Writer Wander 036 - First Draft Blues are Inevitable

You will always get them

P.S. Episode 35 was skipped since I'm still reviewing the audio and considering rerecording it (it was very windy in the Austrian Alps where I recorded then)

Transcript

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Rider Wander thirty six. The first draft sucks. So let me paint a little picture for you guys just to give you a little idea of what we're dealing with right now. So basically for you, there's basically if if I did this right, there's been an uninterrupted flow of content before the recording of this episode. However, those of you should already know that due to the structure of this show, I have a lot of stuff recorded in advance, like an insane amount of stuff. Like I have a massive lead in advance, right? And I just returned from Austria where I I did a little recording. Um and uh it was uh it was kind of um you know that that recording it was kind of kinda rough. So I'm not sure how how I'm gonna handle putting it out, but I'll I'll get to that once I once I get to that. I think it's the episode right before this one or something like that. We'll see. And you know, basically my point is that ever since then, uh I have not um made another of these episodes because I'm also waiting on a microphone because I I bought a microphone which will improve the audio quality, especially when I'm outside. It's one of those DJ minis. However, um I guess the one I bought doesn't come with like this other thing, which is like the receiver, which actually is what allows the audio transmitted to to actually function the way it's supposed to function. So we still have that, we still have that pending right. But you know, all is good in the hood, but I have felt like I have not spoken to you guys in a very long time, and I am actually currently 19 chapters into you know into Echoes of Heroes, and I think I reached a point where I have to make this kind of episode, which it's very stupid and and very silly, but I had sworn off on making this kind of episode basically from the genesis of this entire podcast project. I I knew it would happen. Deep down I knew that this kind of episode would happen because these are just the kind of thoughts that come into your head as you're as you're writing a novel, right? But uh it it's one of those things where it whenever you write a novel, you will always face this struggle. And obviously, since I always considered Rider Wander to be, like the tagline says, a writing podcast that's not about writing, um I I deliberately try to avoid tackling subjects that it often feels like your typical writing podcast covers. But this is just one of those universal things that, first of all, you can always take value from this, you can always take something out of this. And it's one of those things that it it will never not be an issue, like this is an issue that will always haunt you forever as a writer. And what am I talking about? First drafts. Of course, I'm talking about first drafts. You saw the title of this episode, so you know that we're gonna talk about first drafts, and first drafts suck, okay? And I'm sure that if you've been in the writing space or if you were ever interested in writing anything, that is literally one of the first things that people are gonna tell you basically anywhere. The first draft is gonna suck. So don't think about it, just just go through the motions, follow your outline, and see see how things flow. See how things flow. And you know what? For a very long time, I had grown way too comfortable, way too comfortable, with the idea that hey, this this is by this advice is baby food. I don't I don't really I don't really need this advice, okay? I don't need to hear that. And for a while, um that seemed to be okay. But I've I found out that there are some things that it's like this term, evergreen, right? There are some things that will always be relevant, and it is always important to remind ourselves that the first draft will always suck on some level. And I'm thinking that with Echoes of Heroes, the first draft is um is is getting into some pretty rocky territory, right? So I think that the last time that I that I talked to you guys about the novel, I think I mentioned the detail about how the main character gets basically waylaid by pirates on his way to a port, and he falls in with um, you know, it's it's Finn, which is the main character, with his companion Ken. And he falls in with like a dwarf and uh you know a Viking guy trying to escape from the pirates, and you know, they successfully escape the pirates. Uh however, I wrote it into the story, and this is something that emerged during the moment that the the Viking guy he either gets captured or uh or dies in the process of trying to escape, and he saves he saves Finn's life, right? Either way, I'm not sure if he's dead or not. And once the main characters are out of danger, the dwarf, who is the best friend of the Viking, makes a decision to not heed the instructions of his hiking to go to a certain place, and instead focusing his efforts on trying to find his his friend. And at that point, those two characters exit the story. And you know, we we've already talked about this earlier in this podcast where the main goal of this novel is to create sort of like a road trip story where you will have characters that simply exit the story at at certain at certain points, right? And I have to say, like, that kind of stuff is easier said than done because one of the lessons that I'm learning, right, is that this is the second thing I've ever written with an Odyssey style structure or with a road trip style structure. And the first thing that I wrote with a road trip or Odyssey style structure was a children's novel, but I think that in that case, a lot of the difficulties I'm finding right now in this current book are a little were not present there because even though that did have like a more episodic chapter-based structure, uh I did have the advantage that the main crew of characters was always present throughout most of the story. You didn't have like this revolving cast of characters uh which is you know uh which is the design of this current novel, and the difficulty with having like a revolving cast of characters