Nice! I'll go out on a limb and say I think I see the evolution of the scene from something that's more than an outline but less than a draft to the finished product. The first scene looks like it's halfway between outline and first draft, trying to see what you have to say. It's a little scattershot, as if you haven't quite figured Fortéscue's character or his relationship with June yet. I see a little flailing in the early versions as if you're playing with ideas trying to find the heart of the scene. Fortéscue becomes more sympathetic and June softer in her dealings with him. It begins to resemble the final. Most of the elements are there in #8. In the final, you zoom in and crop tightly until you've cut away everything that isn't Fortéscue. At that point, he stands for the entirety of the Avallon 's staff and the scene can be boiled down to June dealing with the "I don't want to serve these people." BTW—I was surprised by how much changing the enumeration of ingredients from a list to the text improved the flow.
I really appreciated this since editing is always a shadowy beast for me, hard to wrangle. As I worked backwards I could hear the discordant notes: where the voice wasn't quite the June we know in the finished product, adverbs snagging at the flow, so much more explicit than implicit. I've been thinking a lot about the external (who what when where) and internal (why) in a scene and how both can be shifted and moved around until they balance each other out. I tend to tangle my plot, making it more difficult to shift individual pieces.
I know changes like this don't happen in a vacuum, do you make a change and then work through the entire draft to see how it ripples out? Do you move one scene around until it finds its home, banging its elbows on the neighboring scenes as it goes?
Unrelated: if you ever have any inclination to chat about writing/making art while also raising kids, I would take any advice/pep you have to offer (and I hope others would too)
It’s so interesting that the biggest change in all of these seems to be June. The different thesis statements that the chapters are built around feel like they’re reflecting the growing level of mutual respect in each draft until we end up with Hoss™️
I’m positive positive positive you’ve answered this somewhere but what does this look like on the backend logistically? I’ve been caught on a chapter for the last weekish, I chugged through half of it just fine then realized I didn’t like the structure. I jotted down a quick re-outline of the main beats but now I’m sort of like… would you write both versions then move on? Do you keep different scene iterations piecemeal and if so how do you organize those? How much rewriting do you leave for the end of a given draft? Sorry, again, I’m sorry you’ve written on this before, but 2 years ago or so my drafts of this book didn’t even have chapters (I was like does a book REALLY need chapters anyway) just scene breaks, if you think about it, so I’m always learning lmao 😭
Fave line was behind them was the busboys waiting to bus and the kitchen boys waiting to ___. I hope the kitchen boys get to kitch soon
I also s2g I do read a big variety of books like a big variety so I don’t know where the whole ‘but do I really need chapters’ thing came from. You can read and still be stupid. It seems
(I am now much better at analyzing books from a writer perspective lol)
Thank you for sharing these! So interesting how you started with 4 pages in the first take and ended with 4 in the final, but in between, the scene ballooned into 8-9 pages as you experimented with different approaches.
That tracks for me, too, as I tend to start with something simple, get wordy as I try to thoroughly explore what the scene CAN do, then only gradually (after much effort) boil things down to what the scene NEEDS to do.
It's a relief to know that seems to be a general feature of the process, and not a bug in mine ...
I found this so interesting too. I liken it to when I’m drawing and I start out with a simple line sketch, but as I embellish and figure out the details it becomes more visually dense. From that mess of lines, I find the final bits I want to hone, and once it is inked and I erase the pencil lines, the artwork becomes clearer again. It knows what it is and doesn’t need the extra sketch lines to hold it up. Taking it back to visual simplicity harkens to the original sketch, but (if I’ve done it right) it will have more depth and surety. I love how this is true of writing and drawing alike.
My dad has been rewatching The Queen's Gambit, and I was in awe of how they read books of other player's games, because I could not imagine taking the time to do that. Well, I just read all 10 versions of this scene, so it appears writing is my chess.
That is to say, thank you so much for this, Maggie. I've always wanted to be able to dig into iterations of a published work before, and this is an invaluable resource. Words can't encompass how grateful I am that you put this together for us.
I find it fascinating how the first version is short, gradually increases in length, then shrinks back down, though it's much different in shape. There's so much I noticed, but I found the depiction of June's relationship with Chef Fortéscue interesting. In the earlier versions (minus the first), she's able to read between his lines and understand him. There's an unspoken understanding between them. Then, that aspect disappears from the scene for the later versions, where events and emotions are more overtly stated. However, in the final version, that unspoken bond reappears, only now it feels stronger than before. It's not simply June reading between Fortéscue's lines; they're having a mutual conversation without explicitly saying what they mean. It both makes their relationship stronger and better fits with the theme things lying beneath the surface that pervades the book.
Were the more overt versions a way of helping yourself understand what you wanted the scene to be about, so you could sculpt it into the final version? Also, was Ovid a cut character, or was that an early name for 411?
