A Writing Tip by Andrea Caswell
GIFT TO SELF: A DEVELOPMENTAL DRAFT
The first draft of anything we write…cue a collective groan! Those first drafts can be a real mess, not because we don’t know what we’re doing, but because creating something from our partially-formed thoughts is a messy business. First drafts famously earn a bad rap—we all know the adjectives hurled at them. Regardless of how you’d describe an initial attempt, the fact remains that you must have a draft in order to have a story (or essay or poem or chapter) to revise. Without that hot-mess of an early draft, all you’ve got is an idea unexpressed. A thought bubble floating above your head, possibly about to float away. Sometimes we’re afraid to ruin a good idea by putting it on paper and turning it into excrement.
In her wonderful essay “The Getaway Car,” Ann Patchett likens reading that first draft to seeing all the beautiful butterflies you’ve crushed. As a writer, you’re probably guilty of killing a few butterflies in your day. One time, a story lived in my head for months, loosely about a woman who lost her kid’s dog. When I finally wrote a first draft, the story wasn’t nearly as interesting or compelling as it had been in my daydreams. I had no idea where it began or what her real problem was! No sense of the setting/context or what should happen! That thin draft was so discouraging because I’d placed too many expectations on the work too soon.
Now, to soften the blow of a reality-ridden first draft, I craft stories and essays using a more gentle approach: a developmental draft.
How is that different from a first draft? Partly, it’s a matter of perception, a framing issue. If a piece starts as a developmental draft, I have no expectation or hope that it will “work” or be more than a set of ideas I’m tossing around like a disheveled salad. This gives me permission to write more freely, to try out unusual ideas, and to problem-solve in unexpected ways instead of applying craft pressure to nascent characters and plot, etc. In a developmental draft, I write a lot of “notes to self,” leaving a trail of imaginative breadcrumbs regarding what I’m thinking about this option or that.
The result is, instead of a first draft that seems like a weak attempt (such as my lost dog story), I have a document that’s been given room to roam and is super-charged with ideas that wouldn’t have fit in a more concerted first draft. Like the mythical “drawer time” often prescribed for our work, the content of a developmental draft tends to percolate and feed on itself, which expands your available options in a future first draft. Some of those freewheeling fits of fancy will belong on the cutting room floor or become necessary parts of other stories. Either way, by the time you sit down to write that first draft, you will be ready.
Andrea Caswell holds an MFA in fiction and nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She’s a Senior Fiction Editor at Cleaver Magazine and is on the faculty of Cleaver Workshops. Andrea is the Creative Director of Write in Paris retreats (www.writeinparis.com). Her work appears or is forthcoming in Tampa Review, The Coachella Review, River Teeth, The Normal School, Atticus Review, Columbia Journal, and others. She’s an alum of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. For more information, please visit www.andreacaswell.com or www.writeinparis.com.
Read more from Cleaver’s Writing Tips.
