What Could Have Been / Literature

Top: The lost 1989 prototype of the first book Bottom: The final version of the first book from 1997.

Examples of What Could Have Been in Literature.

Works with their own pages:

• A Song of Ice and Fire
• Harry Potter

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• 2001: A Space Odyssey took a meandering path toward completion as film and novel were written in parallel, and some of the more memorable out-takes (and some of the early Clarke stories which inspired it in the first place) were included in The Lost Worlds of 2001. These include the ape-men being taught by aliens in humanoid form, not having HAL be murderous (with the only death(s) being due to accident) or not even including him at all, and one ending in which the entire ship passes through the Star Gate, leaving off just before the alien who had first taught humanity welcomes the Discovery crew.
• The Baby-Sitters Club: A planned spin-off would have been called Morbidda Destiny, Teenage Witch, based on Karen's belief that her elderly neighbor Mrs. Porter was a witch whose real name was Morbidda Destiny, but the idea didn't do well with test groups and was scrapped.
• Jeff Green's novel The Cudgel of Xanthor would have detailed the development process of the Xanthor Fictional Video Game series mentioned in the magazines Computer Gaming World and Games For Windows: The Official Magazine, while chronicling the life of the character Xanthor in a fantasy world.
• Earth's Children:
  • Author Jean M. Auel stated she originally set out to write only one book but that during the research and writing process, she decided the story would be better told in multiple books.
  • Word of God was that there were plans for a seventh book (or at the very least Auel said she had enough material to produce another book), but promotional material for The Land of Painted Caves confirmed it would be the final book in the series and there have been no mentions of a sequel thus far. Then again, considering Auel's track record when it comes to sequels, who knows?
  • There was an attempt to develop a TV series based on the first book by Fox 21 TV Studios and Lifetime, with a pilot being ordered and filmed in 2014 for a 2015 airdate. It would've starred Millie Brady as Ayla, Charlene McKenna as Iza, Hal Ozsan as Brun, Johnny Ward as Broud and Aidan McArdle as Creb, with Ron Howard as one of the executive producers. However, the pilot ultimately wasn't picked up by Lifetime and attempts by Fox 21 to shop it to other networks was unsuccessful. Reportedly, there were disputes between Fox 21 and Lifetime that led to the latter passing on the show over the number and length of episodes; Lifetime apparently wanted a miniseries with four feature-length episodes, but for economic reasons Fox 21 wanted it to be a regular cable series in terms of episode count and runtime.
• Gone with the Wind: Margaret Mitchell originally planned on calling her heroine "Pansy O'Hara", and Tara was "Fontenoy Hall". Other names she had considered for the novel itself were Tote the Weary Load and Tomorrow Is Another Day.
• Go to Sleep (A Jeff the Killer Rewrite): A different ending idea had Jeff running into Slender Man after he kills his family, but the idea was discarded for being too "proxy-esque".
• Kill Bill: A hybrid novelization and screenplay, called a "cinematic novel" by Tarantino, who described it as "not a novelization. It functions as a script, and it functions as a novel, but it’s not a script and it’s not a novelization". It was cancelled in 2003, and Hyperion Books released a normal screenplay instead.
• Murder for the Modern Girl: In earlier drafts of the novel, there was a female character who made snide remarks at Ruby Newhouse. Kendall Kulper scrapped her as she didn't want a female character to belittle another woman, preferring to show women supporting and empowering each other.
• Stephen King: There are several King works that have gone unfinished, including a long-shelved fictionalization of the Patty Hearst case called The House On Value Street.
  • Under the Dome began as an unfinished script entitled The Cannibals, which was apparently much gorier and far less subtle with its social commentary. Also, there were no aliens.
  • The Stand wasn't King's first attempt at a post-apocalyptic novel. In 1963, he wrote a 50,000 word manuscript called The Aftermath which described life after a nuclear armageddon in the far-flung year of...1967.
  • Sword In The Darkness, which was written in 1970, is another work King deems unpublishable, but for a different reason: a major plot point is a black activist character inciting a race riot after speaking at a public high school. Ouch.
  • Likewise, while King doesn't generally write ahead, some of his works have gone through different plans in the writing process. Per "Shine of the Times" (an interview originally published in a 1979 issue of the science fiction and fantasy magazine Shayol, and reprinted in Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King), the first draft of The Shining had Jack "beat his wife to death with the mallet", but King felt "It was really just terrible and I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave it that way." In the same interview, King notes that "The original plan was for them all to die up there and for Danny to become the controlling force of the hotel after he died. And the psychic force of the hotel would go up exponentially." This was changed because, as King says, "If it had still felt good to me when I got to the end of the book I would have done it that way. But I got connected to the kid."
• In Remnants, Tate was supposed to be a lesbian. This was part of the explanation for her drive to protect Tamara from the Baby. This wasn't something that the author decided not to go with. Scholastic wouldn't let her do it. This went over with the fandom about as well as you might think.
