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@petealexharris Aha! Yes, this sounds very much like what I do in a second draft. I don’t usually have to add new scenes, but certainly a lot more prose. Thanks for explaining 😊

@paranoiapen You’re on the middle ground then! I hadn’t even considered that there might be folk who even out like that, though of course it makes sense. Thanks for sharing.

@petealexharris So are you saying that you find you need to add more actual story content to some of your drafts? Because that’s interesting. I generally have the right about of story content but not enough prose.

@nebulos Respect for handwriting your drafts. I get terrible hand cramps so this isn’t an option for me. I used to take preemptive painkillers before written exams.

I absolutely think there’s times talking heads can work. Sometimes that dialogue can absolutely stand by itself.

@ElyseMGrasso Oh, that’s interesting! I’d say mine still make sense, they’re just very barebones. I like the concept of the text growing fractally.

@rr4idic Oooooh, I see! That makes sense. I don't think I could do this. I use the promise of getting to write the cool line to motivate me to write the bits leading up to it. Thanks for explaining!

@rr4idic I genuinely respect anyone with this sort of method. I have to write in an Orderly Fashion and I'm always fascinated by people who can write out-of-order.

bear in mind I absolutely don't think an underwritten first draft is any better than an overwritten one, I was just doing a quick editing pass on the words I wrote yesterday and laughing at myself for how empty it is, in places.

one conversation in particular might as well have been taking place between two brains in jars communicating telepathically because I apparently did not include a single "stage direction".

@UncoveredMyths Gotcha! Thanks for explaining. Yeah, I do the same thing, because I tend to skim over a lot of that stuff in the first draft.

@UncoveredMyths Can I ask what you mean by a senses pass? I think I know, and do something similar, but I'd like to know your definition.

@UncoveredMyths Fluffings! :D

You're even more sparse than I am! I'd say a normal chapter word-length increase for me would be anything from a sixth to a third. That's really interesting. What do you tend to leave out in the first draft that you add in the second?

@Artemis201 Ah, that's very interesting! I don't pay attention to word count at all, really, but I can definitely see how that would be a useful thing to do.

@Rhube Yes, exactly!! I was trying to think through why my first drafts are so clean and I think you've nailed it. I do not want to edit garbage. Also, I've been writing since I learned how and seriously studying writing and narratives since I was a teenager, so I suppose that's rubbed off on me too. But absolutely the thought of editing my own garbage gives me hives.

@stevegis_ssg Ooh, now this is interesting to me, because I tended to overwrite in my professional, academic writing! You have a true superpower there, honestly, anyone who can condense a proposal down like that is a genius and a saint.

@Aaron_Davis Oh yeah, for sure I still remove words, I have a horrible tendency to use weasel words in a first draft and I have to cut ALL of them in the second. But on the whole, the second draft will have a longer word count.

@Artemis201 Interesting! Is your partner a fiction writer or non-fiction? I'm wondering if it's different.

@Emmacox Yeah, I've done that. And sometimes I don't explicitly set out to do that, but then I'll go in for the second draft and realise a scene has absolutely no sense of physical place past the introductory paragraph. Oops.

@Rhube Same on both "clean first draft" and "writing and rewriting for decades". For the latter I tend to start over from scratch every single time because my vision for the story has changed. Exhausting. I should stop.

It's actually nice to hear from someone else who writes pretty clean first drafts. I know that common writing advice is to let your first draft be absolute hot garbage, and I've tried going in with that mindset, but I find that I just don't enjoy writing that way. I LIKE sitting there for a bit fiddling with a paragraph until it doesn't suck.

I feel like most writers I know end up cutting words from the draft when they edit. Do any writers reading this find that they tend to add words instead?

My first drafts are often pretty sparse. When I'm editing, I work out where I need to slow down a bit, set a scene, let the story breathe, give the reader a little bit more information.

As a person, I am... loquacious, let's say, but apparently this doesn't translate to my writing.

Question for the #WritingCommunity and also for readers. Would be especially grateful to hear from non-white folk.

My current WIP is an industrial fantasy and set in a city where “white” people are a minority. The vast majority of the characters have brown skin. None of the cultural and ethnic tensions in the novel — of which there are many — have anything to do with skin colour. None of the “races” or cultures can be mapped onto Earth versions.

I did this because I hate “white-as-default” in fantasy and in general, because it makes sense with the history of this world, and because while I am writing about cultural and religious conflict, I’m doing it from the perspective of someone from Northern Ireland, where skin colour has nothing to do with the traditional sectarian tensions. However, I myself am pretty obviously white.

Obviously nobody can tell if I’m being problematic from one post, but I worry anyway. So: if anyone has any thoughts they think I should hear I would be beyond grateful.