On First Drafts and Paper Dolls
Or, on pushing flimsy, two-dimensional characters from scene to scene
Back in February, I finished the first draft of my current novel-in-progress. I’ve been calling it my 1920s novel, but it might be more accurate to call it my post-WW1 novel (you know, to differentiate it from my multiple-timeline post-WW2 novel… not that I have a type or anything). Whatever I’m calling it, I finished the draft, let it sit for a week or so, then printed it out in my usual fashion: size 12, double-spaced, two pages to a sheet. Then, I scribbled all over it.
I say scribbled, but I didn’t exactly just cross it all out – though in some places I might as well have. Instead, I took to it with a highlighter and pen, making copious notes in the margins about what should be cut and what should be added when I begin the process of taking it apart and putting it together again. Some changes are small; perhaps a name change here or an extra bit of dialogue added there. Some changes are large: moving the whole thing three years earlier and cutting out unnecessary characters. Some changes are perennial and really go without saying (though this doesn’t stop me noting them down, over and over again): more feeling, more character motivation, more depth.
Because, that’s the thing with first drafts, isn’t it? (Or, at least, it is with my first drafts.) Writing them feels a bit like lighting a candle in a dark room and trying to see what’s going on. There’s a sense of the characters, the plot and why everything happens as it does. But it’s more feeling than knowledge, more general idea than well-rounded plan. We have to tell ourselves the story before we can understand it enough to tell it to anyone else.
And so, in the first draft, I imagine the characters are a bit like paper dolls. They’re flimsy, propped up beings, that are pushed from scene to scene, spouting the lines I’ve fed them. It’s not quite believable yet because it’s all still two-dimensional. The characters are doing what they’re doing because it’s what I’ve told them to do, not because they’ve become real.
I set out on this particular round of scribbling at the end of February, but then I got knocked off task for a month working on edits for my post-WW2 novel. Then some big life things happened and, bam, it was another two weeks until I got back to the draft. Still, when I picked it up again mid-April, I think the distance made it easier to see through the weeds.
Last week, I once again reached the end of the draft. Now, armed with ninety-nine thousand words and accompanying scribbles, I’m feeling ready to start it all again. I’ll begin like I do with all major redrafts; with the printed draft beside me and a brand new document on my laptop. As I tell the story again, hopefully the people and places and plot will feel a little less flimsy, a little more rounded. This time, I hope my paper dolls will begin to move and speak and act with real feeling, and that the story that emerges on the page will feel a little truer to the story in my head.
As an aside, the paper dolls pictured at the beginning of this post are from the book English Country Paper Dolls in the Downton Abbey Style by Eileen Rudisill Miller. I bought them for my six-year-old, but also definitely for myself. They now live tucked away in a folder with our other paper dolls, saved from my own childhood. (If you were in any doubt about whether I'm the kind of person to have carried a plastic folder of paper dolls from home to home with me since the mid-1990s, that probably answers your question.)
Recently I’ve loved:
In Memoriam by Alice Winn (This is already a front runner for my book of the year. Not only did I think it was a profoundly beautiful, moving book, I’m also pleased to have read it just before starting my new draft. In Memoriam shares some themes with both my post-WW1 and post-WW2 novels, and has served as a great reminder of what I’m working towards).
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (I read this soon after Demon Copperhead and they turned out to be excellent companion novels).
The Seawomen by Chloe Timms (Unsettlingly compelling).
The Weather Woman by Sally Gardner (A delightful story set in the early 18th century with a sprinkling of magic).
I also loved this Substack post from Brandon Taylor of Sweater Weather on ’the virtues of the boring draft’.
Is it sick that I enjoy that moment, lol? All the scribbled nonsense and half-noted ideas someone else couldn't make heads or tails of... just lights a fire, idk. Writers are sick people haha