The Ivies: From 1st Draft to Final Book | SPOILERS EDIT DEEP DIVE

Подписаться 162 тыс.

Просмотров 15 тыс.

50% 1

It's here! My deep dive into every draft of my third published book, The Ivies! Spoilers throughout so do not watch unless you've read the book and/or want to be spoiled.
Ivies Original Ending: www.getunderlined.com/article...
00:00 Introduction
01:11 Drafting timeline & word count
03:16 1st draft: Olivia & tone
07:38 Cataldo & SAT scam
11:48 Other edits for submission
13:30 Original ending
18:02 Major changes from Crown
19:56 What never changed
22:45 Ivies, Margot, & Sierra
27:29 Changing names
29:25 Rewriting Olivia
33:02 Emma, Avery, and "the bitch edit"
35:29 Final edits & COVID-19
40:05 Brainstorming a new ending
44:36 Rewriting the ending part 1
47:05 Rewriting the ending part 2
50:42 Rewriting the ending part 3
55:29 Conclusion
Add Pretty Dead Queens on Goodreads: / pretty-dead-queens
Add The Ivies on Goodreads! / the-ivies
MERCH
alexa-donne.creator-spring.com/
+BUY MY BOOKS+
Buy The Ivies from your favorite book retailer!: bit.ly/3mkxyYj
Buy The Stars We Steal from Book Depository (ships worldwide!): www.bookdepository.com/Stars-...
Buy Brightly Burning from Book Depository (ships worldwide!): www.bookdepository.com/Bright...
Buy BRIGHTLY BURNING on Amazon: www.amazon.com/Brightly-Burni...
Get Brightly Burning on Audible.com! www.audible.com/pd/Brightly-B...
AFFILIATE LINKS:
Shop Clever Fox Planners: cleverfoxplanner.com?aff=54
Use my code "ALEXA10" to save 10% on your order!
+LINKS+
Goodreads:
/ 16817128.alexa_donne
Twitter:
/ alexadonne
Instagram:
/ alexadonne
Newsletter Sign-Up:
alexadonne.com/newsletter/
Website:
alexadonne.com/
Wattpad:
www.wattpad.com/user/alexadonne
+FILMING SPECS+
Camera: Canon 90D
Mic: Rode VideoMic Pro+
Lighting: Limo Studio Soft Kit
Editing Software: Magix Movie Edit Pro

Хобби

Опубликовано:

9 июл 2024

Ссылка:

Скачать:

Готовим ссылку...

Добавить в:

Мой плейлист

Посмотреть позже

Комментарии : 79

@graceputman1854 2 года назад

The Ivies was the first book I read in 2022 and I got it for Christmas! Easily a book that I would re-read in six months! I loved it

@surfpassion19 2 года назад

As if I needed any more encouragement to reread "The Ivies!" I loved Olivia as a main character, especially relating to her as someone in journalism school (in Canada, funnily enough)!

@bailey3645 2 года назад

I read The Ivies last month and absolutely loved it. I help students with their college essays as a side gig and your book was the most accurate depiction of the college process today that I've ever read. I gasped SO loud when Tyler revealed the motive.

@caesuracrossing5473 2 года назад

"The playing the game" aspect could be a lead into book two lol.

@PureMagma 2 года назад

You are so indomitable! I have no idea how you were able to keep moving. My Grandma, Dad and long-time family CPA all passed away in 2018 and I am finally able to function and write again. I have serious respect for your drive.

@nicolejacobson8539 Год назад

Keep going

@heathergagnon5125 2 года назад

I always love these deep dives. Have to say I like the change to Avery's story not knowing about her own cheated scores that way these teens have more powerful people in the shadows so even their queen bee doesn't know everything.

@modernbuys 2 года назад

Absolutely my favorite video that you do. I love learning about all the major edits. The only suggestion is that I think in a previous video you talked a bit more about HOW you implemented the edits, and that would be nice to know from an educational standpoint. Maybe for a future video you can cover how to tackle big edits. I find it fascinating that you changed your Detective's relationship 3x time. Would be amazing to learn how you tackled those edits. Or any edits that have those big ripple effects. I'm sooo bad at that. I keep just rewriting from scratch!

@maryb2587 2 года назад

He he-- "The Ivies" was the first book of yours I read, shortly after I found your channel. I went to a Massachusetts boarding school a zillion years ago, went to Smith College, and couldn't stop reading about operation Varsity Blues, so...as wild as this was, a lot of the details rang so true.

