Be Frankenstein: 5 Tips on Resurrecting a Dead Draft
Author Kirsten Kaschock shares five tips on resurrecting a dead draft and advises writers to tap into their inner mad scientist.
Many writers offer this advice: Write every day. Make it a habit. Never waiver.
But as a professor, a poet, a novelist, and a mother of three, this kind of regularity has not always been possible for me. Fiction should not require fiber. What fitting my writing into the interstices of a busy life has taught me is—no matter how erratic my schedule—I should never throw away my thoughts. No crumpling up a handwritten draft and lobbing at the wastepaper basket or, what is more likely these days, no deleting a troublesome paragraph with one swift but devastating click of the mouse.
I can kill my darlings, absolutely. But it is crucial that I hold onto their corpses. I’ve actually illustrated this approach (maybe a bit too literally) in my most recent book, An Impossibility of Crows.
Instead of beating myself up over consistent production, I have adopted a slightly unorthodox mantra for my writing life: Be Frankenstein.
After many years at the keyboard, I now know that my first drafts, no matter how hard I’ve labored to deliver them onto the page, are destined to die. They may even deserve it. In no world I’ve lived in does “First thought = best thought” actually apply. Because many writers participate in social media and read AI slop more often than they probably even know, it is easy to get used to shoddily tossed-off ideas. But good writing still takes revision. Thankfully, I’ve learned that, with the right attitude—a gothic and irreverent one—revision can be fun!
I know that’s hard to believe. It is certainly difficult to take a scalpel to a living text. Many describe the process as painful—a vivisection. And here lies my secret: Revision can only be entertaining once the first draft is approached not as a breathing patient, but as recyclable material. (Please bear with me through this extended metaphor.) The dead-body-draft theory does work, at least it has worked for me. Below, I give you five of my favorite steps towards successful resurrection.
- Once the first draft of the story or novel or poem or essay is out there—imagine that you are a forensic pathologist. This first draft has lived an exciting but too-short life. Your job is to take it apart to find out how it died and to suggest strategies that might keep the next version alive longer. Dissection is a show of great love: Just ask Gray. Envisioning the first draft as deceased will allow you to imagine re-organizations of the body that might seem drastic if performed on a living work (for example—excising chapter 5 and reshaping it to become part of chapter 3). Such measures can be just what is necessary to build the better story.
- Take out a piece of paper or open a new document as a vessel for extraction. Find the crux of your tale. What is the single-sentence takeaway of this work (whether it is micro-fiction, poem, or novel)? If it isn’t already findable within the work, write the skeleton out. Could it stand on its own? Suggest all possible ways to strengthen the structure. This is the skull and bones. If you can’t articulate the hardest, most unrelenting bits, what chance does your work-as-a-whole have at reanimation?
- For each section (chapter, stanza, paragraph), attempt to find the connection back to this skeleton and its nervous system. Underline or highlight these ligaments. Review each one. What might be done to better show how the story locomotes? If it is slow or doesn’t move well—is there logic missing? Are the tendons too long, too short? Provide amputations or prostheses wherever necessary, or merely cast or splint the affected parts. Are the transitional materials adequate to hold the body together? Is the knee-bone connected to the thighbone? Again, the goal is to move smoothly but muscularly from one part of the work to the next... unless the work is out of order. Is re-organization a better answer? If so, propose a better skeleton. Three-toed sloth? Armadillo, anyone? Maybe the short story should be a novella, or the sonnet—a haiku?
- Finally, review the tissue. If technical issues (grammar and sentence structure or line breaks or the wrong point-of-view) are getting in the way of understanding, identify a stylistic issue to work on. Circle or highlight any vague part, any bit too hazy to recognize as essential to a workable anatomy. Is there specific language that would improve the understandability? Not all readers are forensic technicians. Are run-on sentences bloating the corpse, making it difficult to identify? Have passive verbs removed all the muscle, leaving a mass of jelly? Technical problems can obscure beautiful concepts. If the anatomy you are looking at needs this type of reconstructive work, you are doing no favors offering up a closed casket.
- Put the worst cases on ice. It is my fervid belief that all drafts have purpose. If you have gone through all the steps above but still cannot bring the work to life—Disney-fy it. That is, cryogenically seal the piece. Create a folder (you can call it “The Vault”) where work waits until the urgency you felt in drafting it rolls around again. This can happen years later. Many writers experience this problem: A story simply insists on being written before its time. This can mean either that the world isn’t ready for the subject matter or that the author isn’t. Feel free to mummify these Rapunzels until their hair (it grows after death) cascades down from the refrigerated tower. If they really need to get into the world sooner, they will join forces with your other departed stories and start a zombie apocalypse collection. The dead, I’ve learned, have a real desire for recognition.
Now—you may ask—do I have advice for the converse? When, even if you want it to, your writing will not stay in the grave? I do. Yes. Go with it. The words often know better... we are merely their conduits into the world. The mistake we make is to think of them as precious children we must cherish, co-sleep-with, and gentle-parent. No, they have always fed on our brains. They are not pets... more like a beloved pestilence or parasite. Best to acknowledge that and treat them accordingly. Respect them, yes. But do not coddle.
Gallows humor works for medical students in Gross Anatomy class because it allows them to distance themselves from the very real difficulty of dead bodies. But the truth is: Our stories are as indicative of human frailty as cadavers are. Authors can and should use distancing strategies that allow us to handle our work without falling apart ourselves. Humor can help with grief and with revision. It is a tool that makes what is truly hard to deal with—our human imperfections—just a little softer.
I invite you to join me in Becoming Frankenstein. Despite all their other faults, mad scientists are memorable. Even more importantly, they are often creators of memorable work. And bringing dead words back to life, words that have the potential to live on beyond the intentions of their creator—that’s a more laudable goal than writing for any punch-clock or raising bratty first drafts who feel no need for betterment. Revising a story or poem into its best form—that is some deep magic, deeper I think than science can reach.
Isn’t it kind of Monstrous though? you may rightfully ask. To rework a thing (often a thing you feel great fondness for) beyond recognition?
Maybe? Definitely sometimes? (That’s why we have “Save As.”) But even when the revision process produces a monster, the writer can and should be proud of their creation—knowing that its beating heart is, in fact, the author’s own.
Check out Kirsten Kaschock's An Impossibility of Crows here:
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