  • Amelia's name was originally "Honey"; Amazon.com's summary for Survival still uses that name, and Scholastic did in the past, as well.
• Gormenghast was meant to be seven or so books, but the author died. See the article for details.
• David Weber's Honor Harrington was originally going to be time-skipped several decades, following the death of its namesake character. Her children would have continued the action. His Eric Flint collaboration Crown of Slaves nixed this original plan; its espionage plot ended up fast-forwarding the conflict by putting pressure on the Mesans (spoiler probably unnecessary) to enact their plan early. As a happy side effect, Honor was spared, cutting off what would probably have been the greatest fan rebellion in modern sci-fi literature.^note As Weber himself has said half-jokingly, "I would have had to move to Montana and raise rabbits under an assumed name."
• Similarly Lois McMaster Bujold said in an early interview that the novels that would eventually form the Vorkosigan Saga were going to timeskip decades and centuries, revisiting Barrayar, but not necessarily focusing on it. At least she kept the promise of Absent Aliens and genetically-engineered Human Subspecies, though there wasn't enough time for Transhuman Aliens to appear.
• Larry Niven was planning to write a book for the Known Space verse that would have given a definitive end for that universe taking the whole thing "down in flames". Before he'd gotten past a rough outline he came up with the idea for Ringworld and decided to do that instead. Ringworld and the books that followed have invalidated much of the original plans Niven had for the down in flames storyline but he did take some of the ideas and worked them into the second half of Protector. The outline and Niven's comments about how it ended up getting discarded can be read here.
• At the very beginning of his career, Sherlock Holmes was called Sherringford Hope, and Dr. Watson was Ormond Sacker.
• Stella Gibbons was going to call her parody of rural novels Curse God Farm until a friend suggested Cold Comfort Farm instead. When Gibbons demanded to know where she got such a marvelous name from, she confessed it was the name of a real farm in the Midlands.
• Star Trek books including The Unseen Frontier: Declassified Images from the History of the Federation, the e-book Shards and Shadows, the short story Now You See Her..., the Star Trek: The Original Series novel The God Thing and The Millennium Bloom, Star Trek (2009) novels Refugees, Seek a Newer World, More Beautiful Than Death, and The Hazards of Concealing, a planned omnibus of the Crucible trilogy including nine additional stories, the Harm's Way trilogy, Academy: Collision Course sequel Academy: Trial Run, and the post-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel Walking Wounded were unpublished. Yesterday's Son and Time for Yesterday were to be followed up with Return to Yesterday, Yesterday's Vulcan and Yesterday's Destiny. The A Time to... miniseries was planned to be twelve books instead of nine, including A Time to Create and A Time to Destroy.
• The programme for the 2006 Discworld Convention reveals the synopsis of a completely different The Science of Discworld III, in which the wizards visit assorted alternative Marses, culminating in the Discworld-universe's own version of Barsoom: a flat square planet, on the back of four thoats on the back of a giant zitidar, while Ankh-Morpork was invaded by the Martian tripods. This was abandoned for two reasons: firstly, an alien invasion of the Disc is the sort of thing it's very hard to Snap Back from in time for the next book. Secondly, Barsoom's flavour of Planetary Romance is close enough to Sword And Sorcery that they couldn't figure out how to make a Discly version different.
  • Apparently Terry Pratchett always deletes his early drafts so literary researchers will have to get real jobs. He did mention in The Art of the Discworld that Vimes as the viewpoint character was a late addition to the Watch books, which were intended to revolve around Carrot. There was also almost a scene in The Fifth Elephant in which Sybil and Vimes cross paths with Verence and Magrat.
  • He's also mentioned that an early version of The Truth had the disused well the dwarfs used to mix the ink be the Well of Truth, with interesting results. He eventually decided it was better if the truthfulness of the Times was based on William's beliefs, rather than mystic influences at the printing stage.
  • As of 12 March 2015 due to a severe case of no longer being alive Sir Terrence Prachett will be unable to complete the oft mentioned Scouting for Trolls or Raising Taxes.
  • According to Neil Gaiman, Sir Terry wanted to add an extra twist to the ending of The Shepherd's Crown, but didn't live long enough to.
  • The note by Terry's assistant at the end of The Shepherd's Crown reveals other works in a larval stage included Maurice becoming a ship's cat; a sequel to Snuff with Chief Constable Feeney as the main character; a book about the elderly dwarfs and trolls of the Twilight Canyons Retirement Home defeating a Dark Lord; and a book, probably set in Howondaland, called The Dark Incontinent.
  • One interview by Pratchett reveals a potential plot after Feet of Clay:
  "While I wasn't planning to feature this in another book, I suspect the sequence of events, given Dorfl's character, would run like this:
  1 Dorfl saves up to buy the next golem
  2 Golems suddenly become very pricey
  3 Dorfl does extra shifts and go on saving
  4 Price of golems goes up
  5 Several merchants recieved a friendly visit from the Commander of the Watch to discuss matters of common interest
  6 Golems available to Dorfl at very reasonable prices.
  I want more golems on the city payroll. How else can they resurrect the fire service?"
