F: Fremont Farm

I have been rather neglecting my A-Z posts of late. It's been two weeks since my last one. So now you finally can find out what "F" is . . . something that wasn't even in the original draft of The Experiment. How can something that wasn't important enough for the original draft be important enough for a blog post? It has to do with rewrites.

At a certain point in The Experiment, the children on the Raingolds' side of the story all meet up together. In the final version, this is at Fremont Farm, but it wasn't there originally. Originally they met up at a local park, one that is rather out in the open. Did the park have to be out in the open? Well, actually, it did. Many of the characters and places in the Raingolds' side of the story are based on or inspired by real people or places. For instance, Abby Raingold is closely based on my sister Addy, and the floor plan of the Raingolds' home is the same as mine. The park the children meet up at in the original draft is one close to my home, and it's not very secluded. That was one of the things my mom pointed out that was a problem in the original. She suggested I have them meet up at a different place, at a farm we have been to, the fictional version of which I named Fremont Farm.

All the things mentioned about Fremont Farm, except the clearing the children had found, are real. There really is a dog that is mixed with a wolf, the hayride does go around in circles, and my friend's dad really did read us a story once about a giant purple gorilla that played tag. There are other real events mentioned in the book as well. Normally I don't use very much real life stuff in my stories, but for The Experiment I did. Not that the actual events of the story are real, but the background of the characters on the Raingolds' side of the story are based in reality. It gives the story a realism that wouldn't be there if it was completely fictional. It also served to make the story matter more to me than Across the Stars.