Good Writing Is Really Just Rewriting | Why First Drafts Are Supposed to Suck
- Cambri Morris
- May 30
- 6 min read
Most writers deal with some measure of perfectionism, even published, well-known ones. It’s hard not to be a perfectionist when you hope to present your work in front of others. But as any writer will tell you, your first draft doesn’t have to be perfect (it better not be, or I’m gonna be super jealous). The purpose of first drafts is to get your ideas down on paper. You can reorder, nitpick, and delete them later to your heart’s content.
If you’re set on being a writer, you need to grit your teeth and overcome your perfectionism long enough to get the first draft out of your system.
A Mess of a First Draft
So you have a brilliant story idea, a plot, characters, world building, the whole shebang. You start writing, and you get as far as the second paragraph before you squint at your screen. Something’s not right. Is that word spelled wrong? Should you really start the story with that sentence? Maybe instead of starting at the mall, your story should start at the school.
Screeeeeeeee!
That’s the sound of you slamming on your writing breaks. You’ve stopped your creativity, and, therefore, your novel, before it went anywhere. So, what do you do when you encounter these pesky doubts?
Ignore them! Move on! Keep writing and tell yourself you’ll fix it later. If you need to, leave yourself a comment in the margins. Drafting is about momentum. You need to keep your creativity flowing however you can, but the second your analytical brain turns on, creativity runs and hides.
Here’s the first paragraph from my first draft of The Hole in the Sky:
Rebellion. Such a silly thing. A painful, fruitless endeavor that usually did more harm than good, regardless of intention.
Originally, I started with a prologue, where I showed the reader what happened in the protagonist’s past from the antagonist’s point of view. This was a bad idea for so many reasons:
It revealed something about the main character that I later decided was best kept a secret until further on in the story.
It set the antagonist up as the protagonist because readers tend to try and identify with the first narrating character they’re introduced to.
The first paragraph in particular didn’t introduce a character, setting, premise, or stakes. In short, there was nothing to hook the reader into reading more.
However, even though this prologue didn’t make the final cut, it had a lot of good traits too.
Nothing Goes to Waste
Once you’ve got your first draft written, you can step back and look at it with a wider lens. Just like an artist steps back from the canvas after a sketch to check proportions, a writer must step back from their manuscript to check for plot structure, character arcs, and story flow.
That’s what I did. When I looked at my prologue, I realized it didn’t belong at the beginning of my story, but that doesn’t mean I wasted my time writing it. If I hadn't written that prologue, I would never have discovered what a rich character my antagonist was. I would never have thought to have his and my protagonist’s arcs mirror each other. I wouldn’t have decided to make my protagonist’s relationship with her father so complicated.
Even if you’re a planner like me, writing a first draft is about discovery. You may not end up using a scene in the final version of your manuscript, but you still need to write it, or your story will miss out on great potential.
Why Rewriting Is Crucial
Rewriting time! Now that your first draft is done, you can’t just call the book finished and click publish! No, you have to rewrite. This is where the magic happens. Now’s your chance to explore those analytical questions:
Is this the right tense and POV for this story?
Is this the right place to start the story?
Is this the right setting for this scene?
Etc.
Myself, I trashed the prologue, and decided to start with chapter one, where I introduce the real protagonist, Yena. In the first draft, Yena’s perspective was written in first-person, past tense. In the subsequent drafts, I decided to play with present tense instead:
I’m running as fast as I can.
I decided I liked how that helped me get inside Yena’s head more, but I wanted a way to make her voice sound unique, so I came up with this:
I run fast. Fast as I can.
What was Yena running from? You might ask. The answer is she was running from the antagonist in her dreams. Ugh, I know. I started my book with a dream, one of the biggest cliches ever. Don’t worry, I fixed it in the next draft:
I wake to the sound of a siren.
I know, not much better. I went from one cliche to another. However, in this version, I discovered something important: I needed to start with a hook. Not just something to grab the reader’s attention and move on, like the dream did, but something that would pull them through the first chapter and into the rest of the story. The siren that Yena hears is the first hint that something is wrong with Yena’s world.
Proper Story Structure Makes all the Difference
Part of rewriting means looking at the plot structure. It means making sure you have a compelling character arc that teaches the character something. It means making sure that every scene of action is followed by a sequel of emotional processing.
Knowing this, and wanting to start my book off with a bang, I came up with the following first paragraph:
The elevator doors opened. Two armored Tarin guards stepped out holding spark rifles. They glared around at the women on the sewing floor.
Now my story started in a completely different place, right in the middle of action, which is good. I started here because it highlighted Yena’s situation before the story starts, setting up her character arc. I also decided to switch back to past tense to better match the other POV's. What this scene lacks is a reason to care about Yena. We don’t get to know her at all, and—as my developmental editor Lindsay Flanagan pointed out—there’s nothing to hook the reader or deliver on the promise of the title and cover.
I had one more rewrite to go.
The Importance of Feedback
In the process of rewriting, you’ll need to get some feedback from potential readers and/or editors. Almost all the changes I made to the first paragraph were based on feedback from beta readers. Lindsay’s feedback on my story led me to add a few paragraphs before the scene quoted above. The goal? To introduce the readers to my main character right away, draw them in with a first line that makes them want to know more, and give them a hint at the sci-fi elements they picked up the book for.
I was the only worker wearing a color besides orange and green. I tightened the scrap of magenta fabric around my throat and hurried past the other stragglers heading to work for the day. Normally the street leading to the checkpoint was more crowded on my way to the textile mill, but I was late. Mila, my podmate, had been talkative that morning.
I have a writer friend who is very self-conscious about their writing, but does want to be published. They only let a couple of select family members read their books. But my experience has been that you need to get feedback from several people, or you’ll miss crucial pain points in your manuscript.
Write, Write, Write Again
No one writes a perfect first draft, and if you try to, you’ll end up blocking your story’s potential or else just giving up. Write your first draft as it comes, without picking up the red pen. When you’ve finished the entire manuscript, put on your revising cap and look at things with a more critical eye. It may take you several drafts to sculpt your book into what it needs to be, but an artist never calls their sketch a masterpiece and neither should you.
Which opening paragraph was your favorite? Comment below!
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