: How rough should a rough draft be For a long time I would edit chapters as I wrote them, to make them as complete as possible. Unfortunately this often resulted in me running out of steam

I used to have a terrible problem with over editing my work. Eventually, I would get frustrated that I was constantly working on beginnings and never got to the "good stuff" in the middle. It eventually led to severe writers block.

After several years, I got a story that was so vivid in my head, I had to get it out. I wasn't thinking about writing a book. I just knew that I had to write out what was going on in my head or else I'd never sleep again. I was thinking about it that much! It was almost as if I weren't trying to write a new story. I was just transcribing a movie that I was watching.

So I just started writing furiously for several hours a day. I was trying to just get the events themselves down before I forgot them or I got bored. Sometimes, I'd write one sentence that represented an entire chapter's worth of story. Instead of my usual style of procrastinating by doing research before I wrote something, I'd write garbage like, "So this big explosion happens and I should do some research to make it realistic. But after all the details, the rest of the story will go like this."

Sometimes I'd write mini scenes that would never get into the story if I tried to publish it. The protagonist wouldn't witness the event, so it wouldn't be part of the narrative. But writing it helped me figure out exactly what the characters around her were thinking at the time and their actions made more sense to me. The supporting characters got stories of their own. They had real personalities and sometimes, I'd have to change parts of the story to make it believable to me that these characters had good reasons for what they were doing.

If I changed my mind about an event or character, I'd add in my new synopsis, but I'd not erase or edit the old event or character, in case I wanted to change back to an older version.

Now I'm well past the middle of my "junk draft" and further along writing a story than I've been before! It's very ugly in this form. I'm not letting anyone read it because it's not at all meant to be read by anyone but me. This is just helping me get the whole story out so I can polish it up and do the real writing later.

There's so much that can happen when you do it this way. I scoffed when people said that their stories took a mind of their own. But writing like this has shown me that it really happens. I had a minor supporting character age himself 40 years younger and made himself the primary villain. And then he refused to be a real villain, but still fought against the protagonist. Now it's very ambiguous about good vs evil. There's even a chance that my protagonist is a villain herself who went down a too dark path to fight for the good cause.

I was used to writing fairly stock plots. I can't believe that my story turned out this complex! I blame ditching the editing and let everything fly wild and free. I'll never go back to the old way. This is great!

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Consider using mind mapping to express and organize your creative thoughts before you start writing. On a blank sheet of paper, you write words, short phrases, or drawings to express ideas and use lines to represent relationships between those ideas. You can make it up as you go, or you can adopt one of the standard approaches to mind mapping.

One benefit of mind mapping is that you can express ideas quickly and easily, much faster than writing sentences and paragraphs. Another advantage is that you can get an instant overview of your thoughts by running your eyes across the map. This overview makes it easier to form new connections between older content and fresh content. I like to call it "Creation and Synthesis on overdrive".

It's harder to explain than it is just to do it. All you need is a pen/pencil and paper. Get comfortable doing it manually before you try any of the free software that's out there.

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Placeholders. (I'm explicitly focusing on my own reaction on this first point, because what I'm saying is very much a matter of personal taste.) I shudder at the idea of leaving placeholders in a manuscript. That impulse means that I've lost contact with the story and with the character. I'm no longer experiencing it. Instead, it's me as writer, from outside the story, trying to control it.

And when I come back later to fill in the placeholders, I always feel as if I'm more in authorial or editorial mode than in creative voice. I'm not sure whether that affects what I write, but it sure does affect how I feel when I'm writing.

Things go better when I dive right in and write the thing, rather than leaving a placeholder. If it doesn't work out, I can always come back to it later, once I see where the story is going.

The thing is, I'm almost always pleasantly surprised (either right then or later) by what I wrote. Often, without knowing it at the time, I put in some seemingly throwaway detail that turns out later to be significant. Or I write a line that jumps out at me and tells me what direction the story is going.

Practice. If you could more quickly get the words to the point where you are satisfied with them, you would spend less time fiddling with them. That was the reason I asked (in my comment) what triggers you to edit. If you notice patterns in the kinds of things that trigger you to fiddle rather than moving on, and if you could get better at those things, you would spend less time fiddling and more time writing the rest of the story.

