When starting a new manuscript, everyone knows the first draft just needs to be written.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the whole plot, every single character, or the ending, just as long as you know something to get the words flowing.

But what happens when you can write the first chapter, but just can’t keep the momentum going?

I had this happen to me when I started my current work in progress. No matter how much of the plot was already in my head, how well I already knew my characters, and that I actually had notes for the final chapter, I just couldn’t get that first draft moving.

Normally, I write a story from start to finish, pantsing or discovery writing my way through it, but for this first draft, that process wasn’t working for me. For once, I had so many ideas about where to take the story that all the options were tripping me up.

Trying to write a linear first draft clearly would not happen, and I realized I needed to switch to ugly drafting.

The Benefits of Ugly Drafting

Ugly drafting involves writing a scene you have in your head, no matter where it falls in the story, and going from there.

This might be something you already do as your writing process, but for me, a writer who is all about organization, routines, and writing from the first chapter to the last, it was a strange new way to do things that had me creatively stumped for a few days.

After deciding to lean into ugly drafting, though, the words flowed, ideas came thick and fast, and I even came up with a rough outline.

So, if you’re stuck getting your first draft off the ground and your usual start-to-finish method isn’t working, ugly drafting just might be for you, too, and here are the benefits of it.

You Don’t Have to Stay with Ideas That Don’t Work

If your usual drafting mode is to start and stick with the idea that inspired your story, but you’re finding that idea isn’t working now that you’re putting it on the page, don’t worry about it!

You may have tried to make it work no matter what in the past, but with ugly drafting, you’re free to try out all ideas.

I ran through three different opening chapters for my latest WIP before I got one I hadn’t even planned by ugly drafting to see what came out.

Past-Kate might have never entertained such a thing, but Present-Kate was pleasantly surprised with this new unplanned scene and the words and ideas that flowed from there.

So yes, your initial idea sparked the basis of this book, and maybe with previous manuscripts you’ve had no trouble taking initial ideas and running with them, but if your initial idea isn’t going anywhere this time, don’t force it.

Keep it for another project and go with the ideas that are working. That might seem like the right/logical/obvious advice, but you’d be surprised how much your writer brain tries to force you to stick with your initial idea. Leave Past-You behind for this draft, and ugly it up to get your creativity flowing.

You Can Go Bite-Sized

With ugly drafting, you don’t need to overwhelm yourself.

If you don’t know every character yet, write down the ones you do. If you don’t have every plot point nailed, note down the ones you have. If all you have is a character name and nothing else, that’s fine for now.

Banish the mentality that you must have it all figured out before you even put a word on a page, because with ugly drafting, you don’t.

Go bite-sized with your writing elements and just work on what you know right now to get the words on the page.

At one point, my current ugly draft had 23 random scenes, most of which were literally titles or one sentence that summed up what I wanted the scene to be. I’ve never done this when writing a first draft before.

For this WIP, I had ideas for scenes, no idea where any of them would fit, and some ideas that were barely more than notes, such as “these two characters in a room talking about this event.” I didn’t even know the full details of what that event was. I just knew they needed to talk about it, so I added a scene to my ugly draft to write it later, and you can do that, too.

Write down every scrap of sentence, note, and part of dialogue you already have in your head, and sort them into their own scene/note/page so you can move on to the next scene without feeling the need to fill/write everything first.

You Can Break All the Writing Rules

Just as a first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be written, ugly drafting is the same.

Don’t get hung up on the writing rules. With ugly drafting, you can…

Info-dump.Go into “And Then…”.Play with What Ifs?.Use placeholder staging notes.Embrace nonsense.

The ugly draft is the place to info-dump, bridge ideas by writing “and then this happens” instead of having the exact details written/worked out before moving on.

Go with What Ifs? and brainstorm/write a paragraph about three different ways to end the chapter, and pick which one you’ll use later. Don’t agonize about describing the room perfectly, or where everyone is standing in the action scene as you’re ugly drafting. “Hero is by a cliff edge,” or “MC sat on a couch in the living room” is enough in the ugly draft. Specifics can be filled in on the second draft.

Embrace the nonsense and write whatever you need to or think of in the moment, and shape it to perfection later.

You Can Be Just a Little Organized

Now, just because I’m writing chaos in an ugly draft doesn’t mean I’ve completely abandoned my organized writing side. Once you’ve established most, if not all, of your ugly draft, an element of structure does come into play—and it goes a little something like this…

A Notes File

One thing I found when ugly drafting was that I had to make a lot of notes. Some about later scenes, plot developments that would need to be added at earlier points, and just general backgrounds about characters or anything that needed to be included or explored further, but I didn’t yet have a scene or place for.

That led to the creation of a “Notes” file. This became the place I dumped all these little tidbits. If I decided my MC needed to have a childhood injury impact him later in life, I added that note to this file. If I was writing a scene, and the idea for a scene relating to it needed to be included later in the book, the note for that went into this file.

A notes file allows you to get the ideas recorded so you don’t forget them and allows you to put them away for later, so you keep writing while the momentum is happening. Will you use every single one of these notes in the story? Probably not, but capturing them is important, and it also gives you something to sort through/use when you get stuck on what to write next or where to take the plot.

So, add a “Notes” file to your WIP and keep it updated as you ugly draft. Then, thank Past-You when you use those notes to put together the puzzle pieces of your story.

A Rough Outline

When it comes to outlining, my usual go-to is to reverse outline after I’ve written the first draft. For ugly drafting, I find that making a rough outline when I have enough half-drafted scenes and notes for future scenes to cobble together a plot is the way to go.

This helped me see what I already had and work out where I was going.

You can do this too by creating a new file and writing a bullet point list of what you have so far, for example…

OpeningAssignmentAfter PartyDinerDate FlashbackMissingFootball GameRumorsVigilScoopArrestedSecretsTruthStory Swap

It probably won’t make sense to anyone but you, but each bullet point represents a scene that makes up the roadmap for your story.

Like your ugly draft, this outline should be something that can be quickly sorted so you don’t waste writing time working on a process that is likely to change multiple times with subsequent drafts.

With your rough outline and each scene arranged in its order, you’ve achieved the final benefit of ugly drafting—a (semi-put-together) plan.

From here, you can try writing from start to finish until you’ve completed your first draft.

After that, reverse outline and get to work on your second draft with a clearer idea of what your overall story is, all thanks to the chaos and beauty of ugly drafting.

— K.M. Allan

What’s your drafting process like? Are you a start-to-finish, planner, plotter, pantser, plantser, discovery writer, or ugly drafter? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

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