The Resurrection

Completing a first draft of a book creates so many opportunities to the writer. The story could end up being not all that different to what the draft is, or it could end up being a new book completely. A kind of resurrection.

I took a book I have written and simply changed the world in which it was written, and added some extra stuff to support the new world and the intervening storyline. Though this might seem hard it really isn't, well I don't think it is. To test your own knowledge and skills take any book you have read and then think about it in a totally constructed world of your choosing - sure, there will be some fundamental changes but in all reality most of the actual storyline itself will remain.

It truly is possible to get several books, all very different to each other, out of the one first draft. This is like creating one skeleton, then running through a variations of body types to hang on that skeleton.

Perhaps I do see this as simplistic, then I do not see writing in general as a majorly arduous task, but more an expansion of my general thinking and imagination. For me, with my completed first draft, it is like working clay - it took time to find a clay deposit, time to dig it and even time to pick through it to get out the impurities, but now I have the clay and the molding can begin.

My clay started out as a single point of view contemporary story dealing with living on the streets and having a drug habit with some coming of age situations and salvation through unusual avenues. Very normal type of story really and it will one day make a great final draft book, but I wanted to mold the clay differently to what I started with.

Now I have a steampunk murder mystery weaving its way through class-ism, morphine use and the trade in precious metals while all aboard a giant submarine.

That might sound like a massive step, in fact it does sound like a completely different story altogether. In a way it is different but only by about 50% from the original concept, including characters.

How can this happen? Well, a street corner becomes a hatchway, a building a compartment, a drug addiction (okay that stays the same) and the blue sky become the underside of deck plating. The motivations of the characters remains the same, the storyline dealing with issue remains similar and the events leading to murders are the same.

Why don't I just write another story altogether. Why indeed. Why start again when I have all I need already. Pictorially things have changed on a grand scale, socially things have taken some interesting sidesteps but at the heart the same story is being told.

So far so good. I have worked through 5 full chapters (15000 words) and have a story that on quick glance looks nothing like the original, and that is the real fun part - I have a first draft that when compared will look nothing at all like the final draft -- unlike some writers I find this challenge totally thrilling and a real test of my skills.