Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/3-authors-whose-early-drafts-looked-nothing-like-their-final-published-book/
Most readers assume a finished novel arrived on the page more or less the way it appears on the shelf. The truth is messier and often more interesting. Some of the most beloved books in modern literature survived a version of themselves that was crumpled up, tossed out, or nearly burned before anyone else ever got to read it.
1. Stephen King’s Carrie began as three pages in the trash
King wrote the first three pages, which is the shower scene, but he tossed them in the trash as he “hated it,” explaining he couldn’t relate to Carrie’s problems and it “didn’t move him emotionally.” He was living in a trailer at the time, working as a schoolteacher and struggling financially, and the idea felt like more trouble than it was worth. In his own words from an essay he later wrote, “I did three single-spaced pages of a first draft, then crumpled them up in disgust and threw them away.”
What saved the book was his wife Tabitha. Though King initially gave up on Carrie due to discomfort and apathy, and felt it would never be successful, his wife Tabitha persuaded him to continue writing, and rescued the first three pages of the story from the trash. He followed her advice and expanded it into a novel. After Doubleday accepted the manuscript, King worked with editor Bill Thompson to revise the novel before it was finally published in 1974. The novel that almost never…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-08-18 06:57:00
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