@rdmertz29 2 года назад

Really enjoyed watching this and learning about your editing process. As a former Smithie, though, I've got to ask: why Smith? I mean, I understand the in-text reasons for why Olivia wound end up there, but why did *you* choose it? Also, the bit about the difference between how someone treats you when they know you went to/were accepted to an elite school vs. a state school is SO TRUE. I went to a public high school, elite private college for undergrad, state school for my MA, and another private elite school for my PhD, and I have had multiple encounters where someone who only knew about my public high school or state school MA then learned I also went to more prestigious places for my BA/PhD. Watching a person's facial expression, body language, and raw interest in you change both dramatically and instantaneously due to something so inconsequential is a truly bizarre, discomforting, and revealing experience. Including it in the Ivies was an insightful touch on your part!

@hanmira 2 года назад

OMG I've been waiting for this! Thank you for uploading this video.

@FawnPoet 2 года назад

Alexa thank you so much for your videos. You are so helpful to all of us who are utterly clueless about the process of writing novels. Will you please PLEASE do a video on that Frame Work you said you used to help make changes and twists easy to fix? I’m working on an epic fantasy with a BIG MYSTERY and I keep getting lost in my own head over it. lol Would love for some help. Thank you for all your content!

@oliveaster5797 2 года назад

I've been looking forward to this! Can't wait for the Q&A part 2 :)

@Luisa-bt2wr 2 года назад

thank you so much for posting this video! i had a terrible day is this is exactly what i needed omg

@effie_jay 2 года назад

I love these videos!! It's so interesting to see people's writing process from beginning to end

@brightergreens6382 2 года назад

PERFECT !!! I'm in editing hell for the first time this is so helpful, also so happy to get all this bonus fun knowledge about the ivies !!

@meghanbraun8709 2 года назад

These 1st draft to Final Copy videos are my absolute favorite! Thank you for sharing!

@ellechaika1378 2 года назад

yes! i was waiting, praying for this video since i am nearing the end of my first revision pass on my fourth novella. seriously, these are the most helpful videos you make so thank you. ♡♡

@veronikachristen2373 2 года назад

I love your deep dive into the process! Thank you so much for sharing! As someone suffering from crippling perfectionism it's such a relieve to see that your first draft doesn't have to be perfect in any way, just somewhat functional, and how much can be saved in editing.

@deartrisha716 2 года назад

Just started watching but I had to comment right away! your hair is so gorgeous!!!

@multitaskcreative 2 года назад

HECK YEAH GREAT TIMING♥️

@carsonallen4719 2 года назад

Perfect timing, I'm on the last 50 pages of "The Ivies." Can't wait to go through this and take notes.

@yvesgomes Год назад

Thank you for sharing this. I was impressed by how much things ended up changing. It's good to know agents and editors can agree to work on a book even though they would like to see such drastic changes. This sends the message that folks don't need to nail so much on the first try and that a writer can display quality in a manuscript that still needs quite the overhaul.

@panbrzoza5920 2 года назад

Yesterday I ended my second draft. Its ideal time to watch this video. Thank you so much!

@jennifercooper2356 2 года назад

Thank you for sharing! Really fun insight!

@CharlieMoonDrops 2 года назад

"All books are made in editing..." 🤯 Wow That's what I needed to hear. I was hesitating to start my zero draft, but Its really one of many 😌

@nviz47 2 года назад

🧡🧡🧡🧡 thanks for the efforts and for sharing this journey of your process/experiences editing and changes for The Ivies. It's appreciated to hear and think about - and interesting re your book. But still gotta be said, thanks

@NixLaLoupe 2 года назад

That was Olivia at bottom tier? She still had some harshness to her that I LOVED. I thought for sure that was tier two. I bet she was vicious before edits 🥰

@AlexaDonne 2 года назад

Oh yeah she was still terrible, but before she was worse lolllll

@maia_gaia 2 года назад

This is fascinating! Thank you

@kokoro_flow Месяц назад

I finished the book today. I thought it was set in 2021; I forgot about "2020" being written at the beginning. Around the Midpoint, I thought I figured out who the killer was. Thankfully, I was totally wrong! The characters and their motives were really interesting! I really liked the ending, although I found myself wistful because I didn't get to see Olivia enjoying her life at her university. Anyway, I enjoyed the actual ending. :D After reading the alternate ending: Oh, wow... That's a very different ending. I see the appeal of it, but I still like the final version better. 💖 Looking forward to reading more of your books, Alexa! (I also have The Stars We Steal + Pretty Dead Queens on my Kindle but haven't started those yet.)

@ChrisWilliamsDallas 2 года назад

The Ivies is such a brilliant title. But listening to your discussion about the book I keep hearing. "Bad SAT Friend"

@mshurtleffwrites9092 2 года назад

Oh my. This made me realize how long it's been since covid started

@DrVVVinK 2 года назад

I get why you do these, and I can see how it could help out new writers understand the process. But, do you ever want to hold back, because I am thinking there is maybe something you had in an early draft that you would want to hold on to for another future story?