• Roald Dahl made a few (or more) changes to certain works:
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: One early version of the story was Charlie's Chocolate Boy, which depicted Charlie as black. He became coated in chocolate and was taken back to Mr. Wonka's house as a present for his son, but ended up as witness to a burglary, and was rewarded with the the world's largest chocolate shop, selling all manner of things from an egg containing a little sugary bird to a giant chocolate elephant with a chocolate rider. (That became the ending to The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me, which is set in the same universe, while the sugar bird candy is mentioned in one of Grandpa Joe's remembrances at the start of Charlie.) In later drafts, the number of naughty children and their respective fates varied wildly. One version had about thirty children, but Dahl's nephew described it as the most boring thing he'd ever read. Rejected subplots that made it to the rough draft stage and been published in retrospectives include Miranda Mary Piker, a school-obsessed snob; the chapter in which she was dispatched with featured Mr. Wonka making a powder that allowed children to play sick, botching a job with her father to sabotage the machine that made it. Then there's Timmy Troutbeck and Wilbur Rice, who rode off atop the carts hauling fudge away from Vanilla Fudge Mountain to The Pounding and Cutting Room... (See more what-could-have-beens here.)
  • In an early draft of Matilda, the title character was going to die while trying to use her telekinesis to lift a truck in a car crash. Roald Dahl did keep it that way for a while, until he got the idea of Magnus's story.
    • Matilda was also originally conceived as more of a Jerkass who deliberately irritates people and plays practical jokes. Some of her pranks were kept in but she became an overall nicer person for the final version.
    • When the book was still in the works, the protagonist was intended to be male, continuing the trend of little-boy protagonists in other Roald Dahl books.
  • James and the Giant Peach was to have featured a giant cherry pushed by waterboatmen, instead of the peach.
  • The child in The BFG was originally going to be a young boy called Jodie, until Dahl changed the character to a girl and named her after his granddaughter Sophie (who later became famous as a supermodel.)
• Octavia Butler's Earthseed series was supposed to be a trilogy, but the author passed away before she got to write the third book, which would have continued after the characters leave earth to explore other worlds. One can't help but wonder if they would have encountered the aliens in Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy.
• War and Peace was originally going to be about the 1825 Decembrist revolution against Czar Nicolas I, and not the Napoleonic Wars. Ironically, the book ends right as the revolution is about to begin.
• Philip K. Dick once proposed to collaborate on a novel... with James Tiptree, Jr. Tiptree, being incredibly secretive, declined, and the eventual product (made with Roger Zelazny) was Deus Irae. Still, it's tempting to wonder what a collaboration between two of the strangest minds ever to grace Speculative Fiction would have turned out to be.
  • Dick also contemplated writing a sequel to his influential Alternate History novel The Man in the High Castle. Problem was, it required doing more research on Nazi Germany, which Dick found profoundly soul-destroying for perhaps obvious reasons, so he eventually shelved it. At least one version of this eventually ended up as Radio Free Albemuth.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  • Douglas Adams's original outline follows Arthur (originally named Aleric) and Ford up until they stow away on the Vogon ship in much the same manner as the finished product, but the suggested continuations, aside from one about Sapient Cetaceans, in no way resembled what we eventually got. There is no Zaphod, Trillian, or Marvin; instead, Arthur and Ford wander around the Galaxy unaccompanied, trying to survive by taking on a number of odd jobs for a series of eccentric Galactic residents. Most notably, one of their gigs would have involved shrinking down to microscopic size and protecting an alien's bloodstream from attacking parasitic bacteria.
  • The original radio series was conceived as "The Ends of the Earth", which would have featured Earth being destroyed in different ways at the end of each episode. While developing the first episode Adams decided to focus on the characters he had created and the concept of the Guide.
  • So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish originally featured Arthur trying to remember where God's Last Message is by jumping off a cliff so his life would flash before his eyes, thereby realising how all the events of the previous books fitted together, and deliberately heading back to Earth. New characters would include a man with a skill at opening oysters and "a Brockian Ultra-Walrus with an embarrassing past". The walrus was largely there simply because there was one on the cover (don't blame the publisher for the cover being done before the book was written, by the way, blame Adams's attitude to deadlines).
  • According to Neil Gaiman's biography of Adams/chronology of the Guide, Don't Panic, he would occasionally moot rewriting all the novels to make them more consistent with each other. It's not clear if he ever made a serious attempt to do so.
• One classic example is the infamous Man from Porlock incident. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote his famous poem Kubla Khan one morning, having taken a large dose of opium the night before to help himself sleep, then dipping into a text on Kublai Khan and his legendary pleasure dome just before nodding off, and then spending the night in vivid dreams of the Khan and his dome. He awoke with the entire poem outlined in his head, and set to work to write it down. Unfortunately, he didn't complete it - the poem stops at the point where Coleridge was interrupted by an unsolicited caller from the town of Porlock, who was trying to sell him insurance. By the time Coleridge managed to get rid of the man, some time later, the dream, and his inspiration, had gone.
• Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio was originally published in serialised form and ended at Chapter 15 with the protagonist's death, hanged by the Cat and the Fox. The author was persuaded to continue the story and made Pinocchio survive, changing completely the story's tone. The completed book ended up 36 chapters long.
• In the rough draft of Alice in Wonderland (called Alice's Adventures Underground) there was no "Caucus Race", "Pig and Pepper", "Mad Tea Party" or Cheshire Cat. Titles considered were "Alice Among The Elves", "Alice's Golden Hour", and "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" which became the final title.
  • Through The Looking Glass had a chapter called "The Wasp In The Wig" shelved because illustrator John Tenniel claimed it was impossible to draw. A draft of this chapter recently resurfaced and has been published in Martin Gardner's annotated edition.
    • On the gripping hand, when illustrator Alan Aldridge read about this (in an article in a newspaper that had been used to wrap his fish and chips!), he decided to give the lie to Tenniel's claim. The ultimate result was The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast.
  • Instead of the Caucus Race being used to dry off Alice and the animals, the Dodo would have led them all to a nearby cottage he knew of, where they could dry off. As they walked, the Dodo, the Eaglet, the Lory, and Alice all outwalked the others, so they went ahead while leaving the duck to lead the rest. This was based off of a real event that happened on the outing when Carroll first told Alice the story. As they were finishing their boating, it burst out raining and Carroll led them to a cottage he knew was nearby, where they could dry off. He and the Liddell sisters (Alice, Edith, and L.C.) walked faster than the rest, so they left Canon Duckworth, a member of the group, to lead everyone else there. Carroll eventually used the Caucus Race instead, because he felt that the event he was basing the cottage story off of was too obscure and would only be funny to the circle of people who had been involved.
• Twilight was originally only going to have one sequel called Forever Dawn. The basic storyline is the same as what would become the fourth book, Breaking Dawn. Edward and Bella get married, she gets pregnant on the honeymoon, and Bella has to be turned into a vampire to survive the birth of their daughter Renesmee. Jacob isn't present at the birth, but he imprints on Renesmee a few weeks later. The biggest change is that the love triangle of Bella, Edward, and Jacob never develops because the events of New Moon and Eclipse never happen. In short, Edward never leaves and Bella and Jacob don't become close. The lack of the two middle books also leaves Victoria and Laurent alive. Laurent does a Heel–Face Turn and Victoria gets one of her minions to tell the Volturi about Renesmee. Victoria is later the only one killed at the final standoff, courtesy of the mostly-unnamed werewolves. The ending is still pretty much the same Happily Ever After as it is in the final version.
  • Originally, the book was going to be called Forks until Meyer's agent told her to come up with something more atmospheric.
  • Meyer released some scenes/chapters that had been cut from the first book. One involves Bella being uncoordinated herself in Gym (which was rewritten from Edward's POV in Midnight Sun). Another had them stop to go shopping during the flight from James (apparently cut for slowing down the pacing), while a third had them gamble in Vegas during the Boring Return Journey.
  • The P.O.V. Sequel Midnight Sun, which tells the first book's story from Edward's viewpoint, was supposed to come out shortly after Breaking Dawn. After the first twelve chapters of the manuscript were leaked on the internet, Stephenie Meyer quit writing the book and would not pick it up again for a decade. The book was finally published in 2020.
• The Ultima novels Ultima Saga: The Forge of Virtue and Ultima Saga: The Temper of Wisdom were going to be followed by a third book.
• The enormously popular "Millennium Trilogy" of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest were written by Swedish journalist/activist Stieg Larsson in his off-hours as a way to relax. He only decided to try and get them published after finishing the final draft of Hornet's Nest, then promptly dropped dead of a heart attack. His girlfriend Eva Gabrielsson is in possession of Larsson's computer, which has at least three-fourths of a fourth novel and is rumored to have detailed synopses on the fifth and sixth books as well, though what may come of this is anyone's guess.
  • Reportedly, Larsson envisioned up to ten books for the Millennium series.
• The Princess Bride epilogue mentions a sequel called Buttercup's Baby that was having trouble getting published due to "legal issues with S. Morgenstern's (an alias of the real author William Goldman) estate." It was meant to be fake, but a sample chapter does exist which readers could get if they wrote in to the address enclosed in the book. Later editions simply published the sample chapter, and people began clamoring for the full sequel. Goldman never expected The Princess Bride to be so popular, so he hadn't written anything beyond the sample. He has stated that he wants to write the full book, but he's having trouble coming up with ideas for it. Goldman sadly passed away in November 2018, so it's doubtful the sequel will ever be completed.
