How I wrote the first draft of my novel

And why it doesn't work.

Mar 05, 2025

In the last couple of months, I dedicated a decent amount of time to what I call my “draft strategy”: the plan to fix the first draft of my first novel and how to rewrite it.

Yes, it’s taking me months. Yes, the fact that it’s taking so long is driving me insane too, as well as, I imagine, the readers of this newsletter who have been following me for a while 🤣

There are a few reasons: writing is not my full-time occupation and is “only” something I do in my free time; I tend to lose myself in rabbit holes; also, I’m just slow.

But the major problem is: my first draft doesn’t work.

It’s quite normal, I hear. The whole job of a first draft is to suck: you vomit out some kind of story all over white paper. Then, you go through the mess and salvage what can be salvaged: that’s the whole point of editing and writing new drafts.

It’s weird, though, isn’t it? You have written a whole draft of a book, there must be something of a story in it or you wouldn’t have been able to write it, right? How can fixing something that is already there take so long?

Well, I don’t know why other people’s first drafts are broken, but I know now why mine is.

There are the issues that past-me simply ignored and very kindly decided they were problems for future-me (which is now-me): characters appearing and disappearing in the middle of chapters because I forgot them or because I suddenly realized it would make sense for them to be there; twists and reveals not well foreshadowed (or not foreshadowed at all); plot lines changing from one page to the other… and that’s only talking about the story and not the writing, which, as of right now, I’m not even touching.

But there are some more critical issues at the core of the story. There is movement, there is a direction, there’s a background, but everything is… vague. The arc of the main character is indistinct, as well as that of the other supporting characters: their motivations and trajectory within the story are blurry. And don’t get me started on the world building! It’s just a paper thin backdrop painted by a three year old!

The problem stems from how I wrote the draft in the first place. I actually wasn’t planning to write a book.

A group of friends and I had started a fun little project: an anthology podcast with a collection of short stories. We published one episode (which you can listen to here). I got excited and decided to write something that could be featured in future episodes (which unfortunately didn’t happen—yet). A couple of ideas bobbed up in my mind and they consolidated in the concept of 4 short stories that all had the same protagonist.

So, I set myself up to write. It was nice: the story ideas, at least at first, were simple and based on some of my favorite tropes, which made them fun to write—also, there wasn’t a lot of pressure and I didn’t have huge expectations.

I wrote the first short story; then I started the second. I noticed that the second short story was getting longer than expected and was relying way too much on the first one to be a standalone…

I asked myself, “Hah. Am I writing a book?”

When I got to the third “short story”, which warped and expanded as I wrote, I concluded that yeah, I guess I was writing a book.

I’ve concluded that this was the best way for me to get started writing a book. Of course, I had a big grand book idea in years past, one that was too shiny and perfect to be murdered by my inexpert writing hands (and to be honest, now I can tell it was just an okay concept with no story, really). I was always dreaming of writing it but never really got to do it.

Writing a couple of interconnected short stories that were inspired by some of my favorite tropes was a better way to be eased into this huge amount of work, and way more fun too.

It also left me with a disjointed story that was not supposed to be a book, so, welp.

Of course the characters’ arcs are undefined: all I thought while writing were specific scenes and events, but I wasn’t thinking of the story in its entirety. Of course the worldbuilding is flimsy: I just defined the bare minimum for a short story, not for a whole book.

That’s what I’m doing now: I’m defining things. But that’s also weird, because the more closely I’m looking at an element of a story, the more details I realize I can add, and the more ideas come. It can very easily turn into a rabbit hole (I’m in a couple right now).

But then, why am I doing this? Is it even worth it? Isn’t it maybe better to turn a page and start from scratch with something new? I’ve learned much from this experience anyway: I could write a different story that I can construct more solidly from the get-go. Wouldn’t that be time better spent?

Well… I seriously considered letting go of this book. But I realized, I’m still having fun with it.

Also, and I’m very hesitant to say this, but I believe I’m getting somewhere. I think I’m seeing glimpses of it, of what it could be. I’m connecting dots, defining edges, uncovering patterns. I feel like I’m onto something.

I guess I’m not done with this story just yet.

Have you also been banging your head against a wall while working on a project? Or realized how flawed your initial work was? How did you go about it? If you have any thoughts on what I shared, let me know by simply replying to this email, writing me at ryeyoubs@gmail.com, or leaving a comment!

Take care,

Rye Youbs