Tailbone Features: Essential Parts of Early Drafts
Struggling with confidence while writing your first draft? Read on to learn how the issues you’re creating are essential.
Want some solidarity? Click below to read one of my first drafts.
Floppy disks were obsolete two decades ago. However, you can often click an image like the one below to save your work.
I like to think of this as a “tailbone feature”. Like our tailbones, floppy disks were more important at one point. But even when things moved on, they stuck around in some form. There are plenty of examples in biology and technology, and also in your fiction!
First drafts are usually going to have issues. Too much exposition, clunky dialogue, plot ideas that go nowhere. Any number of other things. Does that make you a bad writer?
No. No it doesn’t.
Those issues are there because they needed to be while you were getting your ideas down. That means they aren’t flaws at all. They’re essential parts of the writing process. You could even call them tailbone features.
Once the first draft exists, it can evolve. Some issues need cutting completely, but others just need some reduction so that they don’t remain as full-blown (metaphorical) tails. A really unnecessarily extremely overly described word is best avoided, but the occasional use of adverbs never hurt Stephen King anyone.
In short, don’t be too hard on yourself when you find unnecessary things in your drafts. They were there when you needed them, and helped you leap closer to the finish line. Celebrate them, even as you rip them out. (Don’t try that with your real tailbone though!)
Can you think of any other tailbone features? I’d love to hear what they are, so get in touch or comment below!
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