How to write a first draft when the words just aren’t coming

• Siobhan O'Brien Holmes
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Last week I received a lovely message from a writer (we’ll call him Badger) in response to my freebie welcome email, asking for some advice. He said he had a great idea for a children’s book he really wanted to write, but every time he sat down to work on it, the words just didn’t come. As much time as he spent staring at a blank screen, nothing was flowing like he’d imagined it would in his head.

I could so relate!

I wrote back to him with some tips and I thought I’d share them here, too, in case you’re also going through a similar block. Thanks for the inspiration, Badger!

If you’ve got an idea for a story that just isn’t pouring out of you like you’d thought it would, here are three suggestions for getting the words unstuck, and the right one will partly depend on whether you’re a plotter or a pantser:

Remembering your first draft is supposed to be rubbish.

Think of it as getting all your ideas out of your head and down on paper, ready to be shaped into a story later. Nobody ever needs to read this – it’s just for you. Terry Pratchett once referred to this shaky first draft as ‘draft zero’, which I love, and Stephen King said that ‘when you write, you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.’

Sometimes, my first draft will contain some lovely, fully developed sentences and exchanges and other times I’ll write the barest, simplest lines or pieces of dialogue just to get them out of my head. My first drafts are full of ‘write this bit later’ and ’she says something funny here but I don’t know what yet’. Challenge yourself to write the worst, roughest first draft ever! It’ll make draft two so much easier.

Use an app that forces you to write!

If, like me, you always want to edit and re-read your work as you go, it can be really hard to bash out that draft zero because you’re putting too much pressure on yourself to get it right first time and clean things up as soon as you write them. Try using a distraction free app online that only lets you type and won’t let you delete or go back to read what you’ve written. There are loads of these out there, just Google, but for something fun and particularly brutal, try Squibler (free). You’ve got no choice but to keep typing with this one because, if you stop, it’ll delete what you’ve already written so far!

For something a little less dramatic, try Word Sprints (also free) which allows you to set a time limit for a writing ‘sprint’ so can just type until the timer goes off. Even better, you can invite others to a group sprint and all work on your stories at the same time for extra accountability.

Start with a clear roadmap

If you just can’t wing it with your first draft and are still staring at a blank screen, you might be a plotter who needs to plan the story out in detail before you can begin writing. So work on an outline, plan out your chapters one by one, use a structure like Saves the Cat as a blueprint for your story so you know how the narrative arc is going to unfold. Sometimes, having a brilliant idea for a story isn’t enough to get you writing it – you need to give yourself a framework to start you off. Check out my list of recommended writing craft books for kidlit authors for some great guides to outlining and plotting.