W O AH

this is a severus snape free zone

c: @do-i-have-tooooo and me

Writing a First Draft

I’ve seen a lot of advice posts that encourage writing a “bad” first draft, or saying that the point of the first draft isn’t to be “good” just to be done, but I have yet to see any examples of what that actually means (which is unfortunate because for a lot of first-time writers that may just mean that their best effort on a first draft isn’t “good enough”), so that’s what I’m here for! The ultimate advocate of ugly writing, babey! Let’s write some “bad” first drafts!!

Forewarning that this is going to be difficult for you perfectionists out there (same hat tho!!!), but really, if you’re looking to finish a first draft within a reasonable time frame (and not continue to rewrite the beginning 50 times to get there, only to be disappointed when the next scenes aren’t as “good” as the beginning), then this really is the way to go. Perfectionism comes in super handy in later drafts, but it’s a real burden in the first draft, and I really really relate to that. What I find that helps keep my perfectionism in check while I’m drafting is to keep a separate Word doc open (or a notebook and pen at hand) to jot down new ideas or things that have changed throughout the draft. Putting a page number down next to the notation will save your life as well. Your future self will thank you!

Okay, so let’s get into it! You have an idea, and you need to get that first draft out before you lose motivation or move on to a shiny new WIP idea. What’s that first draft going to look like?

Write the scenes you’re excited about first. If you’re someone who, like myself, needs to write things in chronological order, then write these scenes in chronological order - but! if you have the conclusion figured out, then write it now, yes, even before that one bit in the middle you’re not sure about. Is it likely that some details in these scenes will change as you keep writing different parts of the book? Yes! Do it anyway! Anything you write will be helpful for later drafts, so write those scenes!!! Plus, if you start with what you’re excited about, you’ll want to keep writing even after they’re finished, because your brain will just keep generating other super cool ideas for those in-between scenes. And yeah, there will definitely be filler scenes to write, but you can probably worry about those in the next draft.

If you’re on a roll, don’t worry about punctuation, grammar, or spelling. I mean it! If those red squiggles in Word bother you, turn them off (they’re really only semi-helpful for editing, and we’re not doing that right now). If you write faster and think better using “internet grammar” (minimal/excessive punctuation, no capitalization, weird spelling, etc.), then do that! If it helps you get words on the page, it’s worth doing.

If you’re not on a roll, try putting some space between what you’ve written and what you need to write. For me, that frequently means hitting enter (even mid-sentence if I suddenly get stuck), typing “monkey,” and then hitting enter again, as many times as it takes for my brain to reboot and remember what the hell I was going for. If that means I have a chain of 20 monkeys in the middle of a paragraph, so be it. They get to hang out there until I come back in draft two and delete them. 

I’ve also written “uhhhhhh” and “oh fuck now what” several times in a first draft. It happens. It’s easier to write in a way that mirrors your thought process, so just do what works. Use memes in your prose to keep it moving - it’ll make future you laugh when you go back through on draft two!

Don’t be afraid to change major pieces of plot - but don’t you dare go back and rewrite earlier pieces to match! Let’s say you’re at the end of act one and you revealed some tragic detail about your MC’s backstory, but now you’re in the middle of act two and you’ve realized that it no longer fits your idea of MC and you no longer want it to be true. Simply make a brief note of it and keep writing like that scene in act one never happened. Deleting, rewriting, and repurposing are all for later drafts! The goal on the first draft is literally just to reach the end - and it’s inevitable that you’ll find and change the story along the way.

Forget about foreshadowing. No matter how detailed of an outliner you are, the fact is that in the first draft you really don’t actually know what’s going to happen yet in your book (see point 5). So forget about trying to foreshadow. Spell out what’s happening plain as day - because the first draft is just one long exposition dump to aide you in future drafts. If you get halfway through and a sudden twist or weird piece of backstory jumps out at you, write it in as if you had foreshadowed, even though you haven’t yet. Make a note of it, and maybe even note where you could foreshadow this in the next few drafts, but keep moving forward. 

Changing perspectives is fine even if it goes against how you know you want your final draft to be. If you have a scene in mind that you know you need to include, but you have no idea how MC would react during it, but you know how your side character would react, write the scene from the side character’s perspective. You can think about MC’s POV in that scene later - again, the point is just to get it written, so if switching POVs gets you through the scene, do it.

