25 Days of Writing: Day 18 - Alternate Versions

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

Well, there's the great sprawling unfinished mess affectionately known as the "porn saga", which has both a desert-island alternate and a "character gets a spine infusion and gets himself a life that isn't an angst-ridden train wreck" alternate. (Yeah, there's a reason that thing's not finished.) And a mirror-universe alternate, though that's only half a scene because really, nowhere to go with that.

For things that are finished or ever likely to be, I can't think of anything with an alternate version. I don't really do abandoned plotlines. I suspect partly this ties into my writing process; I know some writers will try on plotlines and toss them away like yesterday's socks, but for me writing is really about uncovering the One True Story that this story was meant to be, and that doesn't lend itself to other reality-branches. The same goes for characters; who the characters are is usually part of the starting-seed of the story, and while I may learn more about them as we go, who they are doesn't change on a fundamental level.

I don't think "rocks fall, everybody dies" because I'm sick of working on a thing counts as an alternate. ;-)