chloe's first draft

First of all, let me just say that Dreamcaught was my 2012 NaNoWriMo novel. I completed it (and I say "competed it" hesitantly, as in fact I have yet to write like two small scenes in the middle that sort of bored me) the following April during Camp NaNoWriMo, with my final wordcount at 76,442 words.

Now, I will be frank with you, these words were not very clever or impressive words, but as this Tumblr post so beautifully put it: 

My first draft is a perfect first draft.

It is also a terrible piece of writing.

Editing it has been a terrifying ordeal. You see above this text a picture with the very beginning of my novel in it: the darker blue highlighting marks sentences that stayed exactly the same, and the lighter blue marks sentences that I worded differently but are still present in Draft 2. This is actually a really tame example. Look at the next little section of words:

That's all light blue, by the way. I did not keep a single exact sentence from this entire chunk.

And, in case you were wondering, pink marks things that were completely thrown out. Not just the wording or general idea was changed here: the entire plot and characters in this segment were stuffed in the hypothetical word-disposal of my brain. That's right, I completely deleted two entire main characters right out of the plot. (They'd be pleased I used pink to mark this, though. They both liked pink.) (Poor dears, I did love them.)

And here we have a list of notes to myself on what's left of this first scene, after you chop out my sweet and lovely twins. 

Here's Draft 2, which is still sporting most of the issues of Draft 1.

Probably the biggest problem with this opening is that it is painfully dull. Nothing interesting happens and both of the [surviving] characters are groggy and uninteresting.

If you give me any suggestions on how to make this better in Draft 3, I will love you forever.