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#0030 The Nine Draft Process Part 1: The Conceptual Draft

Writer's picture: AlexanderAlexander

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A few months ago, I introduced my writing process, which I call The Nine Draft Process (9DP). It’s been used successfully for my first three novels, and now I’m looking to share the process with you, using my upcoming novel, He’s Going to Kill You (HGTKY). Unfortunately, because of the nature of this blog, you might get a few spoilers for HGTKY, but it’s in the name of science. So it’s a worthy sacrifice. If you’re just now reading about 9DP, I recommend you check out the introduction here.


Today we’re going to be discussing the first step of the process, The Conceptual Draft. This is one of the easiest and most fun steps. It provides so much entertainment, in fact, that many people choose to dwell here with their ideas forever, rather than taking the steps to see their ideas come to fruition. I’ve been there, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.


So what is a concept? It’s an abstract idea generally conceived in the mind. For example, the human form is a concept. When you read that, you imagined the human form, but I can guarantee that it’s not the same image in my head. This is a concept. Everyone can take the general notion of the human form and flesh that out into different results. What we’re aiming to do in this step is to flesh out the concept of our novel.


The concept for He’s Going to Kill You was extremely simple. A guy and a girl go on a first date, and while he’s in the restroom, she receives a note from someone that says (you guessed it): He’s Going to Kill You. My concept was that simple for the novel.


So this is where we (metaphorically) take the pen to paper on our first draft. I use Microsoft Word and add each thought I have as a bullet point. Our goal here is to collect all our thoughts for the novel, both good and bad, into this document. Some (including myself) might call this brainstorming. It’s worth mentioning that He’s Going to Kill You is a little over 40k words and my Conceptual Draft was 2.7k words. I’d say the bigger, the better.


I highly recommend taking your time with this draft. Don’t do it overnight. Let it slow cook in your brain. Roll it around like a superb wine. You’ll impress yourself with what brews as you think about your story during your daily commute or while you work out or whatever you’re doing when your mind wonders. I think the sweet spot is about a month, and during that month I like to read a few books that are in the same genre that I’m writing. That will give you some ideas that fit your genre, not necessarily plot ideas, but ideas for chapter structure, character development, etc.


When you’re working through this draft, you obviously want to collect as much of the core information you can for your story, but there are a few key ideas that I recommend always considering.


  • Theme Information: The idea here is to pin down the core message of your book early, so you can reinforce it along the way with greater ease. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m bad at this part. Often I don’t find my theme until I’m on a later draft. But it helps to do some brainstorming here. For HGTKY, I’d noted themes of not knowing who you’re dating, that others have dark sides, that everyone keeps secrets, and that no one can be trusted.

  • Audience/Reader Expectations: If you want to help your book be successful, you need to give the readers in your genre what they want. Identifying those expectations early in the process will save some time down the road. Since I was writing a thriller, this was pretty simple. I needed a twist and a false ending. Those are common expectations for the genre along with quick chapters.

  • Story Direction: Knowing where your story is ultimately heading well help in designing it. For HGTKY, I knew I wanted to follow it with two more books, so I needed to be sure to plant the seeds and save some blooms for later.

  • Plot Points: This is really the meat of the conceptual draft. You need to have an idea where your novel will or may head with the story. Often I’ll have contradicting directions within the conceptual draft, but that’s a good thing. This is brainstorming. I’ll drop the direction that I like the least. I had over 2.5k words in my HGTKY Conceptual draft and a good 2k of it was plot points. Some of them weren’t used. Some of them changed drastically. Originally, the genders were reversed.

  • Character Growth: People grow through their experiences. That’s really the basis of all stories. They're about how external events affect individuals internally and externally. If you pin down some of those effects early on, it’ll make writing the novel a good bit easier. So for HGTKY, I wanted my characters to become less likable as the story went along. Since I knew that from the get go, I could sprinkle the bad parts of personalities throughout my earlier drafts rather than making that decision later and having go add ingredients after I’d already baked my cake.

  • Setting Considerations: This can be very important, as the setting can change what people do, what they wear, how they feel, etc. If you decide this later in the game, you might have someone wearing shorts in the winter, which isn’t crazy, but it might be out of character. Pinning this down early can help prevent mistakes.

  • Sequels/Spin Offs: As I mentioned, HGTKY was planned to be the first book in a trilogy. Because I planned it, I could setup the next books a good deal easier. I knew I needed to withhold some information, rather than giving everything away in one book.


So that’s a rundown of what I list as the key considerations for the Conceptual Draft. Most of those are short bits in the draft, but the plots points usually fill up multiple pages for me. Below is the HGTKY Conceptual Draft in all of its glory, with typos and grammar issues. I’ve edited out some major spoilers, but ultimately most of the original information is there. If you’ve read HGTKY, you’ll notice that there’s a good bit that I didn’t use or changed completely. This step isn’t about getting your story ironed out, it’s about mapping all the roads that lead through the story you want to tell. You won’t take all these routes, but you’ll know your options when you start driving.


You can download and view the conceptual here:


Just a quick summary of what we’ve discussed. The first step in the 9DP is the Conceptual Draft. It’s basically a document that collects all of your brainstorming for your project. Key considerations during this stage to capture for the document are Themes, Reader Expectations, Story Direction, Plot Points, Character Growth, Setting Considerations, and Sequel Planning.


And there you have it. In an upcoming blog I’ll discuss the Outline Draft, which is the next step in the 9DP. Until then, happy writings.

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