Although you would have never guessed it by how things started out, the third episode, "The Glassy Planet," went through the fewest revisions of the three first season episodes. It only went through eight drafts (whereas the first episode went through seventeen and the second went through twenty-five), but I started from scratch at the beginning of the first three drafts dumping everything from the drafts before.
I knew two things when I started out. I wanted to start in the middle of the action, and I wanted Captain Margay to be found at the beginning of the story. I didn't want the story to be a dragged out search for her.
First Draft - The story begins with the pirate ship crash landing on the Glassy Planet. It was pulled down by a space eddy or whirlpool. It seemed like a good way to start the story out in the middle of the action. If I had continued that storyline, it would have ended up that Margay's escape pod had been pulled down by the same space anomaly.
Second Draft - I dropped the crash landing and started from scratch. In this draft the story begins with Pirate Dark Star shouting, "Quick, guys! Come. I've found her!" It started in the middle of the action and with finding Margay. It fulfilled both of my goals starting out. But then everyone else started finding Margay too. Yes, in this draft, instead of Tonya, it was Margay who was duplicated by the magic mirror. There was even a lovesick Margay who was all over Rusty.
Third Draft - Still unsatisfied with the direction of the story, I started from scratch again. I had decided while writing the pirate scene in the first episode that Temple Pennywonk's treasure would be no more than a couple of baseball cards. And when I planned out the three episode arc, I decided there would be a mirror in the third episode that duplicated whoever looked into it. I didn't give much thought to the duplicating mirror beyond that. In the first two drafts, I just assumed that the mirror was a(n) (un)naturally occurring phenomenon on the Glassy Planet and unrelated to Temple Pennywonk.
When I was still unsatisfied with the storyline, I found myself thinking about the mirror. Where did it come from? Where did it get its powers from? Once I dreamed up a back story for the mirror, it seemed like the natural place to begin the story. Still dedicated to jumping right into the action, the first scene after the mirror's back story was Tonya looking into the mirror and her reflection jumping out at her.
Fourth Draft - Finally I had a foundation that I liked, so I didn't start from scratch this time. I thought it would be more fun for the reader if she were presented with several scenes of Tonya acting wildly out of character and came to the realization herself that Tonya had been duplicated somehow. I decided the best way to do this would be to have the characters split into search teams and then have a duplicate Tonya join each team. I wrote down the names of all the characters. Then I drew lines and arrows connecting them until I settled upon who would be teamed with whom. Then I started writing character traits the Tonya duplicate would most embody beside each team.
After deciding upon the teams, I wrote the rest of the story in a single sitting. The story went through a few more revisions, but the storyline remained relatively unchanged throughout the subsequent revisions.
Leave a comment