Sharing a first draft

I know there are quite a few authors who never let anyone else see their first drafts. I'm not one of them - I fearlessly unleash my work in progress on readers to try to find out what bits work, and what bits don't work.

It's true that the first draft of a novel is very much like vomiting words onto the page. It's that brave attempt to get the story that's trapped inside your head, out on to the page. With it, you get spelling errors, typing mistakes, grammar that is not of this planet, plot holes, and all sorts of weird things as the story trying to settle itself out.

My first drafts are no different. I find that in some chapters, my characters seem to take on entirely new personalities, ignoring the fight that they had not two pages earlier, and being overly chummy with the person they were about to try to kill. But it's these experiments with character personalities that make my first drafts to interesting. At some point, usually the second or third draft, I'll have to settle on exactly how my character should be, but in the meantime, I've got a chance to try a few things out.

So, last week, I gave a couple of scenes a public airing at a writers' meeting. In the two scenes I selected, I had made the same character show every different personalities and emotions, with different dialogue styles. In the first scene, I made my character arrogant and cock-sure. In the second scene he was contrite and humble. The feedback I received was interesting. From what was said, it seems that I could probably go either way with my character's development. This is actually a bit of a pain, because I can't make up my mind. However, everyone seemed to enjoy the scenes I created, so maybe my character's behaviour suited those scenes. Maybe it would be okay to have my character show both characteristics?

I'm still not convinced I'll ever publish the story in question. I've learned a few things by writing it, so I guess it was a useful exercise. Sharing my first draft hasn't been a painful experience, although in this instance, it didn't help me either. So I ask myself, if my open approach correct?

I killed someone last night

Last night, after days of holding the moment off, one of my characters died. A character in a book is just a collection of words making up the narrator's description of them and their actions, and the words they speak. But in my head, as an author, and in your head, as a reader, you have your very own version of this imaginary friend. Left alone, the character lives forever, can fight countless unsurvivable battles, put the world to rights, whatever you like, there's nothing that can destroy them, except for the author's decision to tell the reader that they're gone, and will not be the source of any further dialogue (unless you're writing a ghost story or zombie epic, I guess).

I try to ground my stories in a realistic world, where death is the end of the story for the character. However, their death is not the end of the story for the other characters, just another event. I wanted to explore how my characters deal with this event, because although it's one of life's inevitable events, it always seems to draw out some of the strongest reactions. Possibly even stronger than birth (although I'd like to explore that idea eventually).

So, tragically, I ended the life of a character, and because it was the first time I'd done this, I decided to announce it on Twitter (I like sharing my writing experiences). Within minutes, @Thoughts4Paper asked me "What made you decide to kill the character?"

This question seems to imply that some authors just kill characters, because they want or need some death in their story, and don't really consider why they're writing each death. This is probably true for some authors. I, however, had considered my first death for some time. When I started writing the manuscript, I will admit that nowhere in the plot plan that I'd drawn up did I say that this character would die. This is the truth:

There's a point in writing a manuscript, at around the 10k mark, where something odd happens in nearly every story I write. It's something I can't properly explain, but lots of authors seem to experience it. What happens, and how I describe it, is that my characters seem to start "breathing on their own". Regardless of my intentions, the words I write seem to become independent of  the story in my mind, and my characters take on a life of their own. I become aware of them as real people, and imagine them reacting to their world I've created, and the situation they're in. This doesn't happen in the first few thousand words, it takes time for them to run in a bit.

I've asked myself "why does this happen?" and I've come to the conclusion that while I seem to be pretty good at creating worlds, plots, and story lines, I'm rubbish at creating characters. Really. I know it. I know it, because when I start writing, most of my characters don't even have names! This is one my greatest weaknesses as a writer. I think it's also one of my greatest weaknesses as a person - I just don't "do" people. I make few friends (although I'm friendly to just about everyone), and I don't seem to connect to people in the way that many of the people I admire do. I have trouble remembering names. I have trouble empathising. It's not because I think I'm a bad person, it's just that I don't think and feel that way. It's probably deeper than just the way my brain thinks, it's who I am. I've had to come to terms with this, and so far I've managed to lead a good life, working around this flaw (if you want to describe it that way - some people find my natural naivety towards other people endearing, apparently).

The upshot of my personality problem, is that I don't discover my characters properly until after I've written them. As a result, they can end up being inconsistent, or not fitting the role I intended for them in the story. This is one of the reasons why it's essential that I re-write my stories several times. At the start of the second re-write, I'm much more aware of who my characters are, how they think, and how they'll react to certain events. I can make notes about them to help me improve their consistency. It's not a perfect way of writing, but it's the only way I can deal with the characters that I've created, having got to know them in that first draft.

So why did I kill my character? Because I had to. He started breathing on his own, and it turned out he was an alcoholic. He wasn't very well, and his actions were upsetting to my main character. My main character had never been upset like this before, and I wanted to explore this. I also wanted a vehicle for bringing my main character and his estranged father back together. I'd initially planned a lame search plot, but it seems that deaths, or more correctly, funerals, have a way of bringing families together that other events don't. @Thoughts4Paper responded "Brutal..." Yes, it is, but I think it's entirely necessary.

In the beginning...

By accident, I chose to become a writer.

It's true. I was ready to try anything, and I was even considering regrowing some facial hair, when I stumbled upon National Novel Writing Month in October 2011. To be fair, I'd toyed with the idea of writing stories for years, and even written the odd page of babble, but I'd never given it a serious go. So I signed up, and I started writing.

This blog is intended as a repository for the strange things that happen to me as I write. They seem to make up a good story by themselves, and it would be a shame to forget them. I intend to demonstrate how I research, deal with editing, and maybe even the mystical world of publishing.

So where am I now?

It's July 2014. Lots of stuff has already happened, and I will eventually write about some of the things that have happened. I've got one "complete" manuscript for a story called "In Exchange", and a couple of half written manuscripts for "One Key Higher" and "The Grey Herald", both of which I'm not so sure about. Certainly "One Key Higher" was an experiment, and is a story in itself. I've just started writing a sequel to "In Exchange" called "In Return", and it's way too early to say where that is going yet. "In Exchange" has been sent to three publishers so far. One didn't get back to me. Another folded. I'm waiting on the third.

Has writing changed my life?

Yes. By writing, I met the most wonderful girl, who I fell in love with, and she has since become my wife. Sometimes my own luck surprises me.

Do I make a living out of writing?

No. I have a day job (which is pretty cool in its own right, but isn't the subject of this blog). I write to please myself, and hopefully those that discover my work.

So what next?

I'll write posts here as and when I find time, to let you peep into my little world, because I know how nosey people can be.