When I wrote my first draft, I had an outline, character sheets, and everything I needed to get going. But once it was on paper, it lacked the magical appeal I saw in my head. I knew the story could be stronger. So, I stopped writing it before I even wrote the ending. All I could do was wonder… “what now?”
1) My first step was brain dumping. I rambled out all my ideas, along with what I already wrote, and what I wanted the story to be. The magical appeal that was in my head flew out of me and onto the screen. Except it was a jumbled, typo filled mess, but it was a start, and got me in the right mindset to move forward. I saw some key details that were missing, and what I needed to focus on in draft 2.
2) The second step was developing detailed character sheets. I knew them pretty well from draft 1, but now I really knew their goals and fears, and more importantly, how their fears were getting in the way of them achieving their goal. Writing everything down helped me realize what I was missing for my MC and side characters. And, most importantly, my antagonist. My antagonist was flat, and had no real motive for making my MC’s life a living hell. So I put all my effort into fleshing him out, and more magic sparked into the manuscript. Once I fleshed out my antagonist, it really helped me nail down the plot as well as all of my character relationships.
3) Third step was organizing all of those thoughts into an outline. I like to use the Save the Cat beat sheet to really get the pacing right. Now that I had my characters and my brain dump notes, outlining just fell into place.
4) After my outline, I did scene cards, one act at a time. I wrote down what happens, and then the effect of that happening, along with how it affected my MCs internal conflict (in other words, what was stopping her from getting what she truly wanted?). From there, I wrote act 1. I was able to salvage some scenes I already wrote, along with completely rewriting others. Once act 1 was written, I wrote scene cards for the first half of act 2. Then I wrote act 2… etc. I wanted to give myself a little bit of freedom to change my outline if needed, so I didn’t write all the scene cards at once.
It’s hard to know why your first draft doesn’t sparkle like it does in your head, but going through these steps can help you pinpoint the problem. Once you nail down the issue, writing out a new character sheet and outline from scratch opens up every possibility, without feeling like you wasted time writing draft 1.
Good luck, writers!