Ultimately, this is what people mean when they say your first draft is going to be “ugly.” It’s going to be a little (or a lot) messy. But that’s okay. The struggle of the beginning writer is realizing that your first draft is not going to look like anything you’ve read before - because those are final drafts. And to the gifted writers who breezed through school (like I did) by submitting their first draft essays for grading - that’s not going to work here. Every time you rewrite a piece, it gets better. If you try to make your first draft perfect, you will just end up frustrated and disappointed at the time you wasted, because you’ll end up reworking 80% of it or more in the subsequent drafts. Your writing style will change and improve, and your knowledge will grow, and every time you revisit a draft, that will be reflected.

So write that ugly draft. Insert so many author’s notes mid-paragraph that you look like an early 2000s fanfic writer. Contradict previous scenes like you’re constructing the most elaborate Winchester Mystery House -esque draft the world has ever seen, complete with paragraphs that lead to nowhere and mysterious monkey chains cutting sentences in half. 

And then, in the second draft, make it look as though the first draft never happened.

There was an order that relationships were supposed to go in—a pacing—a calculated number of breaths before certain conversations could happen. Eddie knew this. But he also knew that he and Richie’s relationship didn’t fit the same mold, and so he really shouldn’t have been surprised when Richie brought up marriage. He shouldn’t have been, but he was.

“Yeah, Eddie. I want to marry you.” Richie leaned into Eddie’s space on the couch, nearly on top of him, and pushed his hair back with delicate fingers. “I want to spend an absurd amount of money on a ring you won’t even wear half the time because you’re worried about your blood circulation and I want to take you somewhere nostalgic and propose. I want to have a ceremony with suits and vows and cake and a ridiculous speech from Bill that’ll make us both cry.”

“Oh is that all?” Eddie laughed nervously, something pleasant and curious twisting in his gut. Richie shook his head.

“I want to buy a house with you. I want to get a bed that we spend the whole day fighting over trying to put together. I want to leave little... little sticky notes on our fridge reminding you of things I know you won’t forget anyway. I want to have kids with you—“

“Kids?!” Eddie squeaked, pulling back from Richie’s gentle touches. “You want kids?”

Richie frowned at that, and there was a hint of alarm on his face, though Eddie wasn’t sure if it was at his own words or Eddie’s reaction to them. He sat up a bit on the couch, thoughtful.

“I mean,” he started, unsure. “I don’t know, I never really got to think about it before. But I think maybe, I might.” He looked up at Eddie questioningly. “Would—I mean. Do you want kids?”

“I...” Eddie trailed off, his answer a wordless half-thought. He tried to picture it, but then not too hard.

Because the truth was that Richie Tozier made Eddie feel like he could do things that, in any other place, he wouldn’t dream of doing. And the idea of raising kids with someone who made him feel like that sounded pretty fucking decent.

“Yeah,” he said finally on an exhale. “Yeah, I want that. With you.”

There was a breath—just one—and then Richie was leaning into him again, cupping the back of his neck and kissing him. Eddie re-situated himself on the couch, laying back against the arm rest to accommodate Richie’s weight over him, and kissed him back.

“I love you,” he murmured against his lips between kisses. He wondered absently if he’d ever actually said that to Richie before. But then he figured it didn’t really matter.

my favorite thing to do right now is imagine the hargreeves children on saturdays from noon to half past noon

oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it’s okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher’s back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn’t. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i don’t want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too. 

one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.

How many brain cells the Hargreaves Siblings have

- Diego and Luther share one brain cell (ie: Ölga for Ölga)

- Ben has two brain cells (he is a philosopher and a scholar)

- Ben tries to share one with Klaus, but its often rejected so Klaus has none

- This typically ends with Ben having one and a half brain cells and Klaus having half of one, but then sometimes Klaus has brief moments of genius so Klaus gets two brain cells in those moments (this doesn’t happen a lot)

- Vanya has one brain cell (it’s been through a lot)

- Allison has one brain cell (this brain cell is a mother)

- Sometimes they share

- Five has the other 95 brain cells

- Grace is a perfect being she has 100 brain cells

- Reginald infortunately has a lot of brain cells but he uses them for evil

- Pogo has like 85 (he’s smart but he supports Reginald so that knocks him down a lot)

I don’t know if any of this makes sense but it does to me

SITES FOR WRITERS

Fantasy name generator

Fighter’s block - try to defeat a monster by writing

Child’s Traits Calculator ; predict a child’s appearance 

Child’s Traits Calculator ; predict other traits

Fifty Plot Twist Ideas For Your Work-In-Progress!

Name generator (Character, Baby, Last name, etc.)

Plot generator ; Inspiration for your next novel, film or short story

Character generator ; Generate Rich Characters in Seconds

Writing Exercises ;  This site provides (completely free) writing prompts and exercises to help you get started with creative writing and break through writing blocks. 