• Brandon Sanderson and The Cosmere, the greater universe most of his works are set in, has gone through a number of modifications, iterations and changes. Some early versions which were changed or adapted are out in the world, while other pieces of information are simply Word of God:
  • Mistborn:
    • The trilogy was originally two unrelated works- one called "Mistborn Prime", which introduced the titular magic-using assassins, and "Final Empire Prime", which introduced the After the End setting ruled by a Physical God Evil Overlord. Not really liking either one, he took what he liked from both and made something new. Also, the trilogy's protagonist was originally supposed to be a guy, but Sanderson had a hard time getting a grip on the character- until he turned "him" into a girl, and suddenly Vin really gelled for the first time.
  • The Alloy of Law was originally conceived as a standalone spinoff novel set between the Original Trilogy and the upcoming "Era 2" trilogy, but, when it was very well received, Brandon Sanderson expanded the story into the Wax and Wayne tetralogy.
  • The Stormlight Archive was originally supposed to be composed only of the ten Door Stopper installments. After a while, Sanderson realized that two characters from book two - Lift and Nale - would be returning in later novels as changed people, having undergone off-screen Character Development, so to avoid claims of Ass Pull, he wrote the Edgedancer novella to showcase some of the changes as they happen.
    • A number of elements and characters like the plateu runs, Bridge Four and Dalinar ended up in Stormlight but were originally in another series called Dragonsteel.
  • The Cosmere, as a whole originally had, among others, nine Mistborn novels (a "trilogy of trilogies") and seven Dragonsteel books. Then, the one-shot Mistborn idea that eventually became The Alloy of Law grew into a tetralogy, bringing the number of Mistborn books up to thirteen, while Dragonsteel was cut down to five, then three books.
• Bram Stoker's notes for Dracula show that Dracula's castle originally became a Collapsing Lair when the Count was killed. The idea has since been implemented in the Castlevania series.
• Dan Abnett has revealed that he lost the text of one of the Gaunt's Ghosts books and had to rewrite it at short notice...and in the process invented the character of Lijah Cuu on the spur of the moment.
  • There's an in-universe example in Blood Pact, where Tona tells Gaunt that Slaydo's choice between Macaroth and him as succeeding Warmaster was essentially a toss-up and he could have been the new Warmaster. Gaunt tells her to perish the thought.
    • This line of thought snaps back into focus in The Warmaster. After a Warp translation mishap throws Gaunt and the Ghosts ten years into the future, they discover themselves presumed dead and hailed as heroes, with enormous posthumous honors-that are bestowed and confirmed upon their return. Gaunt finds himself promoted to Lord Militant Commander, the highest permanent field rank in the Astra Militarum, and placed on the top rung of the Crusade's general staff. Macaroth himself confirms that the odds of Gaunt being named Warmaster in place of Macaroth after Balhaut might have approached even odds, and that Macaroth holds Gaunt in the same regard as Slaydo did. Then he discovers that growing discontent in the general staff has left them on the cusp of removing Macaroth, and searching for a replacement-Gaunt himself. Refusing the job, Gaunt manages to reach the Warmaster and apprise him of the seriousness of the situation. Helping to resolve it peacefully and restoring Macaroth's authority while beginning to remedy old wounds. For which Macaroth agrees with his generals' assessment, and promotes Gaunt to be his second, and first among commanders-naming Gaunt First Lord Executor, heir to the Warmaster and second in overall command of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky:
  • His masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov was intended to be only the first arc of a much larger story, but unfortunately Dostoevsky died before he could complete any more of it.
  • The Idiot: Dostoevsky initially conceived Prince Myshkin as a proud Villain Protagonist who would have found redemption by the novel's end. Even after deciding to make Myskin the figure of Incorruptible Pure Pureness of the final draft, Dostoevsky's plan for the novel's end continued to fluctuate. The initial plan was for Myskhin to redeem both Nastasya and Rogozhin.
  • There exist several drafts of Crime and Punishment told from different points of view, for example Raskolnikov's confession to a priest.
• Gail Carson Levine of Ella Enchanted fame gave her novel Ever a Bittersweet Ending, but its original ending was even more so:
  In an earlier version, I imagined something called lij time, which moves much faster or much slower than ordinary time. I had Olus become a lijok, a god who can control lij time. He puts himself and Kezi into fast lij time so that they can be together for many years before her sacrifice.
• The last few pages of The Pale King are a quick rundown of ideas that David Foster Wallace was musing over:
  • More Character Development, with a huge focus on Leonard Stecyk.
  • Claude and Reynolds are based on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and were apparently planned to be roommates or even lovers.
  • Chris Fogle apparently knows a sequence of numbers that grant him the power of total concentration when uttered.
  • The themes of humanity versus technology/tradition versus efficiency/civil service versus corporate profit would be much more fleshed-out, including a contest between Shane Drinion and the latest scanning machine.
  • A deeper exploration of Meredith's marriage and Blumquist's past.
  • A massive plan , courtesy of Dr. Lehrl.
