OLD DRAFTS - SPOILER ALERT!

On this page, I share parts of my first drafts of 9th Grade with My Expanding Experiences, My Rollercoaster Relationships, & Me. This includes sensitive information about the plot as a whole, so if you haven't read the book yet, PLEASE don't scroll any further down this page! Instead, buy the book on Amazon, read it, and then you'll be welcome to explore this page :)
The 9th Grade first drafts didn't require as much editing as the 6th, 7th, or 8th Grade first drafts. Although I wasn't yet writing for publication, I was older (16 to 19), so I had a better grasp of how people would act in various circumstances, and what kinds of circumstances people would actually find themselves in. None of the 9th grade books needed complete plot changes, and most of them only underwent slight revisions in regard to narration and dialogue. 

I looked through each book and tried to find the part that differed the most from the final draft. Enjoy!
In the final version of "New Kid At School," it is mentioned that Shevea and Ellie have a conversation during lunch, but the conversation isn't actually written out. I think I decided to remove the actual conversation for the sake of making the book shorter, since the initial first typed​ draft was much too long.
The final version of "Important Words" involves Mirisen being a bit vague about what she's doing in one entry, and then Allisen learning that she's on a swim team two entries later. In the first draft, it was a much bigger mystery that dragged on for longer. I changed it for the final draft because I wanted to keep the focus of the story primarily on Allisen and her friends starting the Bible study group.
For the final draft of "We've Got Talent", I decided to write out the actual conversation in which Allisen presented her idea to her friends, rather than just saying that she told them and they all liked it, because I figured it would be more interesting that way.
"All Dark" (left) and "Halfway to Independence Day" (right) didn't change much from their first to final drafts.  
Below is a scene from "Bright or Dim Me?" that ended up being cut down quite a bit for the final draft. Allisen's disagreement with her mom over the outfit actually made it into my first typed draft, but was removed later when I went through the whole volume trying to clip out excess words. 
This part from "Vee Is For Victory" where Allisen almost says "I like Jack" is cute, but when it came time to edit for publication I realized that I didn't want to be so blatant so soon. I wanted to incorporate a lot of more subtle clues about Allisen's  crush on Jack, but since it was only a couple weeks after she first started thinking about the possibility of liking him, I didn't want her to be so sure of her feelings yet.
Gretchen and Squeaky were originally hamsters, not gerbils, and Squeaky's name was originally Fluffy. And, as you can see from this excerpt from "Funerals Aren't Fun", Fluffy originally died. I gave her a reprieve in the final version of the book because I decided that three deaths all in one month was a bit over the top. And I changed them to gerbils because I learned that hamsters usually only live 2-3 years, which meant that if I wanted to be realistic, both of them would have to die during the series. I didn't want that.
Below is a deleted scene from "Stand or Fall." In the first draft, this had already happened by the time Allisen started getting emails from randomgirl2009, but yet Allisen never suspected that the emails might be from Vee. I removed this scene in a later edit because I decided it made it too obvious that randomgirl2009 was Vee. 
One thing I did all the time in the old drafts was re-explaining who people were (such as in the first draft of "A True Commitment", you can see that I explained that Madalee was Stivre's ex-girlfriend). It made sense to do this back then, since each "book" was separate and someone who was reading this one wouldn't necessarily have read "Stand or Fall." Once I combined the "books" into larger volumes, I was able to get rid of most of the re-explaining.
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