So identify the most common triggers. Pick one trigger, identify what element of craft it is about, and practice it.

Do your scene openings not draw readers in? There are books and articles about that. Find a story that you loved, that pulled you in, and analyze how the writer did that. Then practice those things.

Do your scene endings not compel readers to turn the page? There are books and articles about that. Find a story that you couldn't put down, and analyze how the writer did that. Then practice those things.

Then pick another trigger. Study it. Analyze stories that do it well. Practice it.

With deliberate practice, you'll get better and faster at the things that are slowing you down.

Of course, your critical voice may simply raise the bar, but that's a whole other issue.

Critical Voice. Your critical voice loves you dearly. It wants nothing more than to keep you safe. It has an astounding capacity to imagine dangers. And it has an even more astounding capacity to focus your attention on every possible danger that it can imagine.

The problem is that our critical voice appears to have absolutely no capacity to distinguish between its imagined dangers and reality. It is afraid of everything. Deathly afraid.

So assess the dangers yourself. If you were to leave this bit of text alone (for now):

What is worst thing that could happen?
What is the best thing that could happen?
What is most likely to happen?

You can ask these questions about anything your critical voice wants you to fear: What if I were to send this to an editor or agent? What if I were to publish it, with my name right there in huge letters on the cover?

Most of the time, I don't have to go beyond that first question. When I figure out the worst thing that could really happen, it comes nowhere near justifying the fear that my critical voice would have me feel.

Your critical voice loves you and wants to keep you safe. But it is afraid of daisies.

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as an addendum to the other answers here, especially Lauren Ipsum's excellent post

I think the answer here is a lot to do with that much trod advice of show don't tell

The first draft should simply be about telling the story as succinctly as possible. With rough pointers to the finer details of the characters behaviour.

In future drafts you take the story you have told and convert it into something that you show.

Personally I am trying to retrain myself to write quickly, so if I've got a scene in my mind that I can write the show part for, then I'll get that down, otherwise the aim should be (IMO!) to tell the story, ignoring the need to try to convert that into a show.

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Placehold the highlights. Write the notes of what you want to accomplish.

Beth: Wow, that was really nice of the waiter.
Alanna: Do you think the boss will punish him for that?
they discuss if they should give him a big tip to make sure the boss doesn't dock him. Alanna wants to give the biggest tip she can afford; Beth thinks a large but not insane tip is enough. Show how Alanna is generous/impulsive, Beth more cautious. Lay pipe for second fight in Act II. End result is that waiter gets a tip somewhere between big and insane, so neither B nor A is quite satisfied.
Remember: Alanna should mention her sister in Nevada who's a waitress. Beth counters that she waited tables briefly in HS. Alanna will be surprised at this.

You can go back later and actually write the scene out. As you're working on the rest of the book, if lines of dialogue come to you (I tend to write pages and pages of it... in my head, while I'm on the treadmill), go back and jot them down in the same half-assed fashion.
Once you get to the end of the book, then you can go back and flesh out these holes.

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Continually editing what you are writing can mean you never get anything finished. Just churning out stuff that you are never going to use in the end doesn't help particularly either.

What I do personally may help you, but everyone is different. Assuming I have a basic plot outline I try to just get the short story, play, article, ect. down on paper. If, as I am writing, I suddenly think of an idea that would be good later or earlier, or if I think of a problem, I just put an asterix and a note to myself that something needs to change and then get on. When I come back to the writing and I don't feel a great deal of 'inspiration' I deal with the notes I have left myself -- I have something to write and it is a way to make it better.

As well, when I start a writing session I look back at what I wrote last time and edit it if necessary, or if I think it needs major revision leave it and write a note about what needs to be done. Then I get on with writing the next section.

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Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird, writes about starting with a "shitty first draft." That is, use your first draft to simply spew your ideas onto paper. This is the creative part of your writing. Let it all out, regardless of consistency, grammar, coherence. Later drafts are where you form that mass of crap into brilliance.

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