• Animorphs: Originally, K. A. Applegate planned to write a Taxxon Chronicles book, but it never happened. The plot, though, was recycled into the book The Answer.
  • Similarly, Visser was originally going to cover the careers of both Visser One and Visser Three, which is why the latter appears on the cover.
  • The series was originally conceived as a three or four book series called 'The Changelings' and it was then extended to the 54 books we got. Jake had a sister who was on the team, but KA went with the Tom concept instead and made Rachel instead of the sister.
  • The Andalites were created as standard Grays, so that they might be easier to adapt in a low-budget TV show, but her publisher thought they were too boring and cliche, and wanted them to be more interesting, also in the hopes of a TV show. She did the four-eyed, six-fingered, scorpion-tailed, mouth-less centaur design as a Take That!, and the publisher actually liked it. But lo and behold, when the hoped-for low-budget television show materialized, the Andalites (and other various aliens) proved to be impossible to show with any kind of seriousness.
• In its earliest stages, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer had nothing at all to do with 9/11. According to the author, however, when his brother read a draft of it and found that the protagonist was afraid of planes and skyscrapers, he asked if it was supposed to be about 9/11.
• Bob Shaw died before writing a fourth book in his Wooden Spaceships series. He left the people of Overland in a cliffhanger, in a universe, presumably ours, where pi is no longer equal to exactly three.
• Discussed Trope in The Great Divorce: The Apostate Bishop is working on a paper where he speculates on what Christianity would have been like if Jesus hadn't died on the Cross and lived out his life to a ripe old age.
• In the Uglies companion book Bogus to Bubbly, Scott Westerfeld reveals that Extras was originally going to be from the point of view of Aya's brother Hiro, however, he felt that the interesting stuff kept happening to Aya. He includes a draft of the first chapter from Hiro's point of view.
• Alternate character names used in early drafts of Les Misérables were Jean Trejean (who became Valjean), Marguerite Louet (Fantine), Anna Louet (Cosette; alouette means lark, as Cosette is referred to), Thomas Telbon (Marius Pontmercy), Chavaroche or Grimebodin (Gavroche), Grangé (Grantaire), Palmyre (Eponine) and Malvina (Azelma.)
  • Cosette's father was originally to be called Gustave Lebotelier (later renamed to Tholomyès) and to have been made aware of his daughter's identity and marriage to Telbon (Marius.)
• Charles Stross has listed some Books I Will Not Write on his blog:
  • An alternate 1950s which would have been early Dieselpunk, just a year after Pollak and Ross coined the word.
  • The first version of Iron Sunrise contained only 30% of the published book. The other 70% included Ancient Artifacts left by the Singluarity and an Uplifted Animal, a cat who befriended Wednesday. Unfortunately, Stross was already writing Accelerando, in which The Chessmaster AI has a robo-cat body, and had no wish to be pigeonholed as the guy who wrote SF about talking cats.
  • The original pitch for The Merchant Princes Series got derailed somewhat when the first book was chopped in half.
  • There was going to be a third book in The Eschaton Series involving Space Pirates who operated by manipulating the stock market based on your cargo rather than actually stealing it, but then Stross realized he'd implicitly broken his own time travel rules in Iron Sunrise, and decided this universe was now fundamentally broken.
  • Following the revelation that the NSA had planted spies in World of Warcraft, Stross announced that the third novel in the Halting State/Rule 34 series was going to be abandoned, because his crazy SF ideas were actually happening.
• Barry Hughart allowed the original draft of his Bridge of Birds to be released on a fan website. It turns out that he had originally intended for Li Kao, not Number Ten Ox, to be the book's narrator and sole protagonist as a callow 19-year-old youth instead of the ancient and experienced sage he becomes in later drafts. Additionally, while the "bridge of birds" plot remained largely the same (except for the rather intriguing reveal that Li Kao is the reincarnation of the Princess of Birds's dog), the ginseng root plot was completely absent and Chang Heng played a much greater role in the story than he does in the final version (where he's only mentioned in passing by Li once).
• A number of things in Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe:
  • Song of the Lioness was originally conceived as a single book for adult audiences. After some years of not being able to sell it and telling Alanna's story to the teens she worked with, Pierce followed a friend's suggestion to chop it up and sell it as a YA book. This also required her to nix an explicitly homosexual relationship between Thom and Duke Roger due to the Moral Guardians of the 80s.
  • Song of The Lioness also originally ended with Alanna marrying Jonathan and becoming queen. But during the revision process, Alanna made it clear to Pierce that she didn't want to be queen, so Pierce paired her off with George in the end instead and introduced Thayet for Jonathan.
  • Aly was originally going to be thirteen at the start of her book, which would have begun during the Grand Progress of Protector of the Small.
  • An early draft of Bloodhound had Beka offending the Queenscove family, which would be part of the reason for her getting sent on the Port Caynn investigation.
• Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers was originally considered Part 2 of Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People. Part 1 would be called "The Clash of the Colossal Kung-Fu Monkeys from Beyond Infinity".
