I really like your approach, and I agree with you — slamming that first draft onto the page can indeed be part an an effective overall strategy. You just have to have the discipline and foresight to devote enough time to the rewriting phase. It’s obvious you have that in spades, so you’re good to go.

I’m going to promote your thoughtful comments to a feature post this week.

Thanks for stopping by the site!

I admit, I’m one of those that does believe in a quick first draft. Completely contrary to your great advice, I deliberately consign that first rough to the “to do” list. But there’s method to even this madness. I tend to write alone, which makes it difficult to get editorial distance. Keeping the write-madly-while-crazy-about-an-idea phase of work separate from the butt-to-seat-tearing-apart-and-making-good phase is pretty essential to me. I get that distance by planning to put every script away for several months between the writing and the re-writing.

The “planning” part of that is important for me. I’ll have several scripts in the pipe all the time: One in the madly-writing phase, one in the distancing phase, and one in the revision stage. For me, mornings are the best time for creating new material, so I do it then. When I worked a day-job, that was *early* in the morning. Day time is for out and about in the real world, eavesdropping and seeing interesting people and things, finding new ideas for the next script. Evening is my revision time. (Afternoons and evenings can be switched interchangeably, depending on when interesting things or events are on.)

Everyone’s psychology is different. We’re inspired by different things. Deadlines work for me. I give myself a deadline to write a first draft. Then the script HAS to sit untouched in the pile for 60-90 days – but no more. There’s a bit of reverse psychology at work there too. If I refuse to let myself work on that script for that period of time, I WANT to work on it. I’m thinking hard about what I’m going to do with it when I can get my hands back on it! I’m anxious to get back to it. But, I’m working on the next script while the first one simmers on my mental back burner.

Revisions have a deadline too, sort of. Nothing goes out before it’s been beaten into something I’m not ashamed to send out, but, I have a plan during revisions, to help avoid the inevitable procrastination. Dialogue, action, structure, characterization, theme… all those important elements get their own draft. To try and avoid the endless revision trap, I plan to have a reader-worthy draft to an outside set of eyes within 2-3 months of starting revision.

The creation of a script is a process from idea to finished document. Slamming that first draft onto the page isn’t the whole process, but, it can be PART of an overall strategy to get to the polished finished product.

Hope this helps someone get their own polished product in good hands.

Trust me, we’ve all been there before. Fortunately, with every script we write, we learn new lessons and it gets easier. And the good news is that even a page-one rewrite is easier to deal with than starting with a blank page. Keep fighting the good fight!

Mitch

This post was mentioned on Twitter by scriptwrecked: 5 Pitfalls of Rushing Your First Draft http://scriptwrecked.com/2010/02/04/5-pitfalls-of-rushing-your-first-draft/ http://bit.ly/dxOINj...