How I Got From First To Final Draft On &#8220;Sauerkraut Station&#8221;

The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - How I Got From First To Final Draft On “Sauerkraut Station”

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February 27th, 2012

07:39 am

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How I Got From First To Final Draft On “Sauerkraut Station”

“Rewriting is writing,” goes the old saying, but so much of writing advice focuses on first drafts. I don’t think there’s nearly enough discussion on how to get from first to final draft… And yet that process is critical for most professional writers.

I once asked my Clarion teacher, Neil Gaiman, how close he came on the first draft. “I’d say 95% there,” he answered, and my heart stopped. Seeing the stricken look on my face as I realized he tossed off 95% of award-winning stories the first draft, he quickly added, “Oh, no, Ferrett! That five percent takes all the time. It is, as Mark Twain says, the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

Inspired by Jake Kerr’s post on his herculean efforts to get the science right in his own Nebula novelette “The Old Equations,” I’m presenting the first draft of my Nebula-nominated novelette “Sauerkraut Station” as a Word document, with sixty-plus comments explaining what was changed, and why. After writing this, I finished one more draft before presenting it to my online writing group, The Wind-Tossed Coalition, who gave me much useful feedback. I wrote two more drafts, taking about three months between rewritings, and then gave it to my real-life writing group, the Cajun Sushi Hamsters — which was the big test, since the group includes Geoff Landis, who is a NASA scientist who would doubtlessly call me on my bullshit science. (Which he did. I even listened to some of it.)

Since the Hamsters gave it a thumbs-up on the whole, I did a final draft, at which point it had ballooned to 20,000 words. I then 10% Solutioned it down savagely to 17,000 words and started sending it around.

Ann Leckie, the editor at Giganotosaurus, bought it and asked for minor changes before publication — mostly around my inaccurate descriptions of sauerkraut (which I actually hate) and the removal of a small scene she considered too melodramatic and out-of-tone for the rest of the novelette. From there, it was straight to publication.

So that’s five drafts from start to finish… And while the bones of the story have remained absolutely the same, the way the scenes have changed in tone and effectiveness are, I think, quite worthwhile for someone looking to separate lightning from lightning bugs.

I’ve added several notes as to why things were changed, to show you some of my thought processes along the way.

I strongly urge you to read the finalized story first at http://giganotosaurus.org/2011/11/01/sauerkraut-station/, as I’ll be assuming you’ve read it. Then download the Word document to compare and contrast. I’m happy to answer any questions about why things were changed, if there’s an interest; leave a comment here or contact me at theferrett@theferrett.com.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/194324.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

Tags: sauerkraut station, writing

(22 shouts of denial | Tell me I'm full of it)

Comments

From:	asakiyume
Date:	February 27th, 2012 01:53 pm (UTC)

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Neil Gaiman was your Clarion teacher? Wow.

You had some great readers!

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From:	theferrett
Date:	February 28th, 2012 02:56 pm (UTC)

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I really did. Neil was nice. All of them were helpful.

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From:	krinchan
Date:	February 27th, 2012 02:39 pm (UTC)

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Have I ever mentioned I cried after reading Sauerkraut Station? Because I did cry for 10 minutes.

You deserve a Nebula for that. :-)

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From:	theferrett
Date:	February 28th, 2012 02:56 pm (UTC)

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Well, thank you. Even if I always feel weird about making you cry.)

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From:	jojomojo
Date:	February 27th, 2012 03:09 pm (UTC)

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Interesting; there's a saying in programming too - 'The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time' ;)

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From:	ravenblack
Date:	March 4th, 2012 02:55 am (UTC)

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I was going to say much the same thing without the witticism - I think it's actually true of a lot of creative activities. You can probably knock together a working cupboard in ten minutes, but if you were making something to sell then there's hours of sanding, varnishing and polishing to do. When drawing you have a recognizable picture of the thing in five minutes, but shading and textures and stuff brings it up to hours.

It's funny that the language of finished woodworking has even carried across to programming - that big "last 10%" is frequently referred to as adding the polish.

