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Q&A How rough should a rough draft be

For a long time I would edit chapters as I wrote them, to make them as complete as possible. Unfortunately this often resulted in me running out of steam and never actually finishing them. I've r...

2 answers  ·  posted 9y ago by Michael B‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:24:24Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/17977
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Michael B‭ · 2019-12-08T04:24:24Z (almost 5 years ago)
For a long time I would edit chapters as I wrote them, to make them as complete as possible. Unfortunately this often resulted in me running out of steam and never actually finishing them.

I've recently started trying to allow myself to write rougher first drafts in the thought of cleaning, editing etc on the next pass.

However I'm not sure how much effort / time I should be putting into writing that rough draft.

For instance, I have a chapter that contains a new couple discussing a good deed a waiter performs. As a means of the couple getting to know each other. At this stage I don't really know how that conversation will progress, and would need to put time into making it feel right

Should I quickly placehold the highlights of that conversation? or try to write it in full? or something else...

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2015-07-01T18:17:55Z (over 9 years ago)
Original score: 17