#EXAMPLES OF ROUGH DRAFT HOW TO#

We'll define what a rough draft is and how to get there, covering: In this 57-minute tutorial video, we'll see how getting the story out as fast as possible gives us the raw material with which to build a quality finished book.

Philip Athans has spent the last thirty years as an author and editor and has learned to embrace the ‚Äúshort, bad book,' knowing it can get longer, and better, before anyone else reads it. This is for writers across all categories, both fiction and non-fiction. We'll talk about some ideas for getting words onto paper like dictation, handwriting, and otherwise just getting words out as fast as we can knowing that there's nothing we can't fix later.Ī lot of writers get too concerned with perfection-in grammar, usage, even formatting-while we should be tapping into our creativity, immediacy, and natural voice. And the opposite is true, I find that the more I use rough drafts and the more I use prewriting strategies, the more confident I am in the writing process and the more enjoyable the Working Draft stage becomes.Embracing the rough draft helps authors write faster, and write more, by giving ourselves permission to be imperfect. I believe that a lot of my trouble (& I would suspect other writers as well) comes from the fact that for stories where I don’t lay the groundwork and do the rough draft (or the outline, or any of the other myriad words for prewriting), I find that the Working Draft RARELY (if ever) matches the vision that I had in my head for the story. And the cool thing is that it isn’t set in stone–if I’m happy with the draft, I can stop and move onto the editing and submission phases, but if I’m not happy, I can go back and fix what isn’t working (which I did for the ending of Silence Will Fall) or I can start all over and re-draft the whole thing again from scratch–which I plan to do for Rocket-Man.) How can I best tell my story (that I came up with in the Rough Draft) that engages and exhilarates the audience? What techniques or effects can I use to maximum effect? This is where I do the “hard work” of writing. This is where my goals as the creator meets the needs of the audience. Writers may then edit their rough draft by. This is where vivid details and description comes into play, this is where I really begin to try to “Show, don’t tell.” I try to find places to show emotions, to appeal to the five senses, and to foreshadow events crucial to the rising action and the climax. After they make a rough draft, writers may begin revising their work by adding more sentences, or removing sentences. This is where characters names get finalized, this is where dialogue becomes more than a place holder and is what I believe that the characters really would say. The Working Draft is sort of my shortened name for a “Work-in-Progress Draft.” This is where I do the REAL work for the audience. Working Draft = Past Tense (Dramatizing the story) I’m simply relating to myself what I “see” in my mind and trying to accurately form/shape it into a story. This is where all the notes that I’ve taken/written down about the story get put into the structure of a story (Exposition, Opening Incident, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action/Resolution) to see if they work correctly as a story. I’m trying to make sure that my plot makes sense (what’s happening in the story), the characters make sense (their motivations and why they do the things I envision), and the setting makes sense (where everything’s happening). I’m trying to accurately put on paper the visuals that I see in my head and that means that I’m not worrying about the audience. This where I “Tell, don’t show.” When I write my rough drafts, I could almost call these “discovery” drafts because I’m discovering the story and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. When I write the Rough Draft for my stories, I’ve discovered that I tend to write in the present tense in order tell myself the story. Rough Draft = Present Tense (Visualizing the story)

Examples of rough draft