Leave In Everything

As you write the first draft of your story, you may come to a point where you wonder if you need to add more stuff, take stuff away, go into depth about this or that.

My advice is go deep. Add as much detail as possible, all the explanations and explore as many tangents as occur to you.

The reason I say this is twofold. First, there should be no editing in the first draft, just an emptying of your brain onto the page. Once you’ve got it down, you can mess around all you want, but having too much description or exposition in an early draft is never a problem. You can always cut it out.

Secondly, and more importantly,  there’s this thing that happens when you write a long-form piece. At some point you will get stuck. Something will be missing or not working or in need of a moment you hadn’t realised you needed.

The thing to do when this happens is to ignore it and keep going. Leave a note for yourself, a place marker, reminding yourself there’s a hole that needs filling but don’t bother filling it.

Then, when you have a more or less complete story, go over it from the beginning to get a sense of what you have on your hands (it won’t be pretty, but it never is).

As you go over it, reading it aloud if you can bear it, keep in mind that there was that hole that needs filling. A reason for Tony to have left England, a secret that Mary never told her daughters, or whatever. And a strange thing will happen.

There will be something in the early part of the story that fits the bill perfectly, giving you just what you need.

It often isn’t easy to spot.  The subconscious is a sneaky bastard. It won’t be in plain sight. It will be tucked away somewhere. And the thing is, if you really empty your brain onto the page it will be there in a much more obvious way.

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