Something Bigger: Turning My One Direction Fan Fiction Into My Debut Young Adult Novel

“This feels like it could be the start of something bigger.”

I nodded at my creative writing teacher. I was 17, discussing the first short story I’d turned in, one about a teenage girl who helps her best friend when he punches his school bully.

Eventually, this would become my debut young adult novel, The Butterfly’s Sting—the story of Bo Clark, a 17-year-old girl who enters an illegal underground boxing tournament to fund her and her siblings’ escape from their abusive uncle. But before that—and before it was even a story I turned in for my high school creative writing class—this was One Direction fan fiction.

(What Is Fan Fiction?)

It was an “alternate universe” story that hinged on two questions: What if One Direction’s Liam Payne got into fistfights at school? What if he had a girl best friend who also got into fights?

Fast forward a few years. I’m a fresh college graduate, brainstorming a book idea. But it’s missing something, and I’m stuck. Suddenly I remember that short story from high school, my teacher’s comment about it feeling like “something bigger.” That gets me thinking about my fan fiction and how much fun I had writing it—how I’d daydream about it all day, scribble pieces of dialogue in between classes, rush home to write more. 

Maybe I could rework it.

To pull that off, I’d need to remove all references to One Direction. That left me with a teenage girl protagonist who fights. But without the fan fiction backdrop, she had no motivation to fight. And that was the one thing I felt, on some instinctive level, was fundamental to this character. So why did she fight?

I thought, it’s her job. 

Those three words carried me through several subsequent versions of Butterfly, including a brief stint as a fantasy novel (don’t ask) and, eventually, my master’s thesis project (aka “Fight Club Story,” as I called it). Each transformation required big changes, big rewrites.

When my publisher purchased the book, again, I rewrote. By then, it had been several years since I’d last worked on Butterfly. My writing style had changed. I saw the story and the world around me differently. Plus, I had five pages of questions from my editor. 

All that meant I had to truly revision my protagonist and her story. What did I really want to say? What was the best way to say it?

I began by cutting things. First came the big stuff: plot lines I didn’t like or didn’t fit anymore, and unnecessary characters. It didn’t leave much. Next, I worked on my characters, fleshing out their backstories and desires. That gave me ideas for how to rework the plot. I wrote down the few scenes I was keeping on index cards and spread them out on my bedroom floor, rearranging them and brainstorming new scenes to fill in the gaps.

By the time I sat down to write, I’d committed myself to what was essentially a complete rewrite. I axed entire chapters and rewrote the ones I kept almost from scratch. I hadn’t realized how blurry the line between revising and rewriting could be. It was hard. When I got stuck (which was often), I tried to focus on the one thing I really felt I knew: my protagonist, the one constant in years of drafts and rewrites. How did her desires drive her feelings and actions in this scene, chapter, plot line? In subsequent drafts, my editor gave vital feedback, always pushing me to let the action speak for itself. After nearly a year of work, the book felt complete.

In its final form, The Butterfly’s Sting is an entirely different story than the fan fiction it started as. In fact, it’s been through so many rewrites, it wasn’t until finishing a last round of revisions for my editor that I remembered my One Direction fan fiction at all. 

While writing this essay, I read that fan fiction again. I was surprised by the similarities between it and Butterfly. A protagonist with heavy responsibilities at home, who loves her siblings more than anything else and has a strong sense of right and wrong and fierce protectiveness for those she cares about. Even her name, Bo, was the same.

As I sat on my bed over a decade ago, writing my fan fiction, I never could have predicted what it would become. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from this process, it’s not to judge anything by its first draft or form. I’ve learned to identify what’s interesting to me. To stick with it and follow wherever it goes. Even if it takes years or rewriting over and over until I get to something that feels right. Even—or maybe especially—if it scares me a little. Because, who knows? Maybe it will be the start of something bigger.

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