About

The Agile First Draft Method

An Agile First Draft is an iterative approach to drafting a novel or short story, adapted from agile methodology in software. Instead of treating a first draft like a single heroic sprint that must emerge clean and perfect, it treats drafting as a series of purposeful iterations, each pass clarifying a layer of the story.

The process of an agile first draft is to iterate to a first draft rather than iterating from a first draft. Plot comes first, as a minimum viable story skeleton. Dialog follows and gives it a pulse. Description and dialog tags make the world solid. Prose polish is handled as an editing step rather than as a drafting pass.

Why It Works

You can build a book the way you build anything complicated step by step, with feedback loops, with intention. Story elements are segmented so that you can give each the proper focus. Decision points are determined when they matter in the process, so they don’t slow down progress unnecessarily. Though there are more steps, creative effort is managed in order to craft a more robust first draft in less time.

The values underneath the method are simple: honor the process, make progress visible, keep the work moving, and don’t let perfectionism masquerade as virtue.

Benefits of an agile first draft:

• Start your draft faster by avoiding excessive prewriting activities.
• Get the story out of your head and onto paper more quickly and with less effort.
• Figure out what needs work before you’re 50,000 words deep into the story.
• Adapt and make corrections more easily with fewer words to change.

Who Developed It

The Agile First Draft method was developed by Annie Jackson through writing two novels, then formalized as the subject of her Master’s thesis in Creative Writing, “The Advantage of an Iterative Writing Process for Novels and Short Stories.” She wanted to understand the system under the story, not to strip it of magic, but to make the magic reproducible.

Annie is a novelist, a teacher of process, and a creator of tools for writers who want to finish what they start. She writes clean YA fantasy and fairy tale retellings, including Tattered Heart and Enchanted Storms, books 1 and 2 in the Princess Kingdoms series. More about her fiction at AnnieJacksonBooks.com.