the writer's room discussion

As I am preparing to begin a new story, I was wondering how everyone else does first drafts. It differs for lots of people, so I'm interested to hear everyone else's.

Personally, I make mine fairly clean. They obviously need some cleaning up, of course, but I tend to write as though I'm writing a final draft. That's probably also because I do a lot of planning beforehand, but it's generally what's always worked for me.

I look forward to hearing from the rest of you :D.

I also write very clean drafts. Idk, I just feel like I don't like things to feel sloppy or messy, even if it's just the first go around. I take a lot of time to make the dialogue and descriptions flow, and if I come back to it and find that they don't, I fix them.

As for outlining beforehand, that mostly depends on the type of story. I usually give myself at least some space to play around, though, since a lot of my best ideas just show up in the moment.

Mine are a huge mess lmao. I usually pick a psuedonym for characters instead of finding a name, eg [agent], [punk girl], [weird kid] or most often, just [name]. I skip scenes with abandon or have a really brief summary in-between. It's like... messy snowflake style haha.

I think the other thing I do is color-code it to keep track of story threads. Helps me follow them/keep them in order.

I just write bullet points at the top of a document of key details (age, name, personal story/job/occupation, etc) and then just start writing. i dont do drafts really. it's very chaotic but it works for me

Usually I do something similar to that. I write character profiles, which are kind of in depth but the information is never really shared. It just helps me visualize things. I write more clean, with chapters and I reread it a LOT. I have a basic outline, but most of my ideas are on the spot.

a hot mess lol

i physically cannot force my self to do "first drafts" cause ofc i have to be a perfectionist and i edit as i go and its not fun 😭

I outline practically every scene for the first 5 or so chapters (but have a general outline the whole time) and then I write those chapters and make a just as detailed outline for the next 5, and repeat. So normally my first drafts are pretty clean. But I don't worry if the writing sounds choppy or the dialogue is bad during the first draft. Sometimes if I know a certain part is written badly I might highlight it so I remember to make sure to come back to it during later drafts.

Normally, I write character profiles, random scenes to get an idea of their personalities in action, then I revise my outlines.

I tend to write them as I would a final draft but more messy and the time frames aren’t worked out yet.