Avoiding the First Draft Doldrums
I have recently finished two projects and am now facing down the depression that often follows. This often happens for me when I finish that final polish pass on a story. The main trouble I think is that however eager I might be to work on a new project, the story I just submitted has undergone several drafts, and each draft took many passes, whereas the new story has nothing, it’s just a looming blank page with the slightest spark of an idea at this point.
The first completed project is a novella that will be coming out soon. It’s a longer story featuring an orc PI who previously appeared in the “Fire on the Docks” story in my collection Ten for the Ages. I finished the final pass on this in July, and then I had scheduled to try and do a first draft of a vampire novel I’ve been eager to write. I worked on that vampire novel for weeks and I found that I just couldn’t do it. There were things that were coming into shape, but it wasn’t coming fast enough, I wasn’t sure how to fix some of it, and it was making me miserable.
I call the misery of being stuck like this “the first draft doldrums.” Rationally, I know that it only seems like it’s going nowhere because at some level I’m comparing it to working on the polished completed work and that it’s not realistic to expect the first draft to shine. But sometimes life is irrational, especially when one is writing. And the sailing ship with no wind to power it metaphor feels pretty apt when one looks at a blank page and has nothing to fill it, or even one’s efforts to fill it just seem so poor that it’s clearly still not going anywhere.
Following some good advice I decided to shelve the vampire novel, swapping it with my science fiction espionage novel which I’d planned on polishing up early next year. I got into a zone with scifi espionage novel, polished it, loved working on it, every day for a little over a month was a joy to be at the computer, and I have now submitted it to a potential publisher. The new problem being whatever I work on next will be a first draft. The doldrums are out there, looming in the mists.
The only time I didn’t experience the “first draft doldrums” with a novel was with my second novel, End Times At Ridgemont High. There are a few reasons for this. I think there’s the structure of the movie that I was parodying, but also the structure of the school year is useful for such a story… One of the earlier incarnations of that story had begun as an idea for a Call of Cthulhu campaign, sort of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer where the players don’t have powers. The first few seasons of Buffy had the school year and its built in events to provide that same structure: first day is an ideal start, holidays and dances, build up to the last day of school for the finale. But in End Times at Ridgemont High I also had something else going for me even in that first draft: I had a character that I loved writing. The stoner surfer character Dean was so much fun to write, even in the first draft he did things that made me laugh, that character made portions of even that early draft felt effortless and I looked forward to working on it each morning. Even writing the early drafts of other chapters had this carrot: get through this bit and there’s a Dean chapter coming up.
Before shelving my vampire novel I made notes of what needs to happen on it when I return to it, and character work was a big problem I identified. I had fleshed out the two main characters well, but the enemies needed work and so did the side characters. Often I find it’s the side characters in a story that I think are most interesting. Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses doesn’t get really introduced until later in the first story, and he’s rarely the main character. Walter Bishop on Fringe was an important character, but Olivia is the primary protagonist for the show and also the audience’s way in to the story. Even on Buffy I was often more interested in what was happening with Willow, or Giles, or Spike, than the main character. I think the main character sometimes carries a burden of being so essential that they don’t get to do the fun things that the side characters might. An exception to this is Twin Peaks. Although he isn’t introduced right away, Agent Cooper is pretty much the main character on Twin Peaks and he is my favorite. Cooper gets to do all the fun things.
National Novel Writing Month is coming up in November. Several of my novels got their start as NaNoWrMo books, and I have an idea for one I’ve been dying to write, but I’m wary of the doldrums. So here’s my plan: I’m going to do preproduction. I’ve tried this before in October, but I’ve got September and October to do it this time. I’ve already identified that I need to know all about the characters before I start, so I will take the time not only to develop the main characters, but also the villains the side characters et al. I’m going to develop these characters and write up scenes and dialogues with them before I make the outline in October. One or more of them needs to be fun. I’m also immersing myself in books, movies, tv shows, comics… any media that fits in tonally with the book I’m planning, I already mentioned rewatching Twin Peaks in an earlier blog post, it’s part of it.
My hope is that if I have enough background ready, if my head is in the world of the story, then I can avoid or at least power through the doldrums when I encounter them.