is that the the character arcs for each of these characters that show up, you have a very limited time to flesh them out. And I'm noticing that because usually in your typical novel, you will have an entire book's length's worth to be able to flesh out a given character and you know give their arc uh the detail that they deserve. But obviously, since I'm dealing with this more compressed structure, um I I'm having a hard time fleshing out a lot of these characters, so you know I'm not afraid to say it. I I I feel that a lot of the characters I've written so far, I certainly get the idea behind them, but they're coming out, they're coming out rather stiff, and they're they're coming out rather rather wooden and rather one-dimensional. And it wouldn't be the first time that I fixed that kind of stuff in editing, but it it feels like a while because I feel that in my in my previous stuff, I had reached a point where my first drafts, they were never good, right? They were never good, but at one point I had reached a point where my first drafts were markedly much better than the very first drafts I used to write with with novels, but I feel that I've sort of regressed in quality, not necessarily because of a a lesser a lack of skill, but because of the fact that since I'm trying something new, I'm sort of like in I'm operating with less elements that I'm comfortable dealing with, especially because like I mentioned in this novel, I'm experimenting a lot with uh structure and form as opposed to as opposed to content, but that's creating a situation where I'm kind of having a hard time figuring out how to put certain pieces in certain orders for for certain characters, right? So for instance, uh I feel that uh right now Finn is in a situation where he falls in with uh if you watch the Karissimi episode, uh he falls in with this priestess called Lady Astris, who has magical healing power, and basically their paths align, they align with like this uh escort of paladins that is heading over to this elven citadel called Ilaris because this uh this priestess, this Lady Asteris, she has it in her mind that she wants to try to cure the melancholy of the elves that are that are fading. So she wants to fade the elves, and obviously Kenem, who again I probably mentioned this before, but he is secretly one of the companions from the old age of heroes, and he's his real name is Talison, and he he is an elf friend, and so he wants to visit Ilaris because he is familiar with the elf lord that that rules there, so their paths coincide. And I feel that um I was hoping that the dynamic that was going to exist between Lady Ostris and her companions and Finn and Ken was going to be was going to be deeper by the time that they reach the citadel. However, I I guess what I found is that it was just first of all, it feels like I have I'm handling way too many, way too many characters. I think I'll probably end up shrinking uh the amount of characters from those scenes in particular. And secondly, while they were on the road, I just feel that you know the interactions stayed very one-note, right? I wasn't able to explore all the dimensions of these of these characters because I I guess I was too focused on reaching the final destination of the Elven City Citadel of Ilaris, which they have reached, and I do feel that the the quality of the storytelling jumped up a bit more once we reached Ilaris. Uh, because for a while, right before that, I was operating a little bit outside of the the plot line, the outline that I had prepared for this novel. And that's another thing, right? Part of the ways in which I usually try to avoid the typical pitfalls that come with a shitty first draft is that I try to clean up as many plot holes as I can during the outlining phase, but no matter what you do, um the outlining phase will never be able to fully predict what happens once you get to drafting. And once you start drafting, you start noticing that hey, there's a lot of these scenes in between these scenes that I wrote down that I probably need to establish, or else it wouldn't make sense for me to arrive to a certain point. And in this particular novel, since again, since I'm experimenting with a form of story structure that I don't know too much about, a form of story structure that I haven't worked with too much before, I'm I'm running more often into the those sort of like uh structuring problems that I had seen that I had seen before. And I guess I'm at a point where it just feels, you know, I I think uh for a while, it's sort of recuperating when I reach the Elven Citadel. For a while, you know, I've been in this point where I feel like the story kind of like lost its magic, and I was just trudging along through through discipline. But uh, this is not again, this is not anything new. Like writing a novel is is literally it's literally a roller coaster, but it's like the world's shittiest roller coaster because imagine this is this is how writing a novel literally is most of the time, at least for me, and I think for most people. When you first start writing, you are you are at the very top of the roller coaster, right? It's like a roller coaster that like starts like very tall and and it has like a drop very early on, and the drop very early on is pretty massive, right? The most pumped you will be to write a book is usually in the very first chapters that you start writing it, and then once the roller coaster is going down, you're going like crazy, it's like hell yeah, let's go. You feel the adrenaline rush, you feel like the air sweep past you, you're thinking up all of these ideas and imagining how cool it's gonna be once you get to certain other parts of the story, but then usually around the time that you hit the second act of the story or near the f the end of the first act of the story, um the the roller coaster like plateaus, like it reaches this point in which the roller coaster track is just completely fucking horizontal and flat, and it stays like that for a long ass time. You know, for like a very very fucking long time. Like it is insane. Like, you know, you can be you can be like five chapters of like the first act and like you're like in roller coaster mode, but then like you can have like the next ten chapters where you are like