First Draft Strategies: How to Get Through the Hardest Part

The first draft is where most writing projects die. Not because writers lack ideas or talent, but because the gap between what they imagine and what appears on the page is so demoralizing that they quit. Every published author has experienced this gap. The ones who finish books are the ones who’ve developed strategies to keep writing through it.

Here’s a collection of first draft approaches that work—not in theory, but in the daily reality of sitting down and producing words.

Choose Your Method: Plotter, Pantser, or Plantser

Before drafting, understand your process. These aren’t personality types—they’re strategies, and you can switch between them.

Plotters outline extensively before drafting. They know the major beats, chapter breaks, and sometimes scene-by-scene structure before writing a single line of prose. If uncertainty paralyzes you, plotting gives you a roadmap. See [INTERNAL: outlining-methods-for-writers] for detailed outlining approaches.

Pantsers (writing by the seat of their pants) discover the story as they write. They start with a character, a situation, or an opening image and follow wherever it leads. If outlines make your story feel dead before you write it, this might be your approach.

Plantsers do both: a loose outline with plenty of room for discovery. Maybe you know your beginning, ending, and three major turning points, but the scenes between them are improvised.

None of these is superior. The best method is whichever one gets you to “The End.”

The Vomit Draft Philosophy

Ernest Hemingway allegedly said, “The first draft of anything is garbage.” Whether he actually said it doesn’t matter—it’s true. The vomit draft approach embraces this truth completely.

The rules are simple:

Write forward. Never go back to fix earlier sections.
When you can’t find the right word, use a placeholder: [WORD], [FIX THIS], [DESCRIBE THE ROOM].
When a scene isn’t working, write a summary of what should happen and move on: [Marcus confronts Julia about the money. She breaks down. He leaves.]
Do not reread what you wrote yesterday. Start today’s session fresh.
Quantity is the only metric. Not quality. Not elegance. Words on the page.

This approach works because it separates creation from criticism. Your inner editor is useful—during revision. During drafting, that voice is pure sabotage. The vomit draft silences it by removing all quality standards. You can’t fail at something with no standards.

Daily Word Count Targets

A target gives your writing session a clear finish line. Without one, you’re just writing “for a while,” which usually means quitting when it gets hard.

Common targets:

500 words/day: Sustainable, low-pressure. A novel in six months.
1,000 words/day: The sweet spot for most dedicated writers. A novel in three months.
2,000 words/day: Ambitious but doable during focused periods. A novel in six weeks.

The number matters less than consistency. Five hundred words every day for three months produces more than 2,000-word binges separated by weeks of nothing. If you struggle with consistency, [INTERNAL: building-a-writing-routine] has practical strategies for making writing a daily habit.

Track your word count. A simple spreadsheet works, or use your writing app’s statistics. Watching the total climb is genuinely motivating—at 30,000 words, you’re not “trying to write a novel,” you’re halfway through writing one.

The Scene Card Method

If writing linearly feels oppressive, try writing in scenes rather than chapters. Write each scene on a separate document or card (physical index cards work beautifully for this). Benefits:

You can write scenes out of order, tackling whichever one excites you most
Moving scenes around during revision is easy
A single scene (800-2,000 words) feels achievable in one sitting
You can see progress as a growing stack of cards

This method pairs well with tools like Scrivener, which lets you treat each scene as a separate file within a larger project. Even a simple folder of documents works if Scrivener isn’t your thing.

What to Do When You’re Stuck

You will get stuck. Every writer does. Here are specific unsticking techniques:

Skip ahead. Write the next scene you’re excited about. The connecting material can be figured out later.

Write the scene badly on purpose. Give yourself permission to write the worst version. “She walked in and said the thing and he reacted and then they fought about it.” Terrible prose, but now you know what happens in the scene. You can make it good in revision.

Interview your character. Open a new document and ask your character questions. What do you want? What are you afraid of right now? What aren’t you telling me? Write their answers in first person. This often reveals what the scene needs.

Change the POV. Temporarily write the stuck scene from a different character’s perspective. You won’t keep this version, but seeing the scene through other eyes often reveals what’s missing.

Go for a walk. Seriously. Physical movement activates different neural pathways. Bring a pocket notebook—see [INTERNAL: field-notes-pocket-notebook-review]—because the solution often arrives mid-stride.

Managing the Messy Middle

The beginning is exciting. The ending is motivating. The middle is where drafts go to die. Around the 25,000-40,000 word mark of a novel, enthusiasm fades, the ending feels impossibly far away, and every word is a slog.

Strategies for surviving the middle:

Introduce a complication. If your plot is sagging, something unexpected needs to happen. A new character. A betrayal. A deadline that accelerates. When you’re bored, your reader would be too—so shake things up.

Revisit your stakes. What does your character lose if they fail? If you can’t answer clearly, your middle will feel aimless. Raise the stakes.

Write a “what needs to happen” list. Not a formal outline—just a quick brainstorm of events that need to occur between where you are and the ending. Even a rough list creates forward momentum.

Shrink your daily target. If 1,000 words feels impossible at the midpoint, drop to 500. Halved progress is infinitely more than zero progress.

The Two-Week Rule

When you finish your first draft, stop. Don’t reread it. Don’t start revising. Put it in a drawer—physical or digital—and don’t look at it for at least two weeks. A month is better.

This cooling period is essential because it creates distance. When you finally reread, you’ll see what’s actually on the page instead of what you remember intending to write. Problems will be obvious. Strengths will surprise you. You’ll approach revision as a reader rather than the exhausted writer who just typed “The End.”

During this waiting period, write something else. A short story. Journal entries. Start brainstorming your next project. Keep the writing muscle active, but let the draft rest.

The Most Important First Draft Advice

Done is better than perfect. A finished rough draft—messy, inconsistent, full of placeholder brackets and scenes that don’t work—is infinitely more valuable than three beautifully polished chapters of an abandoned project.

You cannot revise a blank page. You can revise the worst prose ever written into something good. The only first draft that fails is the one that never gets finished.

So lower your standards, raise your daily word count, and write forward. The magic happens in revision—but only if you give yourself something to revise. For a complete self-editing workflow once your draft is complete, head to [INTERNAL: self-editing-checklist].