Hi fiction lover! How is your January going? I’ve been slowly getting back into drafting, maybe not daily but still more than what I was doing last year! Tell me—what is your favorite read of the past few months? And, what is your first read of the year? I have been enjoying Forged by Magic by Jenna Wolfhart. It’s really cute so far, with a lot of magical world-building. Have you ever read a book like that and wondered how the author drafted it? Perhaps you have heard of several techniques. I’m going to talk about one of the questions you might have: what is a skeleton draft? By the end of this post, you’ll know whether it’s the right method for you!
What is a Skeleton Draft?
I think we can first understand skeleton drafts by thinking about an outline. So, in an outline, you might go chapter by chapter to map out your novel. Starting with the opening image, the inciting incident, and so on. However, outlining can be a bit limited. After all, it’s just trying to capture main plot points.
So, what is a skeleton draft? A skeleton draft takes the basic principles of an outline, but it includes more of the little bones of the story. For example, it will go into the beats of the scene without the author having to write everything out.
The “skeleton” can be as detailed or as bare bones as required. But, it will include the setting, main character, and the main actions of the scene. You can kind of think of it like a cheat sheet or a play-by-play of your story. No one will see this skeleton draft, so you can get as messy and shorthand as possible.
Why don’t we dive into an example?
Chapter 2
John goes into bookstore.
He sees his old friend. (Add description about the nostalgia he feels when going here.)
He tries to find a book about love languages but is unsuccessful.
*Add dialogue here with the grumpy owner of the shop, and how John is supposedly taking up too much space.*
John grabs coffee. He turns around and bumps into love interest, Jessica. They make awkward conversation, and John notices a little heart tattoo that matches his own.
As you can see, it reads a bit more like a screenplay. But! You can get super creative with it, customizing it to your exact needs. You might want to include snippets of dialogue and lines that you 100% want to include in the manuscript.
You can get even more minimal than what I showed! But, remember that it should include more than just a basic outline.
So, once you practice a scene or two, the method would be continuing the novel until you get a full “skeleton.” Once all the chapters are mapped out, you can go in and start adding more flesh to the scenes. Delete your placeholders and write in your best prose, until you get your desired word count for each scene or chapter.
Find Your Process!
Even though skeleton drafting might not work for everyone, I recommend trying it for a scene or two! I think something you might notice is that some parts of the manuscript will be more bare. You might get completely into the zone for one section and fill it out to be something like an actual rough draft.
And that’s okay! Skeleton drafting makes it easy for us to get to the burning scenes that we need to write. And sometimes, these scenes will act as anchors for what we want the rest of the scenes to look like. Or perhaps these key scenes will help us foreshadow and properly build conflict.
Skeleton drafting is something I want to explore more. I tend to write each scene in full, going in chronological order. However, I know there are tons of successful authors who use skeleton drafting, enjoying the process of filling in all the gaps and beautifying.
Thanks for joining me on this one! I hope it answered your burning question: what is a skeleton draft? If you have any questions or anything to add, please comment down below! Visit me on my blog again next week! Continue drafting and being a storyteller in the new year!