Nice! I'll go out on a limb and say I think I see the evolution of the scene from something that's more than an outline but less than a draft to the finished product. The first scene looks like it's halfway between outline and first draft, trying to see what you have to say. It's a little scattershot, as if you haven't quite figured Fortéscue's character or his relationship with June yet. I see a little flailing in the early versions as if you're playing with ideas trying to find the heart of the scene. Fortéscue becomes more sympathetic and June softer in her dealings with him. It begins to resemble the final. Most of the elements are there in #8. In the final, you zoom in and crop tightly until you've cut away everything that isn't Fortéscue. At that point, he stands for the entirety of the Avallon 's staff and the scene can be boiled down to June dealing with the "I don't want to serve these people." BTW—I was surprised by how much changing the enumeration of ingredients from a list to the text improved the flow.
A magnificent (unsurprising) breakdown.
I really appreciated this since editing is always a shadowy beast for me, hard to wrangle. As I worked backwards I could hear the discordant notes: where the voice wasn't quite the June we know in the finished product, adverbs snagging at the flow, so much more explicit than implicit. I've been thinking a lot about the external (who what when where) and internal (why) in a scene and how both can be shifted and moved around until they balance each other out. I tend to tangle my plot, making it more difficult to shift individual pieces.
I know changes like this don't happen in a vacuum, do you make a change and then work through the entire draft to see how it ripples out? Do you move one scene around until it finds its home, banging its elbows on the neighboring scenes as it goes?
Unrelated: if you ever have any inclination to chat about writing/making art while also raising kids, I would take any advice/pep you have to offer (and I hope others would too)
It’s so interesting that the biggest change in all of these seems to be June. The different thesis statements that the chapters are built around feel like they’re reflecting the growing level of mutual respect in each draft until we end up with Hoss™️
I’m positive positive positive you’ve answered this somewhere but what does this look like on the backend logistically? I’ve been caught on a chapter for the last weekish, I chugged through half of it just fine then realized I didn’t like the structure. I jotted down a quick re-outline of the main beats but now I’m sort of like… would you write both versions then move on? Do you keep different scene iterations piecemeal and if so how do you organize those? How much rewriting do you leave for the end of a given draft? Sorry, again, I’m sorry you’ve written on this before, but 2 years ago or so my drafts of this book didn’t even have chapters (I was like does a book REALLY need chapters anyway) just scene breaks, if you think about it, so I’m always learning lmao 😭
Fave line was behind them was the busboys waiting to bus and the kitchen boys waiting to ___. I hope the kitchen boys get to kitch soon
Seconding thirding fourthing and so on and so forth
I also s2g I do read a big variety of books like a big variety so I don’t know where the whole ‘but do I really need chapters’ thing came from. You can read and still be stupid. It seems
(I am now much better at analyzing books from a writer perspective lol)
Thank you for sharing these! So interesting how you started with 4 pages in the first take and ended with 4 in the final, but in between, the scene ballooned into 8-9 pages as you experimented with different approaches.
That tracks for me, too, as I tend to start with something simple, get wordy as I try to thoroughly explore what the scene CAN do, then only gradually (after much effort) boil things down to what the scene NEEDS to do.
It's a relief to know that seems to be a general feature of the process, and not a bug in mine ...
I found this so interesting too. I liken it to when I’m drawing and I start out with a simple line sketch, but as I embellish and figure out the details it becomes more visually dense. From that mess of lines, I find the final bits I want to hone, and once it is inked and I erase the pencil lines, the artwork becomes clearer again. It knows what it is and doesn’t need the extra sketch lines to hold it up. Taking it back to visual simplicity harkens to the original sketch, but (if I’ve done it right) it will have more depth and surety. I love how this is true of writing and drawing alike.
My dad has been rewatching The Queen's Gambit, and I was in awe of how they read books of other player's games, because I could not imagine taking the time to do that. Well, I just read all 10 versions of this scene, so it appears writing is my chess.
That is to say, thank you so much for this, Maggie. I've always wanted to be able to dig into iterations of a published work before, and this is an invaluable resource. Words can't encompass how grateful I am that you put this together for us.
I find it fascinating how the first version is short, gradually increases in length, then shrinks back down, though it's much different in shape. There's so much I noticed, but I found the depiction of June's relationship with Chef Fortéscue interesting. In the earlier versions (minus the first), she's able to read between his lines and understand him. There's an unspoken understanding between them. Then, that aspect disappears from the scene for the later versions, where events and emotions are more overtly stated. However, in the final version, that unspoken bond reappears, only now it feels stronger than before. It's not simply June reading between Fortéscue's lines; they're having a mutual conversation without explicitly saying what they mean. It both makes their relationship stronger and better fits with the theme things lying beneath the surface that pervades the book.
Were the more overt versions a way of helping yourself understand what you wanted the scene to be about, so you could sculpt it into the final version? Also, was Ovid a cut character, or was that an early name for 411?
woah i suddenly have the strength to write more than 2 version of chapter 1, thank you Maggie!!!