Your First Draft Doesn't Have to Be Good, It Has to Exist

By Tony & Charm

The Paralysis of Perfection

Charm spent six months on chapter one once.

Not because it was a complicated chapter. Not because it required extensive research. But because every time she sat down to write, that little voice in her head would whisper: "This isn't good enough."

So she'd rewrite the opening paragraph. Again. And again. And again.

The problem? She never got to chapter two.

Meanwhile, Tony watched her spiral and kept his mouth shut because he'd done the exact same thing with an entire novel. He'd written the first 10,000 words seventeen different times, each version supposedly "better" than the last. 

Spoiler alert: they were all pretty much the same level of mediocre.

That novel? Still sitting at 10,000 words. Five years later. (ask us about the Space Opera idea sometime for more on this).

Permission to Suck

Here's the truth that nobody wants to hear: your first draft is supposed to suck.

Not "could be better" suck. Not "needs some polish" suck. We're talking full-on, glorious, cringe-inducing, why-did-I-think-I-could-write terrible.

And that's exactly what it should be.

Anne Lamott calls them "shitty first drafts." Hemingway said "the first draft of anything is shit." Even Steinbeck admitted his first drafts were god-awful.

You know what all these people have in common? They finished their shitty first drafts and then made them better.

You can't edit a blank page. But you can absolutely edit garbage.

The Myth of Writing It Right The First Time

Social media has done a real number on writers. We see authors posting their beautifully crafted sentences, their perfectly plotted chapters, their eloquent prose. What we don't see? The fifteen drafts it took to get there.

We don't see the deleted scenes, the plot holes you could drive a truck through, the character arcs that went nowhere. We don't see the words that didn't make it, the ideas that flopped, the metaphors that died on the page.

We just see the finished product and think: "Mine should look like that from the start."

Nope. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

What Our First Drafts Actually Look Like

We write in a shared Google Doc, which means we get to witness each other's creative chaos in real time. The comment threads alone are worth the price of admission.

Last week, Tony wrote a scene where our protagonist discovers a body in the desert. His description read: "They go to the wash and find the thing. Make this scary later." Charm left a comment: "THE THING? Are we writing horror or a toddler's book report?"

His response: "Shut up, I'll fix it in post."

There are entire paragraphs that just say "INSERT WITTY BANTER HERE" because neither of us could think of anything clever at 11 PM on a Tuesday. There are character descriptions that read "She's tall? Maybe blonde. Check this. Does hair color even matter for this character?" followed by Charm's note: "You're describing MY character and you don't know what she looks like?"

We've got plot holes we've literally marked with all caps: "[TONY: FIGURE OUT WHY THE HELL HE WOULD DO THIS]" 

and "[CHARM: YOU FORGOT HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE INJURED HERE]". Our world-building notes to ourselves are scattered throughout like landmines: "Research if deserts can have fog. If not, change this entire chapter."

The Google Doc looks like a crime scene. Red and blue comment bubbles everywhere, suggested edits piling up, passive-aggressive notes about whose turn it is to fix the timeline. It's a beautiful disaster, and it's exactly what a first draft should be.

The Only Job of a First Draft

A first draft has exactly one job: to get the story out of your head and onto the page. That's it. That's the whole gig.

It doesn't have to be grammatically correct or beautifully written. It doesn't need perfect plotting or fully developed characters. It sure as hell doesn't need to be ready for anyone else to read, and it definitely doesn't have to be something you're proud of. It just has to be there. Words on a page, even if they're all trash.

Because here's the thing about writing: you can't revise nothing. You can't edit a story that exists only in your head. You can't fix plot holes in a book you haven't written yet.

But you can absolutely take a terrible first draft and make it better. Then make it better again. And again. Until eventually, it's actually good.

Why Perfectionism is a Creative Killer

Perfectionism isn't about having high standards. It's about being so afraid of failure that you never start.

When you demand perfection from your first draft, you're not being professional or disciplined. You're sabotaging yourself before you even begin.

Think about it: would you expect a sculptor to carve a perfect statue on the first try? Would you expect a painter to nail every brushstroke without any underdrawing or sketches? So why do we expect ourselves to write perfect prose straight out of our brains?

Writing is rewriting. The first draft is just you giving yourself something to rewrite.

The Freedom of Lowered Expectations

You know what happened when Charm finally gave herself permission to write a shitty first draft? She finished the book in three months.