down and you are down bad. And once you reach these chapters, this is what I I I personally I like to call it like a risk zone because when you reach these points of novel writing, which are like you know the worst parts of writing a novel, uh it's usually called the sagging middle. This is the point in which you are at most risk of abandoning your writing project because you are so dispassionate. You know, that initial fire that had burned in you and that had caused you to actually write this story in the first place has been all but extinguished, and you are literally just trudging along, and then what usually happens, right, and you know, this is more so my advice. I feel that the two things can happen, right? If you're writing a first draft, and the only burst of energy you ever felt during that first draft was during the first act, but you are plotting along for an extended amount of time in the first draft in that like horizontal phase, and you haven't had another peak, that's a sign that there's probably something wrong with your first draft, and in those cases it might actually be worth abandoning. Again, this is just my advice. But usually what I find is that um most first drafts are not worth abandoning, most first drafts are absolutely redeemable, and when you when you're riding them, usually it's like a roller coaster, right? You might have in that it's like a shitty roller coaster where you're in that plateau for a long time, but eventually you will reach another peak, and you know the you will feel the roller coasters slowly start moving up again, and and you're gonna get pumped again. Oh shit, they things are things are getting things are getting exciting again. And I think I'm currently in that phase with the chapters that I'm writing right now because I I really like a lot of the stuff that's been discussed during the arrival at the Elven Citadel. And uh, you know, but again, this is just another peek, and it is very likely that once uh you know a few chapters later, uh, you know, I'm gonna go down the roller coaster hill, and then I'm gonna go back to plateauing uh once more. And let me tell you, it is it is just it is it is a struggle, right? It is a struggle. One of the themes that we talked about early on was just how difficult it was to do justice to these crazy cool ideas that you might have had in your head when you first started writing a story, and just how hard it is to do justice to those ideas once you actually start drafting, right? Because there's there's always a gap that exists between your level of skill and your level of dreams, right? Or your capacity to dreams, right? Your the dreams to skills gap. It is very real, right? And let me tell you, I think even the best authors cannot compete with their own dreams. The best the best novelist on earth is like any literally just some random guy's dreams, okay? Hypothetically speaking, if you could transmit like your exact vision of the story into paper, you know, that would probably just instantly be a masterpiece, right? But obviously, our own human limitations prevent us from bringing our ideals to life as much as we can. We try to close that gap as much as possible, but um there you know to a certain degree that that just I don't know if anyone can really pull that off, to be honest. Maybe there's like a master a master masterpiece who is literally able to to pull that off like much uh with it just with their sheer skill, right? And get a product that might even be better than their dreams. But definitely in the first draft it's impossible. And I kind of take back what I just said, because I'm only considering the first draft. But again, and and this is something that we need to train ourselves to understand, you know, drafting is a you know, is only like I don't know, something like 40% of the overall writing process. Because after drafting, like the rest is editing, and editing takes a long time, and editing, in a sense, is where the real hard work comes in where you actually have to focus on making the story on making the story good rather than just getting it out of your system. So, in a sense, it can feel like having the training wheels taken off of you, but drafting presents a unique problem, right? And I think that over over time, I mean typically for most people, drafting is the easiest stage uh of the of the writing process, comparatively, I I I feel at least. But when I'm in the drafting phase, I feel that I've just had a very rough time of it recently, and I think it's because you know, due to my own perception of my own experience having growing, and you know, the my own expectations of myself as a writer having grown over the years, I I have unhealthy expectations of how my first draft should look like. Because I feel that oh, the first draft to this other novel that I wrote in the past was airtight compared to this one, right? So, at minimum, I should produce something of equal value or of more value, but that's not the reality, and that's especially not the reality when you're experimenting with new ideas. When you're experimenting with new ideas, um you are more likely to commit errors that you thought you were past a a long time ago because you are in uncharted territory, right? It's sort of like usually when you're walking around your neighborhood, you're probably not gonna trip on stuff. But when you're visiting a forest that you haven't been in in a long time or you're on a trail that you've never been in before, the likelihood of you snagging your heel on a route and falling on a set of rocks is a lot higher because you're you're doing something, you're somewhere, you're you're in uncharted territory, even if you're doing something that you do a lot, even if you're an experienced hiker, the fact that you're in new territory presents an innate risk. And it can also it can also be exciting, right? Because I also feel that that's also something very interesting about once you realize the fact that first drafts suck. When you realize that first drafts suck, one of the things you will see is that once you actually finish that first draft, oftentimes a lot of those parts of the story that you thought sucked uh were actually not as bad as you thought. And a lot of those parts of the story that you really liked, you