From first to final draft

How much does a manuscript change when it gets published?

The Perfect Fit was our debut picture book. It’s been published in 12 languages, has sold over 25,000 copies in the UK and was also selected for the Scottish Book Trust which means over 65,000 children in Scotland received a copy.

We thought it might be helpful to see how a manuscript develops from an initial idea into a published book.

So, today we’re going to share the first version of The Perfect Fit along with the editorial notes from our agent and editor and the changes we subsequently made so you can see how much a manuscript changes between the first and final draft.

We’ve also included a sneak peak into some of James’s initial sketches and a little about the marketing we did (although that’s probably an entire post in itself.)

You can watch the final version of The Perfect Fit being read here. Copies are also available to buy in the UK and the USA.

How it all began

The Perfect Fit began life as an idea on a post it note back in the Spring of 2018.

At the time our eldest son had just started nursery aged three and was finding it hard to fit in with the other children because he didn’t always want to play the same games as them.

One day James handed Naomi a post it note with some shape characters drawn on it and the two ideas came together - what better way to explore the concept of celebrating differences and fitting in than with shapes?

This is the original post it note:

The first draft

Naomi wrote the first draft of The Perfect Fit in June 2018. Some first drafts take a long, long time but this one just flowed as she exactly knew where she wanted the story to go.

It is always a good idea to save each draft of a manuscript separately so you can revisit earlier versions if you ever need to. This can be especially helpful during the editing process.

You can read the very first draft of The Perfect Fit below.

The illustration notes are in italics.