The Discovery Draft!

I finished the Discovery Draft of my Middle Grade novel this week! (Just under 60K words) This means that I was making discoveries right up to the end, and taking notes about how to incorporate those discoveries, so that my first draft can be less about me discovering on the page and more about the story, with the writer, me, more in charge and control of the story I'm telling. 

I created the idea of a Discovery Draft from years of working as a dramaturg on new play development. I realized early on that some scripts (most scripts) were mostly the writer making discoveries as they went along, and these weren't really what I'd call "first draft status." It isn't until we've made all the discoveries that we can really write the first draft. 

As a pantser, I want to give myself as much freedom to discover as possible, and I think the ideas I form about what a piece of writing wants to be can be very limiting to discovery and the creative process. For example, one of my early ideas was to write the story of the first year in the life of my protagonist. I tossed out 80,000 words when I realized I was only going to make the book about the 1st 9 days from the inciting incident forward. But that discovery fueled the pacing of the book in a very exciting way. (I saved those 80K words for later. Sequels? I got enough for 4 actually.) 

Talking to dramaturgy clients about their scripts as acts of discovery helped them understand that this is a stage in the writing process that is extremely valuable but it also means there is work to be done to fully incorporate these discoveries. 

And of course I take my own advice! So I have my very own Discovery Draft now. Yes, I wrote it mostly in Brave Space over the past almost 2 years. I didn't push myself to write it every single day, but I found out soon enough that my best days were days I wrote. 

I also realized that the more often I worked, even for a little bit each day, the easier the work became. It was easier to drop into the work the next day. And then the next. Most days, truth be told, I worked less than an hour a day on it. 

I hope to deal with my notes about incorporating all of my discoveries into the draft to create a first draft to send to beta readers for feedback by mid-to-late August. Let me know if you'd like to read it!

Letters to My Dead Mother (working title) is about 9 days in the life of Brynna, a hyperlexic 12 year old. (Yep, it's all told in letters. But the letters are action-packed full of scenes...) Because I want young people to feel less alone in their grief. 

If you want support around your own writing practice, or any artistic practice that could benefit from a new process, join me in Brave Space. Send me an email HERE and I'll send you a link! 

Onward,

Emma