Clare Furniss

I’m terrible at taking my own advice on this. I always want to get it right first time. It’s impossible though. Allow yourself to get it wrong, to experiment, to make mistakes. No one else ever needs to read your first draft. That’s where you find out what the story is, and who your characters are. The bits you don’t like help you to work out the right way to do it. Cringe-making cliches and terrible dialogue and unrealistic characters are familiar features of every first draft and easy to put right later.