But fortunately, it wasn’t the ‘real’ final version. I tried finding an agent for it, quickly learning that 140k was far too long for a young adult novel. Meanwhile, I was writing book two, hitting story point after story point that changed book 1. After finishing the rough draft of book two, I rewrote book 1, cutting 50k words out of it, making it much better. I was learning on the fly how to write a good book.

Book 2’s influence on book 1 can’t be overstated. For example: as I looked for an agent for book 1, I kept running into phrases like, “looking for characters with a unique voice.” I didn’t know what that even meant. In book 2, I found Mark’s voice which also meant he didn’t have it in book 1. Welcome, another reason to rewrite.

They always tell you to read the genre you write to know what books are being consumed by the market. I was reading many first-person books and liked the way they fit in with my character. Unfortunately, the farther I got into the book, the more I realized I didn’t like writing that way. It wasn’t me. At around the halfway point, I stopped and started over in third person. Yes, another rewrite. The first, actually.

The other book that significantly changed this one was the rough draft of book 6. I won’t go into details because that would be a spoiler, but the change brought by book 6’s course departure caused major rewrites to the five preceding books. So yes, another rewrite of book 1 after I thought it was done. Again. As I mention on the ‘Pant-sers’ webpage, if you’re a Discovery writer, you must finish a rough draft of your entire series before you can publish any of them. You never know when the story will take a left turn that you truly like. Mine certainly did.

The interesting part is when I added in the change caused by book 6’s plot twist, the entire series became tighter and better written like it was the missing thread that should have always been there. For example, two events in book 1, looking back on it, should have been edited out because they weren’t used for anything except taking up space. I left them in for character development but should have removed them because they weren’t used for anything else and didn’t move the story. However, suddenly, upon making this rewrite, those two superfluous plot events connected, creating a key moment in the story, possibly even THE key moment in the series. Certainly a key moment in Mark’s life. When reading it, you might not realize it because it’s very subtle, but it’s a big deal. It was almost like that was how the book was supposed to be from the beginning, which was why I subconsciously hadn’t removed them.

I ran into a lot of that while writing these books. Things that seemed right at the time, just moving the plot ahead, later became key factors in tying the books together. Even the name of the original mad scientist was one such coincidence.