The Beginnings of Draft Four of The Secret Portal

Origins of TSP: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/origins-of-the-secret-portal

Draft One of TSP: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/draft-one-of-the-secret-portal

Draft Two Book One: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/draft-two-book-one-of-the-secret-portal

Draft Two Book Two: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/draft-two-book-two-of-the-secret-portal

Draft Two Book Three: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/draft-two-book-three-of-the-secret-portal

Draft Two Book Four: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/draft-two-book-four-of-the-secret-portal

Draft Three: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/draft-three-of-the-secret-portal

When I was in eighth grade, I was on a writing frenzy. I was getting so many ideas for new stories, so of course I started writing them down. I even started writing the first few chapters of them, although I was quick to hit writer's block on all of them, as I didn't really have a plan. I'm ashamed to admit that the story I easily made the most progress on this year was Warriors Cats fanfiction. I may post about that on a later date.

The point is, by the end of the year, I soon hit a block on every single story I had. But on May 8, 2017, I was staring at my Google Drive, waiting for inspiration to strike. Then, suddenly, it did, and I opened another Google doc and titled it The Secret Portal.

I decided this time to start out with a prologue, but I stared at the curser blinking for several minutes before I put a placeholder first line. I somehow didn't change this cringe-worthy opening for three years, but for the most part, the prologue remains largely unchanged. I just added a few details and spiced it up to make it better with higher stakes.

I decided just to call the other side of the portal... "The Other Side" in "Sector 9." which it remained for a very long time, but I will get to that. I also added a few more layers to how the portal worked, and I hope it makes sense as it is. I also decided to begin world building, and came up with the term Alii to describe the people with powers on the Other Side. I explained that the people without powers were "creatively" called Inutilia, and that after a few decades of fighting for equality, an extremist group popped up and began taking over the governments of the Other Side. I will get back to this at a later date, but I also don't want to spoil my own book before it's published.

I reinvented a lot of names. At the time, The Secret Portal had a lot of names that started with A, but I decided to rectify that. Alexia now almost exclusively went by Lexi, because I discovered I really liked that in the previous draft. I had a character in what soon became School of the Legends called Aurora at the time, so I decided to change Aurora Hathaway to Ashley Hathaway (ironically, the other Aurora's name has also changed). I decided to experiment with calling Ashley "Ash," and discovered that I liked it so much, so decided to refer to her almost exclusively as that.

As I had a lot of planning done in Draft Two and Three that never met the light of day, there were two side characters I decided to include this time: Lara Daron and Andy Armstrong. However, I didn't like their names, so decided to change them to Noelle Bishop and Gwen Amante respectively.

I FINALLY decided to scrap that stupid metal detector this Draft, but still figured I needed a way to find the portal easily, so I invented a brand new character, Rose Hernandez, who had the power to sense other dimensions.

I still kept the outline I'd planned in Draft Three: Lexi and Ash do one thing under Lexi's narration, while the rest get kidnapped under Maddie's. However, I did make a few key changes. The first thing that happened was I realized just being in the two sisters' perspectives was limiting, as I wanted to do something with every character separately, so I began experimenting with everyone else. I soon decided to make each narrator have a different font assigned to them to make it easier to distinguish who was speaking, both for myself and future readers. I will get to this at a later date.

When it came to Maddie's plot, I'd significantly cut down the role of Mikey and Hannah. Neither tagged along, and now they're basically just side characters.

When it came to the person who was to kidnap the rest of the gang, I realized I liked the surname Moon, but didn't like Quincey as the first, so I changed the kidnapper's name to Jedi Moon. However, if you remember, the person who kidnapped them was William Nightingale, not Quincey Moon, so one could argue that I just combined the two, or that I replaced William Nightingale with Jedi's colleague, Carmen Asghar.

These two were originally meant to be villains. However, when I took a moment to make backstories for them (as well as most everyone), I decided that it actually made more sense if they weren't villains, just morally ambiguous, which is how they remain today. I can't explain any more without spoilers, honestly.

When it came to chapter headings, I kept the narrator, time, and date as the heading, but deleted the chapter title and place. The time and date I think are extremely important to pay attention to, because as I wrote, I realized that I needed a lot of backstory to be actually shown instead of told, because otherwise it would be either boring or I'd reveal it all in a really contrived way. Showing what happened in spread out intervals I think works significantly better.

I also soon discovered that I had a lot of female characters. There's nothing wrong with that, obviously, but I thought I should add more boys to the mix, since I'd never really done that... ever. Enter Akash Singh, who I decided would be a "love interest" character for Gwen. He has since developed far beyond that. I also made a few other characters to fill in a supporting cast or background. One of them, Robert Stafford, was only meant to be in the background, but like Akash, ended up developing beyond that.

That's it for today! Tomorrow I will talk more about this Draft and how it evolved! Don't forget to sign up so you can get notifications whenever I update, and leaving a like and comment is greatly appreciated!

Next:

The First Valid Draft: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/draft-four-of-the-secret-portal-the-first-valid-draft