I'd have to read one of your first drafts – and probably get to know you a lot better – to understand what is wrong with the draft and how this happened to be able to answer your question in manner that would be helpful to you personally.

I have read manuscripts by persons who quite frankly simply didn't have the verbal intelligence necessary to write meaningful sentences. If that is your problem, no amount of advice or practice will turn you into a good writers.

If that isn't your problem, then maybe some of these suggestions might help:

• Write the next text.

Writing is a skill like any other. It has a learning curve that you can't skip. You'll have to write a couple of failed works to learn how to write well, in the same way that you have to begin as a beginner and won't create a masterpiece at the first attempt in any other field either.

I found that the quality of my writing began to reach publishable quality about ten years after I began writing fiction. There is a study that shows that on average writers need to write three failed novels before their first publication. Some publish their first attempt, and others need twenty.

• Don't be lazy, or the result will be sloppy.

When you want to build a house or play a song in a band or treat a broken leg, you don't usually just jump in and muddle about. You analyse the problem, make a plan, and then execute it.

In writing, when you are a pantser, your first draft will be a mess. If you want your first draft to be close to publishable, you need to create an outline first.

Yes, there are very experienced (or naturally talented) writers who sit down and write a bestseller without an outline, but those are few and far between. It is much more likely that – if you find that your first drafts are not good – you are not one of these.

I found that once I began doing outlines, my first drafts were finished and publishable except for a bit of copy-editing.

• Accept.

If you find that your first drafts are horrible but that after a few rewrites they get published, then maybe that is who you are and how you work. People are more complex and varied than a simple dichotomy between pantsers and outliners. Every writer writes differently, and maybe writing a terrible first draft is what you need to do to eventually create a publishable text.

If you don't want to accept that,

• Experiment.

posted over 4 years ago

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4y ago

What?‭

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