Single-use Scenes

How can I tell something is a rough draft or not?

I’ve said more than once when reviewing something that “it feels like a rough draft.” Which is probably confusing to people – how can you tell?

Well one of the things that makes it obvious is the presence of what I’ll call: Single Use Scenes. Scenes which serve a single purpose.

Again, I want to stress that the most important thing is to always write – write your heart out and keep writing. I stress this because I’ve seen too many people (one of them in my own mirror) who get so obsessed with trying to write something perfect on the first try they end up never writing anything at all.

It won’t be perfect, you WILL need to edit, accept it and dive into the ink already!

And once you have done that and got to writing, well about 99% of your resulting scenes are going to be single-use. THAT’S FINE. You’ve got to get the story out first to refine it so you’ll just throw a scene out to keep the plot moving to get a character into place or drop some exposition.

Read more about the use of Single Use Scenes at Nate Winchester’s HUNTING MUSES.