Deleted or Alternate Scenes

When I write a novel initially I just get the whole thing down on paper (well onto my laptop) in one big splurge and then, once I have the whole story, make any necessary alterations or change or delete scenes that don’t work.  Then it goes to my editor Nicola for her and Jo to run through and they then come back with their suggestions.

Marked was my first published novel and obviously because I was new to the world of publishing it was a steep learning curve. When I went for my initial interview with Jo and Nicola I was handed five pages of notes – the first paragraph was what they liked about the novel and the following four and three quarter pages were things they thought needed changing.  Even so Jo said I was ninety percent there and on the strength of the first draft that they’d seen were prepared to offer me a contract for three novels.

Pause – while I savour the memory of that moment!

For all that, once the excitement had died down, there were some fairly big changes to be made along the way to the finished novel and I thought readers and other potential authors might be interested to see what a few of them were.

Marked – Original Beginning

This is where the book originally started, however I had already completely deleted this from my original submission to Jo and Nicola. I thought it slowed up the story and wanted to start nearer to the action. Fifteen years ago I walked away from this place and swore I’d never come back yet here I...

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Original Meeting with the Headmistress

This scene was also deleted from my original submission; again I thought it slowed down the beginning. I did show this and the previous section to Nicola after our first meeting and she asked me to weave bits of the information into the final draft so some of it might seem familiar to those who...

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Original Final Confrontation Scene Between Henri and Lucky

This scene Jo and Nicola weren’t at all happy with – I seem to remember Jo comparing this and the one that follows to Dallas when Bobby came back from the dead in the famous shower scene (for those too young to remember he was written out of at least one whole series only for...

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Deleted Hospital Scene (Explanation of above)

Obviously this scene was deleted as it was no longer required. I hope you found all this interesting. ‘One, two, three, clear,’ a loud thwacking sound jerked through my head. What was going on? My body felt numb, in fact I couldn’t feel my body at all. ‘No vitals.’ ‘Okay, we go again. One, two,...

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