{Guest Post & Giveaway} 10 Things that Changed from SCARLET’s First Draft by Marissa Meyer

Check out the SCARLET Blog Tour Schedule

Guest posts, reviews, and giveaways abound!  

&

Welcome to A Week of Little Red in celebration of our favorite scarlet-caped heroine...
not to mention the launch of Marissa Meyer's SCARLET!
Check out my daily schedule of events!
Grab some promotional buttons for your blog
and stop back all week long for fun guest posts, exciting author visits, giveaways, reviews,
and blog tour stops for SCARLET!

Stop back at A Backwards Story this week for more SCARLET goodness, 

including a book review and an audiobook excerpt!

~*~

SCARLET is Marissa Meyer's sophomore novel and the sequel to New York Times Best Selling Novel CINDER!  CRESS and WINTER will conclude the series.

Check out Marissa's website for more information, and find her on Twitter! 

Follow the Lunar Chronicles Series on Facebook!

"10 Things that Changed from SCARLET’s First Draft”
by Marissa Meyer

Tomorrow, check out Bewitched Bookworms for a deleted scene from the first draft!

I wrote the first drafts of the first three books of The Lunar Chronicles (CINDER, SCARLET, and CRESS) during one month—November 2008. Yes, it was as crazy as it sounds. Although it was good for me to get all my ideas down in one fell swoop, in the end I had three incredibly rough drafts and a long, long period of revisions ahead of me. A lot of things are so different from that original draft of SCARLET that parts of it are almost unrecognizable from the book it eventually became. 

Here are 10 things that changed significantly during revisions: 

1. The first draft was 52,000 words long. In comparison, the final published book came in around 105,000 words. Subplots and characters were added, stakes were raised, and the climax (and build up to it) went from 30 pages to about 150. Yikes! 

2. Scarlet was a waitress. In the first draft, Scarlet was toiling away at a job she hated in order to scrounge together every cent she could (see #3), putting up with drunk patrons and ungrateful bosses. The first chapters still take place in that pub, but now Scarlet is running deliveries for her grandmother’s farm. This occupation fits her character—and the story—much better. 

3. Scarlet’s grandmother was a slave—er, “servant”—being kept in America. This is one of the biggest changes that occurred during revisions. In that first draft, Scarlet knew just where her grandmother was, and she was attempting to save money in order to buy her freedom. So the entire plot having to do with her grandmother being kidnapped, which the final book hinges on, didn’t exist until the second draft. Likewise, I chose to keep the entire book in France rather than move the climax to America. 

4. Wolf had amnesia. In the first draft, Wolf knew nothing about himself, his past, or where he came from, and lots of time was devoted to him and Scarlet trying to figure this out. 

5. Travel between America and Europe was prohibited due to plague outbreaks. So when Scarlet and Wolf had to travel to America to rescue her enslaved grandmother, they had to be very sneaky about it, as the entire American Republic had shut down its borders in order to keep the plague from spreading to their country. One of my favorite scenes took place in the back of a trading semi-truck traveling from Canada into America that Scarlet and Wolf had stolen away in—that scene still exists (more or less) in the final book, but it’s now aboard a maglev train. 

6. Captain Carswell Thorne’s name was originally Alexander Woods. Then, and now, I envisioned Thorne as playing the role of the woodsman in the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, so Woods was an easy name to come up with. However, I kept getting confused between the two male leads (Wolf and Woods were too similar), so I decided to change it. I’m now much happier with the name “Thorne,” in no small part because it relates more strongly to the role he’ll be playing in Book 3: CRESS (which is based on Rapunzel). 

7. Scarlet’s spaceship was named Little Red. She still has a delivery ship in the final draft, it just doesn’t have a name. I was worried that the too-obvious fairy tale reference would pull readers out of the story. 

8. The werewolves were much more… paranormal. There are “werewolves” in the final version of SCARLET, but they’re scientifically engineered werewolves, and I did my best to make their abilities fit with the world-building I’ve already set up. Alternatively, in that first draft, they had a much more magical bent to them: shapeshifting with the full moon, etc. 

9. Neither Kai nor Queen Levana made an appearance in this book. In fact, per the original outline of the series, we wouldn’t have met Queen Levana until Book 4! But that was one of the first changes I made as I revised CINDER and it made sense to keep both Kai and Queen Levana as major characters throughout all four books. 

10. Princess Selene’s identity remained a mystery. Of course, if you’ve read CINDER, you know that Selene’s identity is revealed at the end of the book (and hinted at much earlier). But when I was first drafting this series, I honestly didn’t even know myself who the princess was—there was a time at which she logistically could have been Cinder, Scarlet, or even Cress, and my intention had been to keep readers guessing until Book 4. This ended up not working at all though, which forced me to make a decision and reveal it in Book 1. Therefore, the first draft of SCARLET revolved greatly around gathering clues as the characters attempted to track down the mysterious Lunar Heir. 

Now that you know what happened in the first draft, I hope you’ll enjoy discovering what actually happens in the final book!

~*~

O F F I C I A L   I N F O:

Title:  SCARLET
Author: Marissa Meyer

Release Date: Feb. 5, 2013
Publisher: Macmillan / Feiwel and Friends

Received: For Review

SUMMARY:

Cinder returns in the second thrilling installment of the New York Times-bestselling Lunar Chronicles. She’s trying to break out of prison—even though if she succeeds, she’ll be the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive. 

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother and the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she has no choice but to trust him, though he clearly has a few dark secrets of his own. 

As Scarlet and Wolf work to unravel one mystery, they find another when they cross paths with Cinder. Together, they must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen who will do anything to make Prince Kai her husband, her king, her prisoner.

And now, enter to win 

a paperback of CINDER and a hardcover of SCARLET!

One lucky winner in the US/CA will win both books!

I usually use forms, but for A Week of Little Red, I'm going to try out Rafflecopter...

Let me know what you think of moving in this direction, and let me know if you have any issues!

I still don't fully understand Rafflecopter, lol!

a Rafflecopter giveaway