look back on and you're like, oh that I I don't know, I don't know about that. It's kind of questionable. And um, even though I'm really liking a lot of these scenes in like the Elven Citadel of Ilaris, I can easily foresee myself like once I reach the end of this first draft, going back to them and be like, oh my god, what the what the fuck is that? What why what is this? What why am I why am I here so long, like discussing like uh you know this elf this elf lore, right? Because uh right now I just wrote a scene where like uh we we talked about it there was like a funny conversation about elven reproduction because there's this you know there's this uh wandering swordsman called called. Oswald, who is accompanying the party, and basically he comments on the fact that the accommodations for elven men and elven women they're not separated by by gender. So, you know, he mentions that the reason he thinks that's the case is because he heard a rumor that elves don't re reproduce uh through sexual intercourse, right? They they don't they reproduce to through some other through some other means, right? And basically Finn is like, oh what do you think? They grow on trees, and uh you know they have a little conversation about that, and it's a funny instance, and I take advantage of that to then segue into a more a more serious conversation that lifts up tensions between between the characters. But you know, a part of me is like, you know, I could easily see myself like looking back on that scene and being like, okay, these jokes are going on for too long. Let's get rid of that. Even though right now I actually kind of like how it turned out, and I think it's I think it's pretty funny. But uh I I probably do need to talk about how elves actually reproduce. Um, and you know, uh spoiler question, it's not really a spoiler, um, it's more like a world-building detail. Uh I I've always had this idea of elves not reproducing through physical intercourse, but rather it's sort of like a thought process where an elven man and an elven woman unite, and they sort of dream up what is called a thought child through a mystical process, and in this mystical process, um there's no such thing as an elven baby, rather, a fully formed elf will emerge through the mystical combination of the thoughts of these two um of these two of these two elves. So I guess like elves are are just the ultimate sapiosexuals, right? Um there's actually reasons for why I I consider that, right? It's it's not just some weird some weird thing. Um I a lot of that the thought behind that has to do with what I believe is the metaphysical meaning of elves as a race in in fantasy fiction and sort of like some platonic ideals that I'm you know that I'm sort of playing around with a little bit in the in the story, but that's neither that's neither here nor there. The point is that first drafts first drafts suck, and sometimes the most basic lessons are the hardest to learn, and sometimes you just need to go over the basics. And my my recommendations to any of you that might be struggling with a first draft is that first of all, there there is never there's never shame in feeling that you're struggling with a basic problem, even though you've been racking up experience in a certain skill for a long time. There are just some problems that will never leave you. It's just like your life, bro. You will always pay taxes, you will probably uh be paying bills for a very long time, and it's fine, it's it's okay to struggle with those things, and it's also okay for you to start looking up content just to reassure yourself, right? Because I'm you know, I I started to ask myself it this is in part, it's been a very good process because it's made me look back to when I first started writing the kind of videos that I was looking up when I was feeling like crazy, you know, crazy sad about oh my story's not turning out the way that I that I want it to. What was the kind of stuff that I looked up? And I used to look up like a lot of YouTube videos where it's people basically, it's literally people just saying the same thing over and over again about how your first draft is gonna suck, etc. etc. No matter what you do, it's it's gonna be crazy, so you might as well just just get on with it and uh you know do the words, it's a skeleton. Uh so I've just gone back and I'm starting to re-watch those videos. Are they adding any information I didn't already know? No, but they are they are serving to put my mind at peace. Because there's a reason why most people who want to write they never get past the first draft, and it's because a lot of people, once they fall from that initial roller coaster of excitement, that's where most people, dare I say, like 95% of people that ever considered writing a novel fall off because they they don't know how to handle that initial plateau after the first part of the roller coaster, right? And the people who do end up actually writing a novel, um, and this isn't even getting into whether they continue writing long term, but the people who just write any novel are usually people, no, are most certainly people who learn that basic lesson that is actually not so basic when you think about it, because it's it's very hard for most people to learn that you really just have to push through. There there's there's no other way. You you just you just gotta push through, right? And part that's also why why I'm uh uh why I used to be a fast drafter and uh I'm sort of recuperating that ability again, right? But uh, you know, I'm still working on the novel, I'm still writing, and uh I'm making I'm making swift progress. Uh I think that really all things considered, I'm already like at the midway point of the story because this is a relatively short story. Um when I account for the vacation that I took, uh, I think the the time I've been on this has roughly been the standard time that I would usually take for a novel uh before. So I think uh I should be I should be wrapping this up uh I think maximum like two months. Within two months I'll be I'll be done. I wanted to say one month, but you know, I don't wanna you know I don't want to torture myself uh over much, right? But I think I think I'm in a good place. So we will see how things go. Uh Rider Wander, signing off.