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From:	bart_calendar
Date:	February 27th, 2012 03:30 pm (UTC)

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Having just finished Mockingjay this weekend and having read the rough draft of your YA novel I can now say you are a far better writer than one of the biggest selling writers in YA fiction.

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From:	theferrett
Date:	February 28th, 2012 02:57 pm (UTC)

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Disagree. I quite liked Mockingjay.

And the final draft is WAY better.

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From:	bart_calendar
Date:	February 28th, 2012 03:01 pm (UTC)

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You wouldn't have wasted the first 175 pages of Catching Fire the way she did.

The only problem with Mockingjay is the last 20 pages.

Still, you write better than she does.

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From:	simulated_knave
Date:	February 27th, 2012 05:31 pm (UTC)

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This is really neat. Thanks for posting it. :)

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From:	dmorr
Date:	February 27th, 2012 07:55 pm (UTC)

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From:	sig_info
Date:	February 27th, 2012 06:28 pm (UTC)

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I'm really curious to hear Geoff Landis's comments. (I can guess one of them.) I devoted so much of my attention to figuring out how the station worked ("If the habitat cylinder spins to give gravity, it will gyroscopically maintain its orientation, unless...") that there wasn't much left for the story part of the story. Shaky science can do that to me.

I know, it's a tough choice. Drop in a huge expositional dump in an effort to get things right (e.g. Varley, The Golden Globe's space station under construction) or underspecify and risk losing some of your readers. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

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From:	sig_info
Date:	February 27th, 2012 11:35 pm (UTC)

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Uh... might I add that I have an inkling of how much effort notating the first draft must have required, and thank you for doing so? Because your notes were illuminating.

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From:	theferrett
Date:	February 28th, 2012 02:57 pm (UTC)

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Thanks. And yes, the science is fucked seven ways to Sunday, but that ain't MY concern. :)

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From:	anonymousalex
Date:	February 27th, 2012 07:04 pm (UTC)

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I came late to reading the finalized story, so let me take this opportunity to add my voice to those saying great job! I couldn't put it down (metaphorically, since it was on a screen).

-Alex

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From:	theferrett
Date:	February 28th, 2012 02:57 pm (UTC)

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Glad you enjoyed!

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From:	denyer
Date:	February 27th, 2012 09:23 pm (UTC)

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Hopefully it won't sound like a criticism to say I find the writing process more interesting than the story in this case -- something like My Father's Wounds is (to me) gripping because of the concept and novelty, whereas I have trouble getting into the human interest with anything much shorter than a novel, short tales make the outcomes of foreshadowing a little more expected, and extreme scarcity's a bit too real-life news to enjoy in fiction. The confidence and skill evident in the annotations make for good reading.

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From:	theferrett
Date:	February 28th, 2012 02:58 pm (UTC)

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Not everyone's gonna love every one of my stories. Happens. I'm cool.

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From:	mcsnee
Date:	February 27th, 2012 11:07 pm (UTC)

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This is fantastic--thank you for doing it.

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From:	cartesiandaemon
Date:	February 28th, 2012 10:29 am (UTC)

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Thank you, that sort of explanation is really cool.

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From:	fatbunnyghost
Date:	March 1st, 2012 02:33 pm (UTC)

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"asked for minor changes before publication — mostly around my inaccurate descriptions of sauerkraut"

I want to hear bad descriptions of sauerkraut. Is it like bad nazis full of evil or more like bad blood pudding sitting there all evil smelling? Sauerkraut is really delicious.

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From:	fatbunnyghost
Date:	March 1st, 2012 06:23 pm (UTC)

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Read Kerr's blog entry. This confirms my feeling that sci fi writers are scientifically illiterate. Not only did he not have the slightest idea about special relativity (let alone general) he couldn't calculate the square root of 1 - v^2/c^2 which is the lorentz factor, this is something a high school student with modest algebra could figure out.

I love science fiction but there's really not much science in it. Some really good writing though.

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