The writing blogosphere seems to be on a blogfest kick, and since the first one up is the Alternate Version Blogfest hosted by Livia Blackburne, I just had to join in. In honor of April Fool’s day, we’re posting the original and “alternate” versions of scenes from our works—and you know how I love to do that.
This is from an old MS (beyond repair, sadly). In this, Margaux is working with her ex-boyfriend, Fredrick, to pull off what she thought was a practical joke. Once things go badly (chapter 2), he ships her off to stay with her parents for a week while he irons out the mess. At her parents’, she sees a news report about a pair of scam artists who cheated little old ladies out of their life savings.
Original:
“I’ve always thought that [police] sketch looked like Sherry,” her father commented after a moment.
Margaux looked at the screen—it did look like her old friend, although it bore the name “Maryanne Walters.” Then the image changed, showing the police sketch of the accomplice.
It was Fredrick.
Chapter 3
Was that even possible?
Margaux shut her bedroom door behind her. Sure, it was possible–they’d met while Margaux and Fredrick dated–but it just didn’t make any sense.
Margaux sank onto her bed.
Her shock (which is always hard to convey, of course), wasn’t explicit enough for at least one of my CPs. So I wrote the alternate version:
It was Fredrick. Fredrick? FREDRICK?! Margaux rent her socks, writhing on the floor in
the agony of her own poor choices. Her father looked at her as though she were crazy–and she must be, she MUST be, for how else could she have so foolishly involved herself with Fredrick again when he was, as is abundantly clear from the character sketch, a lie and a cheat and a scoundrel and a murderer?
Margaux threw the television set across the room, taking out her frustrations with herself on the messenger. The medium is the message, after all, just as Marshall McLuhan had said in 1964, just ten short years before this scene unfolded.
“Margaux,” began her father in a warning tone. Margaux cut him off with a look that made it clear she was prepared to strangle him with her socks to silence his censure. If she hadn’t just rent them into small pieces of knit fabric, of course.
I’m so happy with this alternate version. It really clears up a number of issues this CP had—I obviously needed constant reminders that this story was set 30+ years ago, and after only ten pages, this CP already knew my characters better than I did. One of the many ways I learned about how to be such a helpful CP myself!
(My second choice: rewrite the opening to the MS I’m revising right now to have the heroine flirting with the hero over her priest’s dead body. I think that’ll really draw the readers in and make them feel for her, don’t you?)
Feel free to join in—or to add more ways I could push the alternate version even further over the top!
Photo by splityarn
