MCBB 5: Writing the First Draft Manuscript

Untitled Jellyfish Picture Book Process

Morning!

After experimenting with plot storyboards, as I showed in my last essay, I started feeling the urge to begin writing. Not just planning and organizing, but writing—which was timely, because the next section in the Might Could Beta Books (MCBB) process is 4. Write the First Draft.

But the thought of opening up a blank page and typing out a first draft manuscript felt intimidating, and to be honest, I was procrastinating getting around to it. So, to combat that fear and hesitation, I decided to make approaching it easier!

Instead of diving headfirst into the deep end by typing out the First Draft, I grabbed a pen and started jotting down random words and lines as they popped into my head. I just let it flow and wrote down whatever came up, without worrying about how good it was, how it sounded, or if it made any sense at all.

Here is that page below, which was written on the couch at 6:30 am before Butterbean woke up. You can see various ideas for lines in the book, as well as some experimentations with rhyming.

And that freewheeling exercise turned out to be just what I needed to jump into the actual writing process! After finishing (ie. when Butterbean woke up), I felt creatively rejuvenated and empowered, and finally confident that I could tackle writing the first draft of this book!

And so, a few days later, that’s just what I did. Here it is—the first draft of my untitled jellyfish book in all its awful-messy-first-drafts-always-stink glory!

P.S. I’ve included “Science Notes” in my manuscript, as I’ll have some sort of call-out box or something of that nature on each spread to give more scientific information. Some of these may turn into just labels, and some may end up being moved to the Glossary in the back of the book. But I think it’s helpful for me to write them now along with the text so they can evolve together.

P.P.S When I copy-pasted my manuscript into the Substack text editor, it was immediately littered with red underlines from my Grammarly app, but I am consciously choosing to ignore those red lines and keep/share this manuscript in its truly first draft state! Obviously, there’s a lot to refine, edit, and improve. But that comes later on. For now, it’s about just getting stuff on the page and trying out different ideas! :)

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Manuscript #1:
June 8, 2022

Page 2-3

Jellyfish live in every ocean,
Floating, drifting, pulsing motion.

(Science note: Jellyfish are found in all 5 oceans: Arctic, Southern, Indian, Atlantic and Pacific)

Page 4-5

Jellyfish can be as big as a blue whale,
and as small as your own tiny fingernail.

(Science note: Lion’s Mane (bell: 10 ft tentacles: 98 ft), Irukandji (bell: 0.4 in, tentacles: 3 ft)

Page 6-7

They do not have bones, brains, or blood like you and me.
Instead, they’re mostly made up of water, gas, and jelly.

(Science note: Jellyfish are made up of between 85-98% water (in comparison, a human is 60%).

Page 8-9

Jellyfish have tentacles, bells, eyes, and ears.
They have the ability to appear and disappear.

(Science note: Many jellyfish have balance structures along the rim of their bells, called statocysts, that work like our inner ears, and also light-sensitive structures at the base of their tentacles, called ocelli, that can decipher between light and dark.

Page 