The Workshop is a place for me to post old versions of stories I’m working on — Homecoming, for example, is an early version of Smoke and Mirrors, as well as a place to better organize discarded materials, deleted scenes, and old plot sketches. It’s a work in progress and I’ll be coming back over the next few weeks to add more and organize it better.
Alternate Universe Series
Homecoming
I tried a few openings and I’ve settled on something that’s working. Currently being worked on as Smoke and Mirrors but will be converting it to a Flash Fiction series soon.
Deleted Scenes
Bittersweet Opening Scenes
When trying to figure out how to open Bittersweet, I wrote a lot of versions. I gathered them here to kind of demonstrate how tough it can be to open a story and how if it doesn’t work, there’s nothing wrong with going back. None of these are bad — in fact, the deleted chapter is actually relatively good. But I wasn’t happy with my timeline or the tone I was setting for the Jason and Elizabeth relationship, so I kept going back until I found something that worked for me.
Other Bittersweet Scenes
When I wrote Bittersweet, I adjusted my plot line twice after already having written huge chunks. In this first section, i rewrote aspects of Carly’s return from the dead and cut out a custody hearing.
This second rewrite is huge — originally, I was going to follow the 2002 storyline more closely and have Jason and Sonny plan Jason’s faked death together, with Sonny lying to Elizabeth when Jason wanted to tell her. I wrote about eight chapters that way until it came time for Jason to come back. When I had to write scenes with Jason explaining himself to Bobbie and Emily, it just didn’t work for me. It felt false.
So I rewrote it and I basically chucked eight chapters. A lot of the scenes were rewritten or revised, pieces of dialogue made it back in in different ways but there was still a lot of stuff I had to get rid of. So if you’re interested it — this picks up about where Chapter Nineteen left off.
Miscellaneous Deleted Scenes
In a few of the stories I’ve worked on, I’ve had some deleted scenes that I’ve then posted as an out take.
Discarded Material
Collision
This is a story idea I’ve been playing with off and on for the last decade. It was going to be alternate version of the show in 2007, but I never got it off the ground. I still really love the storyline I had started and had written a bit of it. Here are is the prologue and first chapter.
Plot Sketches & Outlines
I do a lot of brainstorming and writing about my stories before I write them. I also outline and sketch out projects I don’t end up writing.
With the The Best Thing, I did a lot of planning and outlining before I ever started writing the first chapter. Unfortunately, my earliest outline is gone which makes me really mad, but I do have a ton of planning material, including two pieces of scenes from before I cut a subplot.