My First Draft Pitfalls

I recently sent the first three chapters of Project Scrimmage off to my writing group for feedback. There were a few specific things I asked them to keep an eye out for as they were reading, but I was mostly wanting a vibe check.

I noticed several patterns in the comments. To be honest, they're not exactly anything new.

I have quite a few, what I'd call, first draft pitfalls. Little habits I've yet to break and things that tend to be absent in the earliest drafts of any given WIP from the shelved-for-now behemoth I spent most of my teens and early 20s working on, to my post-college historical romances, to my current for-funsies contemporary football romance that I sent off to my writing group. Even though I'm aware of these pitfalls, and want to think I've gotten better at catching them, they still pop up, and I'm sure I'm not the only writer out there.

I thought it'd be worthwhile to highlight some of my personal first draft pitfalls not to offer solutions (because, let's face it, if I had a be-all-and-end-all solution to them, I wouldn't keep falling into these pitfalls); rather, I want to highlight them because I find that transparency from other writers can be super helpful and even encouraging.

And it's also possible that you're falling into these pitfalls and aren't even aware of it!

Interiority

Interiority is something that I've struggled with for years. I think it comes from having a misinterpretation of show, don't tell drilled into my noggin and being told that it's better to let your reader interpret your character's thoughts than put them on the page. Avoiding he felt sad in favor of describing the red tinge of his stinging eyes.

However, there are times you need to be more direct.

This is especially true when you're writing in the first person, as I am for the first time with Project Scrimmage. Your reader is in your character's head, so you need to clue them in to help form that connection.

Reading Just Stab Me Now by Jill Bearup certainly helped reframe interiority for me, but my grasp on it isn't as firm as I'd like. There's a balance between keeping the plot on pace and lingering that I haven't struck yet.

Pretty much all of my writing up until now has been in the third-person POV, which has put some distance between my characters and my reader, and I think having this first-person contemporary project has put the lack of interiority in my first drafts into perspective. It'll be interesting to see how that impacts my third-person historical projects when I shift gears again.

Who Are You People!? (And Other Character Quandaries)

If you've read my post on knowing when to cut characters from your story's cast or have watched my video going into the reasons I've DNFed books in the first half of this year, this one might be a surprise.

In both cases, I mentioned things like having too many characters creating confusion for readers. Too many people to keep track of when you're still trying to orient yourself in the story's world and get to know your protagonists can overwhelm the reader and make it harder for them to get invested.

But, yeah, having too many names whipping around was something my writing group pointed out in this first draft.

As an example, the current version of Chapter 2 opens with Liam and the rest of his teammates on a bus headed to the escape room Courtney works at. Liam is already acquainted with them, as he's been on the same NFL team with most of them for a while. The reader, however, doesn't have any of this context.

Think of it like arriving at a party where you don't know any of the other guests, while they've known each other since forever. It's probably going to take some time for you to settle in and figure out the various dynamics at play.

Even though I know these characters pretty well because they all live rent-free in my head, my readers simply don't. I can't expect them to just know who a background character like Miles is without establishing any information about him.

The other half of this is that I had too many characters to focus on at once. Giving your reader a half-dozen names without a face—or any distinguishing features—just turns those characters into amorphous blobs. They probably won't be able to tell the characters apart.

On a similar note, I also have a longstanding habit of characters vanishing midscene. Since I've got so many characters to keep track of and want to give each their own moments, it can cause other characters—including my protagonists—to fade into the background. This isn't anything new, as it was something that got brought up in feedback from a college writing professor

When I circle back to those chapters, I'll be taking a good, hard look at the actual number of characters I need to highlight, and whether any character's role can be filled by someone more important to the story, like DeMarcus or Trent.

The White Room

In terms of writing, a "white room" refers to instances where the setting descriptions are scant, leaving your characters floating in a blank void in your reader's mind. AKA, a white room.

This was a concern of mine for plenty of reasons. For one thing, I know I tend to be pretty dialogue-focused in my first drafts because that's what comes naturally to me (more on that soon).

But with Project Scrimmage, there's another layer here. Courtney works at an escape room, like I do. Because my escape room is such a familiar setting to me, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to describe the games Courtney runs well enough. Since it's all so second nature to me, I've found that I only really notice things that are out of place or unusual, like when a light has gone out or when something feels loose.

To my relief, there weren't many "white room" moments in this draft, apart from needing to clarify that this is, indeed, a vampire-themed escape room in a sports romance and not actually a vampire's mansion in a gothic vampire story. And to be honest, this feels like the first time that white rooms haven't been a glaring problem in my first drafts.

There are still a few areas to refine, but I thankfully didn't fall head-first into that particular pitfall.

Are We Clear?

I have a propensity to veer away from my outlines, to the point I honestly don't even bother doing more than a few scribbles' worth of an outline if that because any outline I do come up with ends up irrelevant within a couple of chapters.

Embracing the Pantser side of my writing has been a game changer in my writing, but it's also opened up a few pitfalls since those guardrails are gone. It often leads to things becoming convoluted.

One thing that came up in those first three chapters of Project Scrimmage in particular was looking at how I could simplify things in order to tie up those loose threads. Like I mentioned earlier, that includes assessing the size of the cast as well as identifying things that require an excessive explanation to make sense.

Clarity is everything in writing. My first drafts, while scant in some places, are very much a brain dump where I'm just throwing everything at the page to see what sticks. That sometimes means I ramble, and that makes cutting those passages down a priority in the second draft.

With every draft and with every new project, there have been improvements in my writing. It's hard to break a pattern, though, and I do trip into these first draft pitfalls every so often.

Maybe one day I'll be able to write right on by them and not get caught up on these blunders. For now, though, all I can do is mind those gaps, press onward, and have a plan to climb out.

Tell me about your first draft pitfalls in the comments! And if you've got any tips and tricks for avoiding mine, drop 'em down below!