Building Skeletons: Writing First Drafts

Writing a first draft is like building a skeleton. Laying down the bones. The bones are the scenes and basically what the world looks like and generally how people are feeling and what they would probably say in certain situations. All represented by somewhat or not very carefully chosen words. And all supported by tons of notes on scenes and places and people’s lives. The notes, that’s the prep work, the brainstorming and hopefully the loose organization of thoughts about what I want this thing to be, more or less. So that when I start laying down the bones I have a sense for what this skeleton is supposed to look like.

Writing a first draft is part toying with plot. Where and with whom do I want to start? And why? The why part may not be answerable without some experimentation. So, I write a few pages from one character’s POV, pages that may or may not end up being the first pages but can definitely be used, for ideas at least if not inserted later, like placing a metacarpal between a carpal and a phalange. So maybe I’m building a hand and I feel like that’s the right place to start. The hand feels, grabs, caresses, hits. Though maybe it would be better to start with a leg. The leg represents movement, stability, standing up, collapsing—a different place and time than the hand. And once I start to question which is better, I’m starting to get at the why. Why start here, now, with these people? Why is that cool for the reader? What are the implications for how things can unfold?

After some experimentation I maybe have part of a hand and a leg and some plates of the skull and two ribs, and I leave it all there on the desk and start building from one of those spots. I add an ulna and a radius. These are people and places that I think it makes sense to tell about next. Tell, not show, for now. My final manuscript will be all or most of the latter, none or little of the former. But for me, that’s detailed, grueling work, and right now I’m just laying down the bones. Instead of spending time trying to find the right words to show how someone feels (He hasn’t eaten. He’s been short with the kids. I saw this happen once before. He spat on his distorted reflection and sent ripples through the gasoline rain puddle), I just add a placeholder: He’s never been more depressed. All in the spirit of getting to know where my story is going. What’s the best path, and why? Who are these people? Why do they care? What would they do in certain situations? I’m learning as I go and leveraging the prep work. And yes, I’m doing more, here and there, than just laying down the bones. Depending on what’s inspiring me, I might take the time to breathe some life into this thing. Build some muscle around those fibulas and tibias, run some veins, grow a bushy eyebrow. Meanwhile the brain seems to be growing on its own, each thought a cell and the cells self-organizing into an organ. And to be clear, the writing at this stage is not: He walked down the street…He was feeling sad…He called her…He hung up, because he got a weird feeling…The cops pulled up and gave him the news. I am attempting to write good sentences and paragraphs. I’m just not allowing myself to get hung up on words. The truth, very few words will survive and make it to next draft.

Building scenes and worlds is great fun. Experimenting with what characters say and do, which tells us who they are, is sad and beautiful. The colors start to emerge. The sounds and smells. And maybe the skeleton doesn’t have hands. Maybe it has horns with moss on them. Maybe it has an extra appendage growing out of its left patella at an alarming rate. I very much look forward to the next drafts when I can take this mostly greyscale bare bones creature and more carefully use the English language to paint the irises and puncture a lung and streak the hair. In the meantime, I’m letting the story unfold. And it is. It’s making sense and feeling inspired. You see, because beneath it all is a soul that was always there, a heart not located in the chest, a substrate of energy from which every thought and cell emerges. And as I move along, I’m not surprised to see that this creature resembles me in some ways. And there are other patterns in it too, swirls in the skin, microcosms of something.