Five Stages of a First Draft

I am currently working on a new project for Wet Ink Games. Its early days so I don’t want to say much about it, but this process has given me reason to think about the creative process and specifically about the many stages of work a creator has to go through to make any particular idea a reality. There are lots of creators who have covered this before, but I want to put my own little spin on it. I think of my process from an idea to a first draft as happening over five broad stages.

Stage One - Filling the Blank Page: The the first step of any new piece of writing is to start with a blank page. I have heard many people say the blank page is the most intimidating because there is nothing to work from; the page is blank. I don’t see it that way, because when starting a new project I first set down a lot of ideas about what I want to do. There is often no method or reason to this step, it’s just a way to get all the possibly relevant ideas if not on the actual page, then at least up to the front of your mind so you can work with them. I will sketch scenes, propose characters or even just names, write down bits of dreams I’ve had, list possible plot events and make a list of scenes is movies or comics which I want to use as inspiration. This step is like brainstorming, but it seems more directed than that to me. I am usually not trying to find an idea at this stage, but looking for what will help me build up an idea I already have. This is the most free stage because there is nothing else set down yet so there can be no conflicts or missteps at this stage. All competing details are still possible and exist together in limbo. Once you have put everything you think might be helpful in front of you, you are ready to begin the work in earnest.

Stage Two - Finding the Edges: Once you have your working central ideas you need to know the full extent of the project. You need to know how big this particular project is and where it ends. All the threads of history and inspiration you’ve pulled into this particular project need to break off somewhere. This roughing out of the whole shape of the work sometimes leads you see it as possibly part of the larger series of works, but at some point you have to decide this is the part I am working on now and set that off as a individual project in your mind and on your page. This is the stage of outlining a whole project or maybe writing a one or two line description of each chapter for a novel. I have done a list of what needs to happen in each chapter for several of the NaNoWriMos I have worked on over the years. In the case of writing a RPG book, a list of all the things you want in the game and how many of each is part of what you make at this stage. For example, we need 20 new animal types and five or six new airplanes for the next Wild Skies book. We know that going in. This stage is not limited to outlining. Sometimes you have to start the writing to find out what you need to know about characters and backgrounds. There are still no wrong answers in this stage. You are filling out the shape of how big and how long you think the work is going to be. It may still change in the making. This stage generally doesn’t take that long, but it is my favorite part of the creative process. I love the combination of direction set in this first stage with this stage’s freedom.

Stage Three - Painting in the Floor: I may be mixing architectural metaphors here, but I like to think of this step as filling the work out to the edges set in the previous step. It could also be called “painting in the canvas.” This is the longest step in the process. After the direction is set and you know about where you want to go, you have to actually go there. In stage two you can simply write, “the characters discuss their emotional history,” but in stage three you have to figure out want that history is and how you are going to reveal it to best effect and what words your characters are actually going to say. If you set yourself the task of creating a dozen character profiles or six new airplanes which all need statistics to make them unique then you have to write up all those details. It can be a slog to get through this stage as it’s not a time for a lot of new ideas. It’s slow and steady crafting. It’s the “cruising altitude” portion of the flight, to mix in yet another metaphor. About 80 to 90 percent of a project gets written in this stage.

Stage Four – Finishing the Corners: This is the stage where you have to go back and deal with whatever you skipped in the previous step. This has been less common in the novels I’ve written because I’ve only finished longer fiction like that all in one go during November. It is a more common problem for me in RPG writing where there is often many different types of writing within one project. Maybe you left a detailed time line for last because the alternate history section wasn’t written yet. Or maybe you skipped the details of a weapon’s game numbers because you wanted to get on to describing the attributes of your fantasy creatures. This stage also includes all the details you didn’t plan for from the start. You may not know you need a chapter exploring the motivations of the queen mother until you get to the climax of the story and she’s there when her son is murdered. Whatever the reason you skipped something or left it out, in stage four you have to go back and get those things done. This is the hardest step for me, usually. There is often a reason I left the tricky bits for the end and they are still tricky to get right. I find the work of this stage is motivated not by what I am interested in writing or thinking about, but by the needs of the story. It is often work I just have to push myself to get through.

Stage Five – Polishing all the Details: Fifth and lastly the work as a whole must be harmonized in terms of format and details. Did you change a character’s name in chapter three? You have to make sure it’s corrected in the first chapters. Did you create place-holder information while someone else was working on the real details? That has to be swapped out. Were you inconsistent in story details like descriptions of a place or in format elements like use of quotation marks? You have to bring all that into line. You should also fix spelling errors you missed in your initial haste. This is the final pass through whatever you’ve written to get everything “right” as much as you can before the first draft is done and other people get to look at it. It is a clean up stage and doesn't usually involve too much mental power so while it can be tedious, it is not hard.

There you have it, my breakdown of work. I’m off to paint in some more floors. Expect more news in the new year!

Culminations which are but Preludes

The first downloadable supplements for Wild Skies: Europa Tempest are now available! These were paid for by stretch goals and certain backer levels during the our Kickstarter campaign two years ago. Right now we have an adventure called Lucky Rabbits Afoot, featuring raiding rabbits from the Saar Warren and a closer look at the small nation of Luxembourg. We are also offering a mercenary crew profile of the Rock Roost Renegades which includes four full characters from Corsica and a few of their unique technical innovations. These are just the first of several small releases we have in the works.

I have been working to fulfill my part of these extras for a while. It’s been a real learning experience, as cliched as that is to say. The “Luxembourg adventure” I wrote was inspired by a campaign I ran during the very early days of Wild Skies when when it was a setting grafted onto a different set of rules. As part of the process I got to (and had to) pick an artist, correspond with that artist, send art reference, have my work reviewed and all the rest. I have only written one previous adventure, so I’m still not sure exactly what I need to do. To make things worse, this is the first adventure for the Compass System so there are no models to follow. Again, I get to (and have to) make all the decisions about format and length and how to boil down the NPC combat stats for GMs without leaving anything out. Maybe it just feels trickier than it is because I am my own worst critic. Now that it is out, it can see what a lot of other people have to say and make changes for next time.

The mercenary faction was a special personal project for me. Not only did all the same “learning curve” stuff about art and setting format precedents apply, but I got to work with my father to create the faction. As a backer at a certain level, he got to create this faction and all the characters. My father is not a roleplayer at all so he didn’t really have a desire to pick skills and assign attributes. He is a story teller and the depth he went to in creating back stories for his team of ex-military freedom fighting bats from Corsica is inspiring. He started with the facts of the Corsican biota and chose his characters and the nature of their fighting techniques from there. He wrote character bios and a short story about the origins of the team which I then turned into the game’s numbers and skills list. This was not what I expected when we offered “we will work with you to create a mercenary crew” as the Commodore backer level, but it ended up being very nice to collaborate with my father on this project.

Wet Ink Games has more products to release and more games in the works, so keep watching the skies for more!