually in my outline and I have to go BACK and set all those things up … some of which requires a whole scene which didn’t exist in the outline. So I have to go back and fix those.

I’m pointing all this out for those of you struggling to finish your first draft. I’ve written dozens of screenplays and more than half a dozen prose novels … and this is still what my first draft looks like. I avoid the valley of despair because I’ve been through this a few times and I know I can just go fix it in the first edit pass - but I wanted you to know that it’s normal for a first draft to have missing bits, huge holes, days where I couldn’t write dialog for love nor money, and lots and lots of places where I didn’t bother to note what people were wearing or what the location looks like or even basic character reactions.

And that’s all right. Because it’s a first draft. I’ve got the structure down, the key scenes and moments (almost all) written, and good notes made for where I could feel/see gaps when I was working. I’ll go back now and start making my first draft into a second draft, which will fix all these problems.

And find a bunch of new ones - which is why we have more drafts, to fix those problems.

It’s all right. Just keep writing and editing your way towards excellence.