Many first-time authors get stuck because they treat early drafts as a judgment on their ability. They reread a few pages, wince, and assume they’re doing it wrong. What’s usually wrong isn’t the writing—it’s the expectation that ideas should arrive fully formed.
They don’t.
The draft isn’t the book
Early drafts are not miniature versions of the finished work. They’re thinking tools.
You are discovering what evidence holds, what examples collapse under scrutiny, and where your argument can’t yet carry its own weight. Trying to make those pages elegant too early is like polishing scaffolding: it looks busy, but it doesn’t move the structure forward.
Experienced authors know this. They write badly on purpose, because clarity comes after exploration.
Why first drafts feel worse than you expect
Three things tend to surprise new authors:
- Your internal bar is already high.
You’ve read excellent books for years. Your taste matured long before your manuscript did. That gap hurts—but it’s normal. - Writing exposes fuzzy thinking.
Ideas that feel solid in your head often dissolve on the page. That doesn’t mean the idea is weak; it means it’s being tested. - The book reveals itself by resisting you.
Sections that won’t behave are often pointing to missing context, flawed assumptions, or the wrong structure altogether.
None of that shows up if you wait for the “right” words before writing.
Ugly drafts create freedom
An ugly draft gives you permission to:
- Repeat yourself while you work out what actually matters - and where in the structure that information belongs.
- Over-explain before you learn what can be cut
- Write the wrong chapter so you can find your way to writing the right one
This is not inefficiency. It’s intellectual due diligence.
What editors look for is not beauty—it’s potential: a question worth pursuing, and evidence that the author is thinking, not posturing.
Visual Thinking Can Help
When authors feel they need a full structure or outline before they can relax into writing, chapter and section organisation can feel daunting. Here are three ways to land on a draft structure you can actually work with:
1. Sticky notes on a wall or window
Write out your ideas, sections, chapters, and content notes (or a manageable subset), then move them around until a shape emerges that makes sense to you.
2. Digital equivalents
Tools like Trello (in Kanban view), desktop sticky notes on Mac or PC, or a virtual whiteboard (Canva) let you run the same sticky-note process digitally—ideal if you need flexibility, or cloud-based portability. If you’re looking for a tool that also supports writing, we discuss LivingWriter a little further on.
3. AI tools
Paste in rough notes, fragments, or half-written sections and ask the AI to:
- Group related ideas
- Suggest multiple possible chapter orders
- Highlight overlaps or gaps
- Reframe structure for different audiences
Used this way, AI becomes a thinking partner—not an outline generator.
Think:
Visual Whiteboards (Canva, Miro, FigJam)
Like most tools, these platforms offer free versions with usage limits, alongside paid tiers with expanded features.
When writing manuscripts, Word is not your friend
Microsoft Word works well for short, discrete documents. It’s a reasonable place to start—but it struggles as files grow longer and more complex.
As manuscripts scale, small problems multiply:
- Sluggish performance
- Inconsistent formatting across chapters
- Styles that won’t stay uniform
- Footnotes, headings, or tables shifting unexpectedly
- Track Changes becoming unwieldy or unstable
None of these are fatal on their own. Together, they create friction that pulls time and attention away from writing and toward troubleshooting.
The real pain point usually comes at the stitching-it-all-together stage.
Many first-time authors draft chapters as separate Word files, then merge them late in the process. That’s when gremlins appear: formatting that won’t resolve, corrupted tables of contents, slowing performance, long save times—and hours spent fixing things that were never meant to be problems.
Word isn’t broken. It’s just not designed to manage modular, movable, book-scale writing.
Word is a perfectly good end point.
It’s a fragile working environment for large manuscripts.
Draft where chapters can live independently and be rearranged without consequence. Move into Word when the structure is settled and you’re ready for editorial polish—not while the book is still taking shape. That choice alone saves many first-time authors weeks of unnecessary frustration.
Tools that handle scale more gracefully
Dedicated writing tools treat chapters as components, not pages—making it easier to work in parts.
There’s no one-size-fits-all option. What works well for one writer may feel awkward or unhelpful to another. If you’re trying tools, take the time to understand how they differ and whether their features (such as cloud syncing) meet your needs.
LivingWriter
Built around chapters and sections rather than a single expanding file.
- Chapter- and section-based structure
- Large projects stay responsive
- Reordering is simple (including sticky-note views)
- Export to Word happens once, at the end
Obsidian
Excellent if you’re comfortable writing in Markdown. A small subscription is required for cloud file syncing.
- Each chapter or section is its own lightweight file
- No performance penalty as the project scales
- Structure can change without technical fallout
Scrivener
Designed specifically to avoid the “giant file” problem.
- Chapters live separately but export cleanly as one document
- Reordering is trivial
- Formatting is applied at compile, not while drafting
As with AI tools, some offer free versions with limits and paid tiers with expanded features. Find one that works for you—and stick with it.
Remember: every hour spent switching tools late in the process is an hour not spent writing.
Write in Plain English
If you’re drafting your first book, aim for plain English. Avoid word-soup, unnecessary complexity, or using academic-sounding language that doesn’t help the reader.
Plain language doesn’t weaken evidence. It makes evidence easier to evaluate.
Early drafts are about getting claims, reasoning, and supporting material onto the page in a form that can be tested. Inflated or performative language often hides gaps in logic, weak evidence, or unclear causal links.
This matters most in evidence-based work. If people can’t clearly understand a claim, they can’t properly assess it—and unclear claims attract closer scrutiny.
Focus on:
- What the evidence shows
- How conclusions follow from it
- Where uncertainty or limitation remains
What matters at draft stage is that the reasoning is clear and the evidentiary chain holds.
A direct, imperfect draft gives you something concrete to improve. A carefully hedged page that never quite lands a claim does not.
A quiet reassurance
Every author you admire has files full of abandoned drafts, incoherent openings, and chapters that never made it to print. You don’t see them because they did their job and disappeared.
They taught the author how to write that book.
Feeling dissatisfied with an early draft often means you’re engaging seriously with the work. A draft that feels rough is often one that’s doing exactly what it's meant to do.
We’ve included examples in this post for clarity and usefulness. Nat Sec Press does not receive payment or compensation from any company or service listed.