@EvoluteCreator 2 года назад

Glad I found this so early!

@WhileMirandaWrote 2 года назад

"niche but popular" ahh yes, here it is, my fave video again! These are always so interesting!

@lauralunapuigsuarez7032 2 года назад

Loved it!! Alexa will you do a Q&A for our questions???

@AuthorElliot 2 года назад

Love this!!! You know what would be fun? (Well… for me idk about others) if you went thru your line edits and shared that stuff too! Not like, every edit but, idk, stats? Or like, patterns? And if they were on average any different for this book than they were for previous ones

@PrettyAndOrOdd 7 месяцев назад

As someone who has listened to the Ivies audiobook several times over: - I really want all those removed FAQs! - It’s my favorite murder mystery to date, and it’s inspired me to write my next murder mystery at a boarding school! - I’m weirdly shook to learn that Cataldo is spelled that way (in my head it’s ‘Kataldo’ 🤣)

@heathermac8725 2 года назад

That was brilliant, Alexa. I watched it straight after watching the video you did a while back on the 'must hit' thriller beats (all in one sitting, for greater penetration into my conscious and subconscious brain.) Next step for me is that I will buy ''The Ivies'' and then go through it and actually try to identify those beats that you laid out so well in the other video ... and with the original draft ending too. Then I'm going to go through my own draft story and try to see where it does, and where it doesn't, 'hit the beats.' (I'll also then kind-of do that all again with several more reference videos and books about thriller structure, maybe ''the story grid'' should be one of them ... and just keep 'drafting and re-drafting/editing using such references to keep honing as I write. But this intensive watching and note-taking of 'your way' feels like a very solid place to start (re-start) my story, more fully than I got to with it on my previous attempts with it. (I felt very sad for you when you said that your mother had died a while back now ... you spoke about it a bit on the first video I watched. My own mother died 7 years ago. It was the anniversary of her death yesterday. It's 'an ongoing shock' you never get over (as I once heard someone so accurately say about the death many years before of their own mother.) Anyway, thanks for what you do. It's a great way to honor the contribution to your life of a loved one that has passed, living on in being, and contributing, your own best creative self.

@lulujaime7243 2 года назад

"you love it, that's why you're here!" yes. you know us so well.

@timpancakes2011 2 года назад

I am going to hold off on watching this video (paused immediately!) but I wanted to say I started reading the Ivies at my graveyard hotel shift tonight. I'm training a new person so I have literally nothing to do for 8 hours unless I need to step in and support. I was hooked on page one and cannot WAIT to devour the whole thing ^.^

@moshecallen 2 года назад

I feel like you're describing a book I could never have written. Social nuances especially of groups are something I struggle with. Perhaps that's why I'm not a Jane Austen fan. I'd love to hear your explanation of how friend groups work for fiction purposes.

@susanollington5257 Год назад

I know this was 11 months ago, but I recently used this idea to establish how to make my groups of people feel like individuals! It might help someone else who reads this comment 😊 Basically you have each character in the group down the side of the table and across the top also Then reading horizontally, you have how a character feels about others, and reading vertically you have how others feel about that character - the idea is to identify where you have characters who think the same thing about the same character, which makes the character feel less unique I haven’t tried this but it would probably also be beneficial to work out how each character feels about the group 😊😊

@davidmtgregorio 2 года назад

I really would've liked to read the first version of the story, it sounded like a lot of fun!!

@WesleyHastings-ml2ee 4 месяца назад

YOU ROCK!

@marysullivan4342 2 года назад

I've just started to edit my first book, and l found your words of wisdom very helpful. . The task doesn't seem as daunting now...

@heatherwilson9717 2 года назад

I read the ending, and I loved the happy ending, but... I like the "realistic" ending better. The original ending is just a little too... neat for this messy thing we call life.

@MillieMartineuz 2 года назад

Thank you 😊

@SebastianDrawzStuff 7 месяцев назад

Just a little thing I noticed, do you not have the last book of the A Good Girl's Guide To Muder series? Like I don't see As Good As Dead... I will give you my copy of it just to see it completed...

@katiejmiller Год назад

You did the first draft of a novel in 3.5 months?!! Wow! Is that common? I need to hurry up!

@pokemongirl5674 2 года назад

I know I haven't read the book yet (I am going to read it after Christmas so I can pick up a copy for myself) but I am mainly watching this video as I'm writing a boarding school ya story and wanted to see if I could find information that might be beneficial to me as I go through my story drafts

@skstein2 2 года назад

That shirt color looks gorgeous on you!