Not because she suddenly became a faster writer. But because she stopped stopping. She stopped second-guessing every sentence. She stopped deleting paragraphs before she'd even finished them. She stopped rewriting chapter one while chapter twenty-five sat unwritten in her head.

She wrote badly. Enthusiastically. Without judgment.

And then—only then—did she go back and make it better.

The book we published? Nothing like that first draft. But that first draft gave us something to work with. It showed us what the story actually was instead of what she thought it should be.

Tony watched this transformation happen in real time in our shared doc. One day she just started blasting through scenes, leaving notes like "this dialogue is terrible but I'm not stopping" and "I know this doesn't make sense, fix later." 

The comment threads turned from her asking permission to write badly to him cheering her on: "Hell yes, keep going, we'll fix it in revision."

How We Actually Do This

Our process is messy and probably wouldn't work for everyone, but here's the thing: it works for us because we've given ourselves permission to be terrible first.

Tony will write a scene that's mostly action beats and placeholder dialogue. "He says something about the case" or "She makes a joke here." Charm will come through later and actually write the dialogue, leaving her own notes about how his action beats don't quite work. He'll fix those in the next pass. She'll realize halfway through a chapter that the timeline is completely fucked and leave a comment that just says "HELP" with seventeen exclamation points.

We've learned to embrace the chaos. When one of us writes something particularly bad, we leave encouraging comments for each other. "This sentence is a crime against literature, but I love where you're going with it." "I have no idea what you meant here, but drunk-you was onto something."

The key is forward motion. Write the bad version. Leave a note. Keep going. The Google Doc fills up with a strange mix 

of actual prose and notes to our future selves, all of it held together with digital duct tape and hope.

The Real Reason We Fear Bad First Drafts

Here's what it really comes down to: we're afraid that if we write something bad, it means we're bad writers.

But that's not how it works.

Writing something bad means you're a writer who wrote a bad first draft. Which is every writer ever.

The difference between published authors and unpublished ones isn't that published authors write better first drafts. It's that they finish their shitty first drafts and then revise them into something good. They don't give up at the mess.

They work through it.

What Happens After The Shitty First Draft

Once you have words on the page—even terrible words—the real work begins. And weirdly, this is the fun part.

Now you can see what story you actually wrote instead of what you planned. You can fix plot holes and inconsistencies. You can develop characters beyond "tall guy who does stuff." You can replace "INSERT CLEVER LINE HERE" with actual clever lines. You can cut the boring parts and add depth to the shallow parts. You can make your prose actually good.

But none of that happens without the shitty first draft. You need the raw material to sculpt.

Tony once wrote an entire chapter about a character investigating a crime scene, only to realize in revision that the character had no reason to be there and the whole scene was pointless. But that chapter told us something important about what the story wasn't, which helped us figure out what it should be. The final version has a completely different scene in that spot, and it's infinitely better because we had that terrible first attempt to learn from.

Our Challenge to You

Stop trying to write a good first draft. Seriously. Stop.

Instead, try to write the worst possible version of your story. Write it badly on purpose if you have to. Make it ridiculous. Fill it with clichés and terrible metaphors and dialogue that makes you cringe. Just get it done.

Then, once you have a complete shitty first draft, you have something precious: a finished story that you can actually work with. That's when the magic happens. That's when you take the garbage and turn it into something you're proud of.

But it all starts with giving yourself permission to be bad.

The Bottom Line

Your first draft doesn't need to be good. It doesn't need to be pretty. It doesn't even need to be coherent. It just needs to exist.

Because you can't edit what you haven't written. You can't revise a blank page. You can't fix a story that's still bouncing around in your head, too afraid to be terrible on paper.

So write badly. Write enthusiastically. Write without judgment. Write your shitty first draft. Then make it better.

That's how books get written. That's how writers become authors. That's how blank pages become published novels. Not by being perfect from the start, but by being brave enough to be terrible first.

Our Google Doc is a testament to this philosophy. It's full of half-formed ideas, placeholder text, arguments about character motivation, and notes that just say "THIS SUCKS BUT WE'RE KEEPING IT FOR NOW." And you know what? 

That chaos becomes books.

Keep writing (badly),

Tony & Charm

P.S. - That chapter Charm rewrote seventeen times? The version that made it into the published book was nothing like any of those attempts. All that perfectionism was completely wasted. Write the shitty version first. You'll thank yourself later.