leebrontide:

Can I offer a reframe of the common “write the shitty first draft” advice? I like that advice a lot but I think the way it’s often presented bounces off a lot of people and activates shit that does not help writing happen.

I think of the first draft as an armature.

If I was making a beautiful bronze statue, I would need to make a clay model first. And, depending on the shape, before I even got out my clay I would need to get some good thick wire and create a basic shape for the clay to adhere to, so it doesn’t all fall down. Once I have this essential 3D wire frame, I can start building and subtracting and refining.

But if I try to refine on just clay, it won’t have enough of a core to hold it up. I’ll sculpt a beautiful hand only to have the whole arm fall off and go smush.

The armature isn’t the sculpture. It is the frame you build the sculpture around.

The first draft isn’t the novel, it’s a sort-of-novel-shaped thing that will hold up everything you build and beautify later.

Write the armature draft. Try to make it a good armature, instead of trying to make it a good novel before it’s ready.

This is why it’s called “writing down the bones”

This is why adding more detail into that outline is called “fleshing it out”

It’s like being a necromancer or Frankenstein or something building a body– if you had to start from a skeleton and work your way all the way up

Bones… then muscles and nerves and fat and organs, and connective tissue, and the inner and middle and outer layers of the skin. And finally the finishing touches– the pores and fine lines in the skin surface, the curl of each lock of hair, the gradients of color in the blush, the glint of life in the eyes

It’s as if a body could come to life by the process of decomposition in reverse

This is why it’s called… “composition”