Call this post “Dudeology #3,” as we continue our exploration of The Big Lebowski, with an eye specifically to the writing of first drafts. We were talking in a couple of previous posts about the preparatory questions a writer asks himself or herself before the first word of a first draft goes onto paper. For me, the first two are: “What genre am I writing in?” “What’s the story’s spine, i.e. its ‘narrative highway’ from Act One through Act Two to Act Three?” The third question for me is, “What’s the theme? What is my story about?” Which brings…

  Here we are, getting set to plunge in on our first draft. But what do we do before that? We said a couple of weeks ago that our first question to ourselves, pre-pre-first draft, should be: “What’s the genre?” Okay, great. Let’s say that we’ve done that. We know our genre. Our story, we’ve determined, is a sci-fi action-adventure. Or maybe it’s a love story. Or a Western combined with a supernatural thriller. Good enough. We’ve got that covered. What’s next? For our answer, let’s refer back to Paul (“Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull”) Schrader’s excellent guidelines for pitching:  …

  We were talking last week about The Big Lebowski being a film in the Private Eye genre. But what really makes Lebowski so inventive and so interesting is it’s a mixed genre. It’s a Slacker/Stoner tale (like Dazed and Confused, Go, Clerks, or any Cheech and Chong movie) conceived, structured, and executed as a Detective Story. What does this mean for you and me as writers? It means that mixing genres is one of the most canny and fun tricks we can pull to come up with something new and fresh and exciting. Mix the Private Detective genre with…

  [Reminder: only two more days to order your free e-version of my new book on writing, Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t. Offer expires at midnight, June 30. Click here to download. Totally free. No opt-in required. Takes 38 seconds or less.]   I was talking three weeks ago about the preparatory files I use before plunging in on a first draft. The first file is one I call Foolscap. Here’s the first question I ask myself in that file: “What’s the genre?” I’m asking, “What kind of book am I writing? Is it a Western? A Love Story? What…

[Forgive me for leaving this post up two weeks in a row, but response has been so overwhelming to this free offer (see below) that we’ve decided to keep it going till midnight a week and a day from now—June 30. That’s the expiration date. Don’t be late!]   As a thank-you to readers of this blog, we’re giving away the e-version of my newest book, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t, just out today. No opt-in required. You don’t have to enter your e-mail address or compromise your privacy in any way. The book is free until midnight Eastern time…

  Have you ever seen a “breakdown board” for a movie? You and I as novelists can learn a lot from it about the writing of first drafts. Motion pictures, as most of us know, are not shot in sequence. The first day’s filming may be the movie’s final scene, or a scene from the middle of the picture. What dictates the order of shooting is efficiency. Budget concerns. If we’re shooting Zombie Apocalypse VI and we know we’ve got three scenes that take place in the abandoned warehouse down by the railroad tracks, let’s shoot them all back-to-back Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday,…

We’ve been talking for the past couple of weeks about first drafts. Bottom line message: Get through them fast and with aggression, even if the final product is imperfect and riddled with TKs (placeholder scenes, descriptions, and dialogue). In other words, “Cover the Canvas.” That’s fine. It works. But what do we do before we cover the canvas? Plunge in blindly? Start writing from Page One? I’m gonna take the next few weeks to address these questions. What I have to say is purely my own idiosyncratic thinking and experience. Okay? Here goes … Before I start a first draft…

Is the first draft the hardest? Is it different from a third draft, or a twelfth? Does a first draft possess unique challenges that we have to attack in a one-of-a-kind way? Yes, yes and yes. A first draft is different from (and more difficult than) all subsequent drafts because in a first draft we’re filling the blank page. And we know what that means: Resistance. We were talking last week about the “Blitzkrieg method” for attacking a first draft. Here’s another way of thinking about it. This is my main mantra for first drafts: “Cover the canvas.” I think…

Continuing our new series on First Drafts … Blitzkrieg is German for “lightning war.” It’s a technique of battle that was developed in the ‘30s by certain German and British generals, foremost among them Heinz Guderian, and put into practice with spectacular success by the Germans in the assaults on France, Poland, and the Soviet Union at the start of WWII.

  On Shawn’s storygrid.com this week there was such a great piece that I’m ripping it off lock-stock-and-barrel here to share with my peeps. It’s on the subject of writing a first draft.