The first draft, for me is always the toughest. I know that once I get that down I have something I can edit, massage, and shape into a solid polished work. Something real. It's wading through the first draft that nearly stops me every time.
I think it's because I write too slowly. I get sidetracked. I start editing - which in a first draft is death. I know I need to power through, to just keep typing. But it's tough to do. It's hard to leave things in a messy, embarrassing state for long.
So I've started trying to up my word-count. To write fast. And the best way I've found to write faster is to do a little more planning, to structure things so I have a better idea where I'm going when I start to write. This small amount of planning just before each writing session has saved me tons of re-writing, and upped my daily word-count by a ton.
I've been taking that idea a bit further lately and really digging into story structure. I'll share my thoughts on that with you in an upcoming article.
For now, here are a few more thoughts on How to Write Faster.
I'd love to hear your tips and techniques for getting that first draft done, and how to write quickly.
The only first draft I have ever finished so far I wrote during NaNoWriMo – a great month! There are other, somewhat less official Novel-Writing Months, too. I recommend them all. Writing a novel in a month is a great experience, especially when you’re doing it with a bunch of other people.
i learned to type fast just because i type a lot.
i know there are tutorials on how to type fast but i never had time for them.
i followed the link ‘how to write faster’ and found ‘dictating’ thing a very good idea. sadly, not always you can do so
I am working on my second short story for submission to a site called http://www.mindwingsaudio.com. This site is little-known but wonderful. The story has to be between 7500 and 11,000 words. I like this word-boundary because it pushes me to expand my story as fully as I can, knowing that I will pull back and refine it later, as needed. I’m encourages me to write faster because my first goal is to get at least those first 7500 words. Sometimes, I don’t worry about where a particularly scene is going to go. I write the word “SCENE” and then assign it an identifying word. For instance, “SCENE-downtown.” Then I let my fingers type as quickly as the words come to me. It’s amazing how this random practice inspires other scenes and sometimes, I’m able to go back and add more to other sections of the story, based on what I’ve just written. I keep placing these little blocks of story at the end of the document. That way, I can easily find them. I really like this process for helping me to write faster without feeling like I have to keep writing in a certain order
I have been trying my hand on short stories and drama. The key to getting my self go fast is to take an idea and quickly develop it into a paragrah, then to a page and then to several pages. This is often then in one sitting. Thereafte, i can take my time to do some editing, some expantions and then sorting out.
But it also helps when i writing for a contest. The contests challages me by giving me time to complet, number of words to use, length of the piece to be produces. There is also the idea to to expored, which narrows me and makes my submission tighter and sharper
Aim