How UNTAMED began plus my very first notes!

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So, if you’ve read any of the interviews I’ve done, then you’ll know that the idea behind my debut novel, UNTAMED, began after I watched this music video:

To be specific, it’s the scene about halfway through where there’s what looks like a pig’s heart being sold at a market. This scene made me think: what if everything that a heart represents could also be bought at a market, just as easily as meat and clothes?

So, yes, that’s where the first sparks of the idea that became UNTAMED began.

I’m not sure when I watched that video and got inspired–but it must have been before June 2013, as  from June 1, 2013 I began drafting the very first draft of UNTAMED–it took me 23 days to get just over 70,000 words.

But yesterday, I found a couple of sheets of paper from early 2013 on which I’d outlined a manuscript. After reading through this outline, I realised that these were the very first notes I ever made for UNTAMED! And they were written between watching that music video and me starting the very first draft.

What surprised me was just how different those notes were from the final book–at first, I didn’t even realise that these notes even corresponded to UNTAMED and was sure it must be for a different manuscript. These notes indicated that, back then, UNTAMED had a different title, that Seven Sarr had a completely different name, and that the plot was quite different… and all these changes I’d forgotten! The only thing I’d remembered was which music video it was that inspired me, and I find this so interesting. All this other stuff… well, it was like it had never happened–and it was quite a surprise to find my notes.

So, what do these notes reveal about my very first visions for this book?

Well, the following:

  • the title was UNTOUCHED
  • The main character was Sercha (and she had a completely different personality to our Seven)
  • There wasn’t as clear a divide between the two groups of people
  • The Untamed didn’t have a name at this point
  • The Enhanced were called the Altered
  • Sercha (the MC) started off as an Altered
  • There were equal amounts of normal people and Altered people living in the world, and the conflict was only just evolving.
  • There was no Dream Land or spiritual element at all–no Seers!
  • The augmenters were called enhancers in these notes (and actually this name was only changed about four months before the publication date!)
  • The plot was set in a rather English landscape
  • And the romance was huge. Seriously, it was the main plot–soooo different to now!

And, as I’m sure you can see, these very first notes are sooooo different to the final, published book, where:

  • the title is UNTAMED
  • The main character is Seven Sarr (and this wasn’t just a case of renaming a character, Sercha’s still in my head, but just wasn’t right for this book)
  • There’s a huge divide between the Untamed and the Enhanced, and the Untamed have their own culture
  • Over 95% of the population are Enhanced
  • The Dream Land and spirits are pretty important–there’s a whole belief system based on these factors
  • The plot has a big emphasis on Seven’s internal conflict
  • And addiction is huge in this book
  • The setting is also a desert landscape, an amalgamation of imagination and research into the Niger-Nigeria border.
  • The romance is limited, and is definitely secondary to the action.

Okay, so there are even more differences that I haven’t listed here–because these early notes, if I’d drafted them into a manuscript, would’ve made a completely different book, albeit one based on the same concept as UNTAMED. And I definitely think the changes I made worked; they made it stronger.

In fact, only the augmenters (though they were called enhancers) were the same. I’d written a long list of all the different ones in these notes, and it was fun to read through–especially when there were some negative ones at this stage, and some questionable qualities that people could consume, such as Dominance and Power. Hmmm. I’m not sure about those now, as in the published version, all augmenters have to give positive results–we’ve got Calmness, Serenity, Happiness, etc. Dominance and Power don’t exactly fit in, but it is an interesting concept…

I’ve been able to work out that I must have made these very first notes at least a week before the beginning of June 2013, as by the time I started drafting the very first draft for UNTAMED, I had a new outline that was closer to the final book–it was called ‘Untamed’ by then, and the plot was closer to the final plot, and Seven was called Seven (although at this point, she was called Seven Kalweskii, and not Seven Sarr).

I love looking at how UNTAMED has evolved, particularly as when I normally think about this manuscript’s evolution, I look at the changes that occurred post-first draft, and not from the initial idea. Sure, there are plenty of changes that occurred during the drafting stages (Corin originally had two sisters, Seven’s love interest was a different guy altogether, and Katya didn’t have a role at all in the book). But looking at these earlier notes that I made before I began drafting the book brings a whole new dimension to the evolution of my debut novel.

The idea really had evolved further than I had realised.

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