@CollabCrush 2 года назад

Regarding the wrench that COVID threw in your book: rather than making all of those adjustments and edits, why not just back date the events in the novel to a year previous so that COVID hadn't even happened? I'm sure you had thought of that already, so I'm just curious if that would make it less relevant... or if there was some other reason why that wasn't a good option.

@lolaloves6574 2 года назад

Probably because if it referenced the real college admissions scandal then it had to be set in 2020.

@CollabCrush 2 года назад

@@lolaloves6574 Ahh.... makes perfect sense.

@mint2740 2 года назад

Aw, now I want to see the mean girl Olivia edit XD

@cheyannebuckhannon815 Год назад

The hair😍

@megankirrmann6624 2 года назад

See how much a book changes....start to finish.....thank you for the creation of editors, proofreaders and beta readers!!!!

@ThatsJustMyBabyDaddy 2 года назад

Very educational.

@AJDunnReadsandWrites 2 года назад

One thing that never seems to stop blowing my mind is how much editing has to be done after you have an agent a sell a book, yet getting an agent requires your book to be almost perfect. It makes no sense to me.

@AlexaDonne 2 года назад

Your book doesn't have to be almost perfect to get an agent... but it does have to be clean and obviously saleable. The latter is the most critical part. If they believe they can sell it, they'll sign you and do edits with you.

@ImaginaryMdA 2 года назад

Honestly, I'm skipping this one because I'm planning on reading this. I'm happy for u tho Or sorry that happened

@theblackrose7935 Месяц назад

Have you ever thought about raising funds to do a show or movie for youtube. You can put it on a private website and have us pay to watch it?

@faabyy21 2 года назад

I keep thinking you just had an olivia MC when Olivia Rodrigo is the biggest pop star of the year. I could see many marketing opportunities there.

@jackiejackman8664 2 года назад

This was a really good book and I’m so happy Olivia ends up dropping Ethan. I think he was my biggest disappointment. 😂

@reinventingmelissa2061 2 года назад

If I were scapegoated like Olivia, I would dedicate the rest of my life to destroying the lives of other Ivies and Ethan. My. Entire. Life.

@elizabethreads0312 2 года назад

I loved the ending because it wasn't perfect there was a lot to chew on. I just wanted a different person to be the killer.

@nono-im7jo 2 года назад

hi im early

@WinterWind 2 года назад

For some reason going in I thought all the girls were gonna get killed one by one lol. Kept waiting for a second murder 🤣 fun book however

@ambertucker6792 2 года назад

I'm surprised you didn't just set it in 2019 to avoid COVID completely. lol.

@aliciab.b.1837 2 года назад

First!!!

@mattmallecoccio8378 2 года назад

Nice red top. It works with your red hair. 😊

@emilieolsson356 2 года назад

Ethan, Rebecca, Sierra, Margo... TYLER. They sound very basic and millennial to me. Olivia doesn't stick out as a basic name. Your editor was right about Madison for obvious reasons but she really should have criticised the other names as well. Emma came off as the most believable name at a Gen Z boarding school because it's a traditional name that isn't associated with a specific generation or class background. I was really surprised because you've talked about the importance of researching names in your earlier videos and even said that you can sometimes tell that a YA book was written by a Gen X author. I feel like the names in your book screamed millennial author.

@AlexaDonne 2 года назад

Nearly all of the names I chose were on the top baby names list for the year these kids were born, 2003, soooooo (I also checked 2002 and 2004 for coverage/trends). Ethan was #7. Tyler was #15 on the Social Security baby name list. (Emma was #2 and Olivia #4, if you were wondering) Rebecca and Sierra were further down--#63 and #73, but as someone with a name that was literally in the 600s in the year I was born, not everyone is even named from a top 100 name, but all the ones you've singled out are top 100 names for 2003 except for Margot. Because it's a gorgeous, classic French name and I like it. I also literally cribbed names from sports rosters from real Northeast boarding schools in 2019. Actual living breathing Gen Z people have these names. And many of their parents would be Millennials. YMMV.

@lafonevc5663 2 года назад

@@AlexaDonne excellent reply and shows the difference between factual research and dumb prejudicial opinion.

@vivianharper4249 Год назад

This book would have been way better if you didn’t have to hit every virtual signal point there is. I read to escape all that crap of left right progressive conservative but boy you made me feel like I was at a rally for key note points to make sure I say in every conversation. I wanted to like the book. With that said I don’t think I will read anymore of your books because if this one was like that I bet all the others are or worse. 2021 was the year of virtue signaling so perfect time for the book