• In Super Diaper Baby 2: The Invasion of the Potty Snatchers, the villain, Rip Van Tinkle, was originally named Prime Minister Pee-Pee, which was later changed to Pee-Pee Longstockings, before finally settling on his current name.
• Dav Pilkey (author of the Captain Underpants books) was going to make an anthology book that parodied various children's books. He made a outline of a Curious George parody called "Furious George", before he cancelled the project due to the harsh subject matter.
• John Green:
  • The Fault in Our Stars: The original ending had Hazel and Van Houten try to find a way to honor Gus's death by dying themselves in a way that would accomplish something and was meaningful to his life. They plan to go out and kill a drug lord and die at the hands of his bodyguards, but apparently decide against the idea before the story's conclusion. One editor, upon reading this ending, remarked, "I can't tell if the last 40 pages are a joke." The again, neither can John Green himself.
    • Originally, the story was going to be from Isaac's point of view.^note So to speak.
  • In the first draft of Paper Towns, Q and the crew finally catch up to Margo in Kashmir (yes, that war-torn region in Asia), whereupon Margo is involved a freak earthquake. The end of the book features Q searching for her in the rubble.
• The first installment of The Railway Series "The Three Railway Engines" was intended to have only three stories. Henry's railway would have been disconnected from Edward and Gordon's and he would have supposedly have been left stuck in the tunnel permanently. Publishers agreed to releasing the book, on the condition Rev. W. Awdry made a fourth story in which the three engines met (thus establishing the Sodor North Railway) and Henry was released and got a happy ending. Had this stipulation not gone through, who knows what changes this would have made on the novels' continuity or the television series that stemmed from it.
  • Henry proved lucky once again. His decreasing health in later stories was allegedly due to Awdry growing tired of artist inaccuracies with his build (which was strikingly similar to Gordon) and intending to silently have him killed off. When this idea was naturally considered too dark, Awdry settled for writing Henry to be rebuilt into a Class 5MT, making it easier to draw him distinctively.
• Lin Carter would have reprinted more Clark Ashton Smith collections (scroll down to Jimrockhill 2001's post) and an additional twenty-three titles in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series had resources permitted.
• In Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys Land, apart from the handful of books that were in the outline or manuscript stages whenever a series was cancelled, there were multiple names the characters could have went by. Nancy was pitched as the "Stella Strong Stories", and almost had her name changed to Diana Drew, Diana Dare, Nan Nelson, or Helen Hale, and the Hardys were almost named Keene, Scott, Hart, and/or Bixby. Furthermore, in the mid-60s, Hardy chum Chet Morton had become so popular there were plans to give him his own spin-off series that never materialized.
• The working title of Please Don't Tell My Parents I Blew Up the Moon was "At Least I Didn't Blow Up OUR Moon" until it was changed for the purpose of series recognition. The author has said that he still thinks of that as the real title.
• Vampire Academy:
  • According to Richelle Mead's blog, the opening novel was going to be named Kissed by Shadows.
  • According to another blog post, Richelle's original story ideas were quite different. "I knew for sure that I didn't want the main character to be a vampire—I wanted a human who interacted with vampires." The story "was actually about a teenage boy and girl. Through an ancient family tradition, they had been arranged to be married and met each other for the first time at the start of the book. One of them was in danger, so the other took on a bodyguard role. I can't remember who was protecting whom—or which one was the vampire."
  • The story then shifted into a different direction. Richelle: "However, I originally set out to write it in third-person POV, with a wider cast of characters having bigger roles. In fact, side character Camille Conta once played a much more significant role and had her own subplot." Chapter 2 included Camille's perspective on the return of Rose and Lissa to the Academy.
  • Rose started life as a human character. During the rewrite of the novel, Rose was changed into a dhampir.
• V. C. Andrews has plenty of "whats that could have been". For instance:
  • The first draft of what would become Petals on the Wind (Titled Where the Greener Grass Grows) actually dropped the infamous Brother–Sister Incest between Cathy and Chris, with Cathy marrying Dr. Paul and Chris marrying a nurse. Cathy's children don't exist, and in fact Carrie ends up with a daughter that she names Catherine Leigh. It, along with several other unknown works of Andrew's, was found by a fan in the private archives of Boston University (How they ended up there is unknown).
  • Also found at Boston University was a mostly empty notebook of Andrew's titled Rosenthalia, or Rosenthaila. The original report only noted that there was a list of French sounding names, but apparently there were also notes on the French Revolution, sparking speculation that Andrews had planned at one point to write a book set in that time period.
  • Heaven was originally an autobiography by an unknown woman. It was rejected since it was deemed she couldn't write well enough, but Andrews' editor found out about it, and the story was bought for Andrews to write a book about it (the woman also did notes with Andrews). It should be noted that Heaven is the only book in the Casteel Series to be based on the woman's story.
