The First Draft Is You Telling Yourself The Story
Why writing for yourself first is the only way to write for anyone else
I spent 20 years writing first drafts for an imaginary audience.
Trying to impress people who weren’t reading it yet. Polishing sentences before I knew what the scene was about. Making sure every page would land with readers who didn’t exist.
And every first draft took forever. Because I was performing for ghosts. I was writing for the market and never finishing scripts the way I used to.
But the truth that took me forever to learn is this:
The first draft isn’t for them. The first draft is for you.
To really create something powerful. To write a story worth telling, you have to step outside of wondering if anyone will like it.
You have to tell yourself the story. Figure out what it’s about. Discover what you’re actually trying to say underneath the plot you thought you were writing.
The audience comes later. In revision. When you take what you discovered for yourself and shape it so others can discover it too.
But if you’re writing for them in the first draft, you never get to the real story. You just get the version you think they want to hear.
At 43, after 26 years of doing this wrong, I’m finally learning: The first draft is private. The revision is public. And you can’t skip the private part just because you’re afraid of what you’ll find there.
Why We Write For The Audience Too Soon
Does this sound like you?
You sit down to write. And immediately, you’re thinking about how it will read.
Will this scene be boring? Is this dialogue too on-the-nose? Will readers understand what I’m going for here?
Those are revision questions. But you’re asking them in the first draft. How do I know? Because I do it every time.
So why don't we do it right away? I’ve found that it’s because writing for yourself feels indulgent. Messy. Like you’re wasting time on pages nobody will ever see.
Writing for the audience feels professional. Efficient. Like you’re being productive.
But here’s what actually happens when you write for the audience in the first draft:
You censor the truth. The raw moment that feels too much. The character behavior that’s honest but uncomfortable. The scene that reveals more about you than you want anyone to know.
You write what you think they’ll accept instead of what you actually need to say.
You perform the story instead of discovering it.
And performance without discovery is just a draft that sounds good but means nothing.
The First Draft Is Discovery
The first draft is where you figure out what your story is actually about.
Not the logline. Not the pitch. The REAL story underneath the plot.
You thought you were writing a heist movie. Turns out you’re writing about trust.
You thought you were writing a love story. Turns out you’re writing about forgiveness.
You thought you were writing about a detective solving a case. Turns out you’re writing about what it costs to see the truth when everyone else wants to believe the lie.
You don’t know that on page one. You discover it by writing toward it.
But if you’re writing for the audience, you can’t discover. You’re too busy making sure every page reads well. Making sure the story makes sense. Making sure nothing is too weird, too raw, or too you.
Discovery requires permission to be messy. To write the version that doesn’t work yet. To follow threads that might go nowhere.
The audience doesn’t give you that permission. You have to give it to yourself.
What Writing For Yourself Actually Looks Like
Writing for yourself means asking different questions in the first draft.
Not: Will readers like this?
But: What does this scene actually need? What is this character really feeling? What truth am I avoiding by keeping this safe?
It means writing the version that’s too honest. Because you can always pull back in revision. But you can’t add honesty after the fact. You can’t inject truth into something you kept polished and safe from the beginning.
I’m just finished a script I started in 2019. The first draft was careful. Professional. Every scene did its job. The structure worked.
And it was dead on the page. It sounded more like Hallmark than a cathartic healing journey about love, loss, family, and self-discovery than I had hoped.
Because I wrote it for the audience. For the imaginary executives who might read it. For the contest judges. For the hypothetical producers.
I didn’t write it for me.
So I started over. Literally just did a page one rewrite over the past month and a half. I gave myself permission to write the messy version. The one that’s too personal. The one that reveals more than I’m comfortable with.
And the story finally came alive. Because I stopped performing and started discovering.
Literally. So, quick backstory, my wife isn’t one to cry much during movies—like at all. She pokes fun at me for being the crier during even the right commercial that hits. And so, she read the script recently on our drive down to Disney World, and she was real quite, not making a sound. So, she finishes it, finally looks at me, is ugly crying, a mess, and just goes, “It’s perfect.”
And I was like, “Wait, have you been doing the mouth breather thing because you didn’t want me to know you’re crying?”
“Yes.”
And mind you, she’d read this script in previous drafts many times. But it was this one, the one where I spent most of the time writing the scenes with tears streaming down my face, that finally got her.
Why? Because it’s honest storytelling. Written for me.
The Revision Is Where The Audience Comes In
The first draft is you telling yourself the story.
The revision is you telling it to everyone else.
And that’s when the audience matters. That’s when you ask: Does this scene work? Is this moment clear? Will readers understand what I’m going for?
But you can’t answer those questions until you know what you’re actually going for. And you won’t know that until you’ve written the private version first.
Revision is shaping. Clarifying. Making the discovered truth accessible to people who didn’t discover it with you.
But you can’t shape what you haven’t discovered. You can’t clarify what you kept vague to protect yourself. You can’t make something accessible when you never went deep enough to find anything worth accessing.
Write for yourself first. Discover the real story. The honest version. The one that scares you a little because it reveals too much.
Then revise for the audience. Make it work. Make it clear. Make it land.
But in that order. Discovery first. Performance second.
Why This Feels Scary
Writing for yourself feels vulnerable.
Because if you write what you actually think, what you actually feel, what you’re actually exploring, people will see you.
Not the professional writer version of you. The real you. The one with questions you don’t have answers to. The one who’s messy and uncertain and figuring it out as you go.
That exposure feels dangerous. So you protect yourself by writing for the audience. By keeping it polished. By staying in control.
But control kills discovery. And discovery is where the real story lives.
The version you’re afraid to write is usually the version you need to write. The one that’s too personal. Too raw. Too honest about what you’re actually wrestling with.
That’s the first draft. That’s the discovery.
You can decide how much of that to keep when you revise. But you have to write it first. You have to go there. You have to tell yourself the story before you can tell it to anyone else.
The Bottom Line
The first draft is you telling yourself the story.
Not the audience. Not the contest judges. Not the imaginary executives. You.
You’re figuring out what it’s about. What you’re actually trying to say. What truth you’re exploring underneath the plot you thought you were writing.
That draft is private. Messy. Full of scenes that don’t work and moments that are too much, and honesty that might not survive revision.
But that’s where the real story lives. In the discovery. In the version you write for yourself before you worry about anyone else.
The audience comes later. In revision. When you take what you discovered and shape it so others can discover it too.
But you can’t revise what you never discovered. You can’t polish truth you never wrote in the first place.
So write the first draft for you. Write it messy. Write it honest. Write it too personal and too raw and too much.
Then revise for them. Make it work. Make it clear. Make it accessible.
But in that order. Discovery first. Performance second. Private first. Public second.
The first draft is yours. Protect that. Let yourself discover what you’re actually writing about before you worry about whether anyone else will like it.
The story you’re writing for yourself is the only story worth revising for everyone else.
What are you discovering in your first draft right now? What truth are you writing toward that you can’t see yet?
Drop it in the comments. Let’s talk about the private work that makes the public work possible.
Remember that your story matters because you matter.
—JR
Truth and authenticity is only found through the courage to dig down and find the buried emotion.
Ohhhh, this is excellent and a timely reminder. I'm in a place physically and mentally that makes me forget my story. I take the weirdness and the details for granted now because I'm too deep in it. And always the editing of yea but who is it for??? which is a death knell. Thank you.