Slideshow

Troy Kirby

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Puke Drafts

Everyone has to write a puke draft.

It's the draft where you have a bunch of ideas, you threw it against to see what stuck, and now are in the process of draft two. If there is a draft two. Sometimes, you see that first draft and are disgusted that the pile of bile which you unleashed is just that. A rotten source of nothing but a bunch of words. Whatever the story was there, its not there now, right?

I would suggest that idea is wrong.

You have a great story, hidden somewhere. But you have to fall out of love with something in order to know that you have love for it.

My first drafts are garbage. Pure crap. Every idea I have, some in caps which fill specific chapters, characters change mid-sentence and so may some of the story.

I'm like that fighter who is feeling out my opponent. Seeing what the other side has got. A lot of times I surprise myself. There are ideas that weren't there, characters undeveloped or too developed to be included. Now, there is just the story. That's it, that's fine, that's all that matters.

It's at this point that I begin to understand what I have. Things start changing, quite a bit at first, to help the story breathe.

After a second draft, when I think I have something, I let it sit for about two months. I do other things, take my mind off of it, then go back to the story with a new eye.

But if I hadn't kept up with that puke draft, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to re-write the document as a second or third draft. Nothing is more evident than that faith you have to have in the puke draft.

No comments:

Post a Comment