What the First Draft of The Mystery of the Body Thief Was Like

I am having a bit of technical difficulty with the video of Phoenix answering viewer's questions. There is a weird doubling effect in the video. This caused the editing of the video to be slowed down. I don't know when I am going to be done editing it, since I am still trying to sort that technical difficulty out. But, I will post it when it is ready. However, I figured while you were waiting, I'd talk about what the first draft of The Mystery of the Body Thief was like. I am halfway done with rewriting and editing the second draft. 

I think this is worth talking about since the story itself went in a very different direction than I thought it would go in the second draft. But if I had stayed with the idea of the first draft and with how the series would have gone this is how it would have gone... 

Also if you would like to check out some posts about the novel, that were written while I was writing the first draft, I recommend checking out this one. And if you want to read about how the story is now, I suggest checking out this post.

                                                   Let's begin: 

                                             The 5th book instead of the 1st-

Originally this was going to be the 5th book in the series. I had sketched out several other books before it, which...didn't end up working. As I was writing The Mystery of the Body Thief, I realized that it would work better as the 1st rather than the 5th book in the series. 

There are going to be prequels, though. They won't necessarily follow the same plot-lines that the original four other books I had in mind had, but they will show what Annabelle was like before the events of book 1 and 2 of the series. She did in fact solve cases before them. 

                                   Annabelle was going to end up with D.I. Time- 

(A drawing I drew a while ago of Annabelle with her and D.I. Time's children) 

Even though this plot-line did not end up happening, it was a possibility that it would end up happening in the series as I originally planned it. 

I had thought giving Annabelle a love interest would be interesting as a subplot. And I decided that D.I. Time would be the perfect character for it, because they were both detectives and liked solving mysteries. But then the characters had a mind of their own and Annabelle decided that "no, I am not going to marry D.I. Time and you cannot make me." So, that plot-line did not end up happening, and I am glad that it didn't. 

However, in the second draft it is being used as a conflict that D.I. Time loves Annabelle, instead of there being a romantic subplot between them. I can't say how it is used exactly, because of spoilers, but it does cause a lot of trouble and confusion for them. 

There was an all powerful sorceress (who had multi-colored hair)- 

(Some of the concept art for her)

This idea ended up not succeeding at all, partly because when I did start world-building the idea of an all powerful sorceress who knew the future (but didn't really try and stop it from happening) didn't fit with the world. 

She had an interest in card reading, zodiac signs, and other things, and she was also very, very, magically powerful (and randomly had hair that could go through all the different natural hair colors one could have). 

(Horatio (left) and the sorceress (right) made using this Lord of the Rings doll maker). 

This didn't work, though, because everyone would be wondering "why didn't she just try to stop it??" and "how did she get to be so powerful??" But certain elements of her character ended up getting dispersed throughout the novel. Ophelia has some of the aspects of the sorceress (some but not all) as well as having powers herself. Also, since magic is a thing that more than one individual could obtain, it makes sense that other characters would have powers (that could be learned) too. Two of the characters who ended up getting powers were D.I. Time and Annabelle herself. 

The world's setting was originally alternate history instead of a wholly original world- 

     The world was originally an alternate history set in Shakespeare's time, because I (once again) wanted to reference Shakespeare. But, I realized later on that I wanted a world that was more High Fantasy than Alternate History. Also, a lot of the characters were non-human, even in the alternate history setting, so it made more sense to me to have it be High Fantasy. 

While in some alternate history stories there are characters who are non-human (ex. Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell). In my story a majority of the characters are non-human as opposed to just one or one that wouldn't be noticeable. In addition, Dragon's Province (Dragon-spire at the time) seemed to be its own country not connected really to any real world place. Because of these things I felt it made sense to switch to High Fantasy. 

But it also made sense to switch because I wanted to make my own world with its own rules, its own magic system, and its own history, rather than write an Alternate History. While I do love alternate history, for a Fantasy series I really wanted to come up with a whole new world like Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal or other equally amazing Fantasy settings. I wanted people to step into a whole new world they had never heard of and get immersed in it. I thought maybe I could even get readers to do the kind of things they do with Hogwarts houses and Camp Half Blood cabins, where they decide what they would be if they were in the story (which of the gods or goddesses in the story would favor them in my story's case), or decide if they'd be an elf, a dwarf, a fairy, or a human. Anyway, that is one of the many reasons I switched it to High Fantasy. 

                                                   

                                                             I thought it was YA- 

(This is not The Mystery of the Body Thief, but it reflects what I thought the series was like around 2016-18)

     It turns out, none of the characters are teenagers. (Except for maybe Marigold? But she may be older), and yet younger me kept insisting (well not in front of anyone, just in my...head) that it was a young adult book, even though the only YA book I had read was Percy Jackson and (maybe) Harry Potter. My grasp of the genre was very, very limited. 

The target demographic was changed more to Adult rather than Young Adult. While this doesn't stop teenagers from reading it, they aren't primarily the target demographic for it. 

I didn't create a magic system- 

It originally had no magic system, because originally magic was something only a few people could obtain, including the all-powerful sorceress and a few other characters. And while in the first draft there were characters who were born with magic, there were a lot less characters who got magic from learning how to use it. Because of that, the gods and goddesses who taught characters magic didn't even come into play until the second draft. 

I admit that I did not put a lot of thought into the magic in the first draft. I knew magic existed in the world, but instead of having a reason simply for existing I just slapped it in without thinking about how it affected the world. Also, along the lines of the magic system, Ophelia, D.I. Time, and Annabelle didn't have powers in the first draft of the story. Ophelia wasn't even a priestess/healer: she was a nurse. And D.I. Time was pretty much just a detective. This post was the first time I actually started thinking about how the magic system worked. 

And that's all. There were other things that changed in the story as well, but they were small things or things that contained spoilers in them that I couldn't share without giving away the story. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this. 😃

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If you're a writer, what was the first draft of your novel or short story like? How did it change over time? 

-Quinley