"Draft Zero" verses "Draft One"

Published 3 months ago • 5 min read

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Welcome to the Tuesday Telegrams, a semimonthly newsletter from award-winning author Naseem Jamnia. You're currently reading a writing-related Telegram, where I update you on projects, offer behind-the-scenes looks, delve into craft, and other publishing and writing topics.

I wrote this newsletter before the terrible ruling that came down from SCOTUS today, essentially saying that conversion therapy is free speech. This is horrific and unsurprising, and on this Trans Day of Visibility, I urge my trans readers to take care of yourselves. You deserve to be safe and loved. I have a few relocation resources in my Solidarity Corner linktree if you need them. Please reach out to your support networks and loved ones, and if you have mutual aid links, feel free to send them my way to amplify.

For a long time, I wasn't a believer in "draft zeroes." The term, as you might guess, refers to the very first draft of a thing. In my mind, if you finished a draft, then count it!

Then I wrote a draft zero, and I understand now what the difference is.

In the last writing Telegram, I discussed why I don't think revising while drafting works. In a sense, both this and the idea of a draft zero is part of a larger conversation about planning and pantsing—that is, planning your project, or writing "by the seat of your pants."

I call myself a plantser because I started as a pantser, but as I learned more about craft, I realized I had to begin planning my projects before I could really put something cohesive together—or even, to some degree, put pen to page. Now, to draft, I create a loose outline (what I like to call "plot bullets") of big-picture events that have to happen, do some character work, and then allow the story to unfold with those as scaffolding. It helps me do much less work in revision, which, for me, is an extremely intensive process.

In my mind, a draft zero isn't a skeletal outline that's been turned into prose, and it isn't your first draft masquerading as something less-than. Based on the draft I just produced, a draft zero is a draft that might hit some of your plot points, and might hit some of your character developments, but is mostly so exploratory that it can't be read from start to finish, and most of it can't be recycled in revision.

If you are fully pantsing a project, the concept of a draft zero makes sense. It's not a draft that is necessarily cohesive from start to finish because it's being written on the fly. Ironically, I was not pantsing this project, yet I still created a draft zero.

The project I'm currently working on is with Bittersweet Books, the packager that put together my middle-grade debut, The Glade. I've talked about work-for-hire and packagers before, but here's the TL;DR for new subscribers (hello!): A packager is a company (often run by former editors, agents, or other authors) which puts together story ideas, hires an author to write the project, and then sells that project.

As I discussed in my last Telegram, for The Glade, I was hired into a project that had been deeply fleshed out, with detailed chapter breakdowns, character arcs, and worldbuilding. As I worked on it, it slowly changed to take a shape closer to how I would tell the story, and the final version is certainly my own.

I mentioned last time that this project (I'm not trying to be coy about it; I just can't talk about the details) is one where Bittersweet and I worked on the idea together. They pitched me a synopsis, and after my detailed feedback, they revised the synopsis. After I gave some more thoughts, they came back to me with a chapter outline, but something that was closer to the plot bullets I usually work with rather than the level of detail they gave me for The Glade.

The good news is, this has allowed me to shape the story from the get-go. The bad news is, this first draft is what finally leads me to understand a draft zero: it's borderline illegible. Characters get added or disappear, plot points vanish, and it wasn't until the last third or so of the book that I finally figured out how to streamline the story, the magic, and the character arcs.

So: I wrote a draft zero. I will have to toss most of what I wrote (though that final sequence was pretty solid) and rewrite it from scratch.

I do subscribe to no writing being wasted; I had to write what I was writing to see how it wasn't working. Things that seem to work in plot bullets may or may not work when you're actually fleshing them out. (Honestly, if I'd just stuck to the plot bullets, it might have been okay, but the problem was that I hadn't done the worldbuilding or character work to support those bullets.) I don't love that I have to rewrite this book over the next few weeks, but I am glad that I finally hit the end of that draft so I can think about the story holistically.

Wish me luck in the weeks ahead!

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Today, I'm highlighting some mutual aid links I've seen on Bluesky that can use some boosting.

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Every other week, I send out a newsletter as part of my Tuesday Telegrams; one is on writing, publishing, and craft, and the other personal reflections on my life and the times. THE BRUISING OF QILWA, my Crawford-, Locus-, and World Fantasy-nominated novella set in a queernormative, Persian-inspired world, is out now from Tachyon Publications. My queer MG mushroom horror debut, THE GLADE, is out now from Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. I regularly teach writing classes focused on inclusive and marginalized storytelling at organizations like Tin House, Clarion West, Carl Brandon Society, and Roots. Wounds. Words.