The Rules of an Intuitive First Draft & the Actual Timeline of Writing One
A realistic 6-month writing process, just doing things, & ignoring the Script Mad Libs from my screenwriting class.
If you asked me at the beginning of August what I was working on, I would have said:
Oh, just ya know, trudging through Act 2 of my screenplay without knowing where the hell I’m going and feeling like a complete hack, hbu?
But oh how things can change in the matter of seven days. And oh how I need to remind myself, eternally: it doesn’t take long to gain momentum again.
I’ve said it a million times in various formats, but I truly believe…
Execution Creates Momentum
Because (a) when people see you doing things, they want to do things with you.
And (b) when you do things in the world, you create a self-fulfilling loop of evidence that you can.
When I turned 29, it was the first time I realized you could just do stuff because you chose to do stuff.
I know, it’s very millennial-coded. Gen Z was seemingly born doing stuff they just felt like doing.
Nevertheless, I am millennial-brained so I’ve spent a good part of the last decade reminding myself in a predictable loop that I can just do things.
And last week, I remembered, once again, that no one is going to magically ask me to make movies or, lol, make mine out of the goodness of their heart.
I remembered that, yes, in fact, I have the power to initiate projects at any time.
I was at one of those “meet the moment” moments. Meaning, the forces of the world were moving, and I could see if I didn’t take the leap now, without the perfect pieces in place, I was going to miss it. Or worse, someone else was going to grab the opportunity before me, and I, grumpy and self-pitying, would be sitting on the sidelines for the next year while other people did the cool things I wanted to do.
So what happened in the span of 7 days?
I sent 12 emails and got my feature documentary project off the ground.
I wrote for 2 days and finished the first draft of my narrative feature script.
So now I’m busy again.1
You know I don’t believe in blanket advice, but I did want to share about that quantum speed as a sort of permission slip / reminder / confirmation of the thing you already know:
Act as if it’s going to happen, and there’s a good chance it will.
I’ll have a lot (a lot) to share as the documentary gets underway, but it needs a bit more gestation time. That said, is there something you want to know about the process? Leave me a comment with your question and I’ll either answer back in the comments, or write more about it later.
Meantime, let’s talk narrative.
The first cut draft is the deepest hardest.
It took six months of agonizing before I wrote 50% of my first draft in two days.
Here’s how I did it, 9 rules for writing an intuitive first draft, and a loose explanation of what an Intuitive First Draft even is: