What Could Have Been/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

** There are '''far''' too many of these to mention in the new ''History of Middle-earth'' series. Perhaps the most radical are that Tol Eressëa was going to be England, Farmer Maggot and Treebeard were going to be villains, and Aragorn was going to be a [[Badass]] hobbit called Peregrin Boffin (alias "Trotter") who had been tortured in Mordor, or else a [[Future Badass]] version of Bilbo himself. He wore shoes (very unusual for a hobbit) and one proposed explanation was that he had [[Artificial Limbs|wooden feet]] as a result of his real feet having been ''[[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique|sawn off by his tormentors]]''.

** Another one had {{spoiler|Boromir}} surviving the Breaking of the Fellowship, but then doing a [[Face Heel Turn]] and joining Saruman in the attack on Minas Tirith. (This was before the Rohan subplot was conceived.)

** The character of Arwen was introduced very late in the game. Originally Aragorn was to marry Eowyn, then Tolkien decided Eowyn should die and Aragorn never marry because he didn't get over his grief. Tolkien's wife convinced him not to kill Eowyn, so Arwen came into being. (This is part of why her and Aragorn's story is included in the Appendices rather than the book itself.) This created a fair amount of [[Fan Wank]] even when the books first came out, with some wishing he'd married Eowyn as originally planned.

* ''[[Harry Potter]]'': [[J. K. Rowling]] planned to kill off Arthur Weasley in the final book after she put off killing him in ''Order of the Phoenix''. (A remnant of this can be seen in the attack on him by Voldemort, which he survives. Rowling's reported outburst into tears over the character killed in this book may have actually been over Arthur, and in the end she couldn't bring herself to do it.) She changed her mind, "making up for it" by [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|killing]] {{spoiler|Lupin and Tonks}} instead.

** Jo'd said before ''Deatly Hallows'' that someone would do magic for the first time late in life, but then she changed her mind, and it didn't happen. Also, in the interview with TLC/Mugglenet after the release of Book 6, she said Grindewald was dead. In Book 7, it turned out he wasn't.

** In the earliest draft of the first chapter, the Potters lived on an island and Hermione's family, living on the mainland, saw an explosion out at sea and discovered the bodies of Harry's parents.

** Also from Book 1, Dean Thomas (called Gary back then) was with the Trio and Neville when they found Fluffy.

*** Dean/"Gary" actually was going to have his own subplot. Apparently his biological father was actually a wizard killed for refusing to join Voldemort; Dean's mother, however, just thought he abandoned her. This gets briefly alluded to in Book 7, but J.K. abandoned most of this back story in favor of [[The Unchosen One|Neville]]'s, which ties in closer to Harry's story.

** Hermione was planned to have a younger, Muggle sister. Eventually JK decided it was too late to introduce her, and Book 7 makes it clear that Hermione is an only child.

** When Harry visits the Leaky Cauldron in the first book, it was originally planned that one of the people he met would be a female reporter. Rowling thought the character didn't fit there and moved her to the fourth book, where she eventually developed into Rita Skeeter.

* ''[[Gone with the Wind]]'': Margaret Mitchell originally planned on calling her heroine "Pansy O'Hara", and Tara was "Fontenoy Hall". Other names she had considered for the novel itself were ''Tote the Weary Load'' and ''Tomorrow Is Another Day''.

* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'': George R.R. Martin originally planned to have a five-year [[Time Skip]] between the third and fourth books, which would have had a major effect especially on the several child and teenage characters. In the end, he wasn't able to pull it off. And ironically, there actually was a ''five year gap'' between the two books' publication. He lampshades it with one character saying (paraphrased) that he "expected five years of peace, at least, before {{spoiler|Cersei}} screwed everything up."

** Zahn and Stackpole wrote "[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Reenlistment_of_Baron_Fel The Reenlistment of Baron Fel]", which started as a six-comic miniseries and was revamped into a four-part story. It's about [[Ace Pilot]] [[X Wing Series|Soontir Fel]], once of the Empire before [[Defector From Decadence|defecting]] to the New Republic, getting abducted by Thrawn and joining the Empire of the Hand. They ''finished'' both versions, and both of them have both versions. But they haven't been bought and published. They are just sitting on those hard drives. Waiting. This is incredibly frustrating.

** The proposed miniseries ''Spectre of Thrawn'', between the two [[Hand of Thrawn]] books. Cowritten, again, by Zahn and Stackpole! And it never happened.

* ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'' originally ended with the young lad in charge of the world's largest "chocolate shop", selling all manner of things from an egg containing a little sugary bird to a giant chocolate elephant with a chocolate rider. There were also meant to be two extra naughty children, "Marvin Prune", who would have been a conceited boy, and "Mary Miranda Piker", who would have been a girl allowed to do anything she wants - to that end, become a school-obsessed snob. The chapter in which she was dispatched with featured Mr. Wonka making a powder that allowed children to [[Playing Sick|play sick]], botching a job with her father to sabotage the machine that made the powder (they start <s>laughing</s> screaming. Mrs. Piker claimed her husband never laughs).

** Another version had about ''thirty'' children, but Dahl's nephew described it as the most boring thing he'd ever read.

** A deeper exploration of Meredith's marriage and Blumquist's past.

** A massive [[Plan]] , courtesy of Dr. Lehrl.

** Similarly, ''Visser'' was originally going to cover the careers of both Visser One and Visser Three, which is why the latter appears on the cover.

* In its earliest stages, ''[[Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close]]'' (now a movie) by Jonathan Safran Foer had nothing at all to do with 9/11. According to the author, however, when his brother read a draft of it and found that the protagonist was afraid of planes and skyscrapers, he asked if it was supposed to be about 9/11.