  • In an interview for the 1985 book Faces of Fear, Andrews mentioned plans to publish her earlier novels, a medieval novel and a fantasy (The former presumably Castles of the Damned, the latter Gods of Green Mountain), as well as plans for a book about ESP possibly inspired by her own experiences.
• The Doctor Who New Series Adventures novel Big Bang Generation (2015) ends with author's notes that reveal it was originally going to team the Twelfth Doctor with River Song, but that idea received an Executive Veto. While the reason isn't stated, it became obvious enough by the time the book hit shelves — the 2015 Christmas Special already had dibs on that premise. Author Gary Russell brought in popular Expanded Universe companion Bernice Summerfield to serve as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for River instead (as it happens, both are archaeologists!).
• Confessions of Georgia Nicolson: A new series about Georgia, introducing her as a young adult after her happy ending with Dave "The Laugh" at the end of the books, was due to have begun in 2017 and the first book was advertised for pre-order on several websites. It was then withdrawn from sale, and due to the author's death, it's now unknown whether the book will be published (and either way, there won't be a series.).
  • About halfway through the publication of the Georgia series, another new book by the author Louise Rennison was advertised for pre-order online: a stand-alone novel about a boy who writes down his life story during an English exam. This was also withdrawn from sale and ultimately never published.
• Divergent was originally going to be written from Four's perspective. In a prequel novel following his transfer to Dauntless, a handful of the original scenes from his POV were included.
• The Chronicles of Narnia had an eighth book planned (Or perhaps, a spin-off) that would have focused on Susan after the events of 1949 (The Last Battle). Allegedly, this would have focused on her coming to terms with the loss of her family, eventually joining the others in Aslan's country, and at one point meeting Lewis himself and telling him, which would have explained just how the books came to be.
• Nina Tanleven: Coville has mentioned a planned project that has yet to come to fruition, "The Ghost Saw Red", with the ghost’s backstory set during the McCarthy era.
• Woodwalkers: According to the website of Katja Brandis, it was planned that the series should've only been three books long, but after the first books sold surprisingly well, the German publisher allowed her to end the series only after the sixth book.
• Franny K. Stein:
  • Jim Benton originally drew Franny K. Stein with long hair, but changed it to pigtails when he realized that a girl mad scientist wearing her hair down wouldn't have been practical while working in the laboratory.
  • The title character was originally going to be named Angeline Frankenstein. She was instead named Franny K. Stein because Jim Benton liked that name better.
• Redwall: It's likely that a 23rd book was in the works at the time of Brian Jacques's death: there had been a contest to create a character to appear in the books. The winning character was Reisa Kartwell, a haremaid cartographer from Salamandastron. The winner was sent an illustration of the character. As this character did not appear in The Rogue Crew (the only book to come out after the contest), it's assumed that this character was meant to be in the next book after that.
• The Paper Bag Princess:
  • Princess Elizabeth was originally going to retaliate to Prince Ronald criticizing her appearance by punching him, but this had to be changed to Elizabeth merely telling Ronald off out of concerns that the scene was too violent.
  • The ending illustration was originally going to symbolize Elizabeth's freedom by having her chuck away her paper bag and walk into the sunset naked. The final version instead shows Elizabeth prancing into the sunset while still wearing her paper bag.
• Animal Inn: Advertisements in earlier books referred to book 12 as Operation Horse as opposed to its final title of Gift Horse.
• Bruce Coville's Book of...: The introduction for Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters II said that after completing the second full cycle of books in the series, he might do a thirteenth book to wrap things up. No further mention was ever made, and the thirteenth book never materialized.
• Dragonlance: The New Adventures: There were originally intended to be ten Dragon Codices, one for each color of dragon. However, the final 3 (Blue, White, and Copper) were never published due to the economic recession in 2008. Rebecca Shelley, one of the authors writing the codices under the House Pseudonym R.D. Henham, eventually reused the basic plots in her own Dragonheart novels.
• Under Suspicion (Series): The first book, I've Got You Under My Skin, was originally conceived as a standalone novel, but due to its plot revolving around a TV show investigating cold cases, Mary Higgins Clark's publisher suggested she turn it into a full-blown series with Laurie and her team investigating a different case in every book. Higgins Clark was interested in the idea, though due to her age (she was already 86 years old when she wrote I've Got You Under My Skin) and her commitment to writing other standalone books (she aimed for one a year), she decided to get another author to help write Under Suspicion, that author being Alafair Burke.
• Goblins in the Castle: Goblins On the Prowl was originally set to have much more pronounced references to The Dragonslayers. As Coville wrote on his guestbook, in the first draft, "Bwoonhiwda was accompanied by Queen Wilhelmina's daughter, who was named Pink. But the editor felt that the book was overpopulated and someone had to go. Alas, it was Pink who got the ax."
• The first book from Papelucho written by the Chilean novelist Marcela Paz was about a child whose parents decided to divorce and told how an 8-year-old boy dealt with such a distressing situation. However, although the book was finished, it was never published, since the divorce It was a very controversial topic in Chilean society at that time (1945)

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