Finish First Draft or go Strait to the Second?

So the good news: I wrote the ending to the first draft of my book! But while I managed to write most of the story from start to finish, there were a couple (as in literally two) parts I skipped over writing and jumped ahead to a latter scene. Nowadays I've been going back to those parts and filling them in, but I wonder if that's really worthwhile. So I wanted to hear some opinions: would you generally tell someone in this position to get one write through all done or to start the next, or does it depend on the situation to much to say definitively?

I think it's more a question of what works. The method you've been doing is how I revised my first script, Our Wizard: change details that aren't working. Maybe overhaul a scene here or there. This method works for a story that you know is structurally sound — it usually works best for a draft that you planned out beforehand.

But with Gleahan And The Knaves Of Industry, I took a page out of a writer-friend's book and started on a completely blank document, put it side-by-side with the old one, and started reworking the whole thing from scratch. Don't worry about what was in the old draft, just write what works. Write what makes sense. Once I got to the point of adding a new scene or doing a major overhaul, I just set the old draft aside and put myself fully into "write-from-scratch mode." It fixed a lot of the glaring issues I had with the script in its first draft, and gave me a lot more freedom to make changes — "I'm already typing it all out by hand, so it's not as big a deal to change this one detail here."

Ultimately you'll end up with a second draft either way. The real question is how you get to that second draft. That's what worked for my writer-friend. He talked about this method at a group here in Duluth, then a couple other writers tried it, it worked for them, and it worked for me. Maybe it'll work for you.

I'd say it depends on how large the part you left out is. If it's just one scene that you just didn't bother writing, you could just incorporate it into the second draft. If it's a huge chunk of the story though, then go ahead and include at least a summary of what happens in that chunk before going on to the second draft.

I know for my novel (of which I am about 5/6 of the way done with the first draft), what I did was write out some brief thing to move a plot forward, but then leave a note that says "expand on this" or whatever. That way when it comes time to do the second draft, I can see that note and hopefully have more info about how the story goes so that I actually have material to work with.