First Draft Quotes

Writing a first-draft battle scene is akin to real combat—chaos, confusion, and you must keep your cool as you fire word bullets downrange.

Don Roff

Your first draft is a petulant teenager, sure it knows best, adamant that its Mother is wrong. Your third draft has emerged from puberty, realising that its Mother was right about everything.

Angeline Trevena

First draft blues:"He tested the stick and glanced at the set handbrake. With his feet he felt the accelerator, the brake, the clutch. Backwards, but otherwise just the same, and comforting in a solid, mechanical way. It even smelled right, oil, petrol, lubricated warm metal, and the polished windshield seemed transparent in the night’s silver flood.

First draft blues:"He tested the stick and glanced at the set handbrake. With his feet he felt the accelerator, the brake, the clutch. Backwards, but otherwise just the same, and comforting in a solid, mechanical way. It even smelled right, oil, petrol, lubricated warm metal, and the polished windshield seemed transparent in the night’s silver flood.