Hello, writers! Julie and Whitney here with another video installment. This one details what each of us learned about writing fiction after completing a first full draft of our novels.

While we both knew a lot about fiction when we started writing, there were a lot of things we had to learn about writing it … while we were writing it!

And guys … the same was true for recording this video. What’s below is our THIRD attempt at recording. Our first attempt at a screen-share conversation looked great but had no sound. After researching how to fix the problem, we tried again and got mostly through the second video. But then a storm rolled in and the video call started freezing. So many frozen awkward faces. So much messed up dialogue.

Finally, we decided to film ourselves separately and splice the footage into one video. The format’s not ideal, but the content communicates what we intended. We’ll shoot for better results in the future. Surely the weather and internet gods will provide.

And so, it is with much pride and joy that we FINALLY present to you, 3 Lessons We Learned While Writing the First Draft. Spoiler alert: they have to do with style, character focus, and writing a synopsis.

Morals of the story? Embrace the creative process. It’s messy. Be willing to learn new skills at every phase of your project!

Thanks for watching and enjoy!

Want to learn more? Try Whitney’s post about how to get your plot moving forward or Julie’s about how to write awesome dialogue!

And make sure to leave us a comment below about what you learned while writing your first draft!