Notebook ; create your characters, worlds, objects, places, etc. and save them

Festisite ; Create a fake license, marriage certificate, credit card, ticket and you can find other stuff as well.

The most common last names in the US

Lists of most common surnames

List of most popular given names

List of the least common surnames [last names] in America, rank 16,001-20,000

Fantasy name generator (again)

Random Name Generator (Choose origins, gender, etc.)

Said is dead (Remember that you can use said, don’t use it to less.)

How Much Blood Can The Human Body Lose? 

How Long Can Someone Go Without Breathing?

The 6 Types of Collars Every Man Should Know by Name 

18 Different Types of Sleeves Design Patterns

What are the most widely practiced religions of the world?

Differences Between a Short Story, Novelette, Novella, & a Novel

Hemingway editor ;  It grades your writing by its readability. 

Zen writer ; writing without distractions (Might not be free after a while)

33 Ways to Write Stronger Characters

75+ bad habits for your character

30 SCENE IDEAS FOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

10 Things Writers Don’t Know About The Woods

British and American terms

Free writing worksheets

Feel free to add more!

i just found them utterly delightful this season

Meals became the one time of day […] to be together – and I met them with equal parts […] and dread. Would today be the day I engaged Allison […] stand up to Diego’s taunts? Maybe I’d show Five the violin piece I’d been working on for weeks.

Though prone to arrogance and outbursts, even more than the average preteen, Five was my sole confidante in the years before he disappeared. It almost seemed fitting […] the siblings to leave us, it would be him who [I fully?] […] who fully trusted me. Five was […] always one […] Dad’s manipulations, and he […]-ites like my other siblings. Five […] man’s most […]-ive weakness […] compen… […] beyond […]

One morning, I left the Academy […] with clothes, snacks, and mementos […] I think I even brought a dream catcher […] from home following me wherever I went […] a bus stop, and I sat there all day long – and strangers […] first time in my life it hit me that I was completely alone. I thought I was alone my entire life, but this was new and entirely different. I was afraid of what I [didn’t know?] and would choose Dad’s torment any day over the [endless dark that stretched?] down our street. [Buses came?] […] the kind drivers away. That night I walked back […] the front doors, and no one knew I had even left to the […]. I wonder how long it would have taken them to realize the extra girl they never needed was […] existence? To this day, I’m not sure. The next time that […] was when we all did. After what happened to Ben.

Our everyday existence was full of evidence that Dad had […]-pped into treating us like experiments. Not as children, but like animals. And what happened to Ben was the last straw that finally shattered the illusion for the others, I regret that […] among what they realized that day. I didn’t […] to leave on my own. It wasn’t until Allison took off for Hollywood and Diego cursed out the old man for good […] [realized?] we were ultimately a broken family. I […] that my family would accept me into the fold. I […] as long as there was a club to belong to, one day […] notice me and invited me too. Everyone would say “Vanya, we can’t believe we’ve wasted so much time without you, you’re our sister after all.”

But it was then that I realized […] there was nothing for me to aspire to be anymore. It was […] – the life that I had wanted for as long as I could remember […] had finally fallen apart: Without The Umbrella Academy […] and the freedom to be whomever I chose. Suddenly my violin playing wasn’t stupid – it was something that made me special.

I would say it was Dad who implemented all of this. He caused my alienation through procedures, through harsh rules that we all followed for fear of the alternative. And to an extent, that’s all true. I can’t forgive what he did to me – but sometimes I wonder where Dad’s actions ended and by siblings’ began. When you consider what a mind, especially a young mind, will absorb and harness when put into dire situations, it’s not at all difficult to believe that my siblings learned cruelty from Dad until they eventually made it their own. It wasn’t just the rules keeping me out of top-secret meetings, anymore. It just made sense that I would sit at the end of the table, so Diego could help Five’s technique, or so Allison could paint Klaus’s fingernails. I became accustomed to sulking and watching them from afar – […] my morning oatmeal went uneaten and but thoroughly […]

Highlights:

Five was Vanya’s closest sibling and the one person who treated her like an equal

Five is not an angry old man from his apocalypse time, he’s just like that

Vanya once tried to run away, and when she came back, nobody even noticed she was gone

Hargreeves treated them like lab rats (but we knew that)

Ben’s death changed everything

Diego cursed out Hargreeves (Go Diego Go!)

Allison painted Klaus’ fingernails as teens

Vanya just hates that goddamn oatmeal

I would love for them to publish Vanya’s book as a companion to the series. This tea is piping hot, and I wanna figure out which part made Ben say “Oh my god, she wrote that? I can’t believe she would do that!”

how to draw arms ? ?