I recently had this question posed to me by a friend regarding a short story I have been writing: “What’s easier: the first draft, or the second draft?” And in pure C.M. fashion, my response was: “It depends on the day.”
The first draft, I explained, is “you telling yourself the story”—a quote that is attributed to comedic fantasy writer Terry Pratchett (but has been significantly repeated by other authors over time). This part of the storytelling process, like all endeavors, comes with its own variety of pros and cons.
Some pros, for instance: you’re just starting out, and you have that “blank page excitement” to work with—that feeling that magic is flowing through the tips of your fingers and from this moment on anything can and will be possible, which can make the work seem almost effortless at times. You also know it’s your first draft, so—ideally—perfectionism is out the window, and you are free to shamelessly write pages and pages of nonsensical gobbledygook that you can fix later, leaving you to experiment and give the imagination a much needed stretch.
The cons: you might have no clue how to get from Point A to Point B, especially if you tend to be a pantser. Which means you can often get stuck somewhere in the middle, and it sometimes seems that not even the promise of a later fix can make the gobbledygook feel justified. The first draft is also the bulk of your workload. Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser—or anything in-between—the first draft takes the most time and effort to get yourself from start to finish, and in the meantime you have to deal with that nasty little goblin in your brain telling you you’ll never finish; you’re not a real writer; this will never earn you a living, what the heck are you doing with your life; you’re just plagiarizing better writers, etc.
The pros of the second draft, meanwhile, are centered on the idea that everything this time around is more straightforward. A few blank spaces may need filling, but you otherwise know the story and have the majority of the information that you need. Maybe you have to do a little more research around a particular plot point, but at least you know what you’re looking for instead of blindly sending out your feelers for any helpful hints at some hypothetical scenario you’re trying to portray. Basically, you have a solid foundation of a story: all you have to do now is build upon it.
The cons of the second draft: adjustments may just lead to further complications. You may know that you want Side Plot A to be introduced as part of the underlying theme, but how can you spread it out through the rest of the story without messing up what you already have? How can you make it flow better? Maybe fixing this part of the story now makes that part lose its power. Sometimes, the second (and even the third, fourth, fifth, for that matter) draft feels like you’re building your tower, but every new edition slightly nudges the blocks below it out of place—and one wrong move can make the whole thing collapse altogether. Plus, you’re going through a lot of story you have already seen at least once before, and that can make the job seem tedious.
So, as I said, it depends on the day. Maybe you’re in the right mindset for the mental gymnastics of reworking your foundation; maybe your mood is much better suited for figuring out what happens next. There is no answer written in stone within the writing community for what is easier and what is harder. It often depends on the writer just as much as it depends on the day.
Night Owls, what do you like / dislike about first drafts? What about second drafts?
