Drafting is essential to creating good work. With each rewrite and revision, the superfluous words and ideas are winnowed away, while the story comes into focus. But you know what is necessary before you do all that time consuming and tedious drafting? Prewriting.
I love prewriting. Prewriting is that exciting process where ethereal ideas becomes nascent story. The possibilities are endless.
Before I write a story, I put together an outline with important story beats and note where themes will be illustrated. I pair that with character sketches that include three to four characteristics, where they are at the beginning of the story, and how they will grow. Sometimes, I don’t know where the character will end up, sometimes I do.
Then I write. And write some more. Then I get some coffee (or bourbon), and write some more. Prewriting for me is putting it all on the page. It is giving in to every word and idea and letting the story go where it needs to.
Following the outline is essential. I write each point exhaustively. It is less about jamming everything into a particular section of the story, and it’s more about a pouring out all the ideas that I may want to incorporate into that portion of my narrative. It also gives the characters room to breathe, and for all the little synapses in my brain to connect— even in places I hadn’t considered. It’s an area of discovery that is tiring but oh so rewarding.
Then, as I move through each plot point, I can borrow or rearrange passages from previous sections. Ideas and themes show themselves more relevant, while others aren’t useful. The story comes together through my own vision and the artistic alchemy that is writing.
I see writing like gardening. Many have this vision that gardening is selecting plants, putting them in place, and then the garden is complete. But a full garden, much like a story, requires significant time to allow it to grow unabated, only weeding when unnecessary. Then when the garden is lush, and potentially overgrown, you prune it to realize its potential.
As with your stories, allow them to flourish. Give yourself the time to empty out all your ideas through a prewriting phase. The prose might be iffy, and there will be scenes you won’t use. But you’ll discover new characters, ways to implement an important theme, and you’ll construct a handful of sentences that are just masterful. When you move on from your prewrite, you’ll have a wealth of great content that you will turn into a better story than you thought you could tell.
So what’s next after all that prewriting? Rewriting. Yikes!
