The first draft: your own life without the diary entry
Writing the first draft
A poem about yourself, in spoken word or on the page, is not an account of your life: it is one small piece of it, chosen because it has edges, and set down so exactly that somebody who has never met you can stand inside it.
That is the difference between a poem and a page of a diary, and it is the most useful thing a young writer learns in the first fortnight. A diary entry is written for the person who already knows the story. A poem is built for somebody who does not, so it has to hand over the room, the object and the weather rather than the conclusion. Spoken word poetry is stricter about this still, because a listener gets one pass at a line and cannot go back for the part they missed. How to write a poem sets out where this sits, which is stage 2 of 11.
What is the difference between a poem about your life and a diary entry?
The difference between a poem about your life and a diary entry is who does the feeling. A diary entry states the feeling and explains it, so the reader is handed the answer and has nothing left to do. A poem puts down the thing that caused the feeling and lets the reader arrive at it, which takes fewer words and lands harder. The test is mechanical: if a line could be swapped for the sentence I was upset, it is a diary line.
| The diary entry writes | The poem writes |
|---|---|
| I was so angry that day | The 15 minutes I spent in the corridor counting ceiling tiles |
| My grandmother meant everything to me | The tin of buttons, and which 3 of them she let me hold |
| It was a really hard year | The same 4 items on the shopping list from March to December |
| I felt invisible at that school | My name said wrong twice a day for 2 years, and never corrected |
| There was never much money | The heating on from 6 to 8, and coats on the beds |
Not one line in the right column says how anybody felt, and every one of them makes a room feel something. That is not a trick. It is the difference between reporting an event and building one, and it is available to a beginner on day 1 with no technical vocabulary at all.
What do you write about when the subject is you?
When the subject is you, write about the things around you, because a life is only reachable through its objects, rooms and journeys. Writers who start from myself as a topic produce a summary. Writers who start from a windowsill produce a poem that turns out to be about themselves, which is the only version anybody else can read. Starting from a prompt carries a dozen instructions that produce this kind of material in about 8 minutes.
- A room you know at a particular hour: the kitchen at 6 in the morning, not the kitchen in general.
- A journey you make without thinking: the same 20 minutes, handed over as if somebody else has to make it tomorrow.
- An object that outlived somebody: what it is for, who used it, and where it lives now.
- A sentence said to you once: reported exactly, including the wrong grammar, and never improved.
- A job somebody in your house does: the hours, the tools, the smell of the coat when it comes off.
- A word from home: a word in Punjabi, Somali, Polish, Welsh or Hindi that English only half translates, kept as it is said.
An assignment that names a country behaves the same way. Told to write your own poem about life in South Africa, or about life in Britain, a writer who answers the nation writes a leaflet. A writer who answers one street, one taxi rank or one afternoon writes something a reader anywhere can enter, and the nation arrives on its own.
Does a poem about yourself have to rhyme?
No. A poem about yourself does not have to rhyme, and in spoken word most do not, because rhyme in English pulls a sentence towards the word that fits the sound instead of the word that fits the truth. The rule for a writer who wants rhyme anyway is one line long: keep the sentence you would actually say. If you are reaching for a word you would never use in speech, the rhyme has taken over, and a room hears that instantly.
Two kinds of rhyme survive being said out loud. Half rhyme, where the sounds are close but not identical, so the ear notices a pattern without hearing a nursery rhyme. And internal rhyme, landing inside the line rather than at the end of it, which is where most of the rhyme in performed poetry actually sits. A fixed short form such as the cinquain is a different tool again, useful in school because 5 lines with a set shape make a beginner finish something, and finishing is the point of a first draft.
Is this a story or a poem?
It is a story if the material needs a beginning, a middle and an end, and a poem if it can stay in one place. Deciding that before the draft rather than halfway down page 2 saves a week. A story moves through time and explains how one thing led to another; a poem is allowed to stop time, stand inside a single moment for 20 lines, and end without resolving anything.
The test works in an English lesson and in a workshop alike. Say the material out loud in 2 sentences. If those sentences are then and then and then, it wants to be a story. If they are one image you keep circling back to, it is already a poem, and the draft should stay inside that image.
How do you get a first draft finished, badly, on purpose?
To get a first draft finished, write the whole thing badly in one sitting and correct nothing while you write. Four habits make that possible, and all 4 have to be deliberate, because the instinct of a careful student is the opposite of each one.
- Set 8 minutes and keep the pen moving, including through the sentences you know are wrong.
- Write the ordinary detail you think is too small to matter, because that is usually the line the poem is built on.
- Leave a gap where a word will not come, rather than stopping to find it.
- Stop 1 line after you wanted to stop, then put the draft down without reading it back.
A finished bad draft is worth more than half a good one, because the next stage works on what exists. Revising is where the cutting, the line breaks and the ending are decided, and it cannot start until there is a whole object to cut.
What is the adult doing while a first draft is being written?
The adult is protecting the conditions, mostly by doing less than feels natural. Write with the room for the full 8 minutes instead of circulating, because a teacher reading over a shoulder turns a draft into assessed work in about 3 seconds. Say before the writing starts that nothing will be read out today, and keep to it. Do not mark drafts. Offer the option of writing about somebody else's life, which any young person having a difficult year needs available without having to ask.
Say plainly, before anybody writes, where the limits are: personal material is welcome, and no adult can promise to keep to themselves anything suggesting a young person is being harmed, which is the point at which the setting's child protection policy takes over. That guidance is published separately in each nation, by the Department for Education in England, the Welsh Government in Wales, the Scottish Government in Scotland, and the Department of Education in Northern Ireland. Nerves, and what to do with them deals with a later fear. The fear at this stage is simpler and entirely reasonable: that the page will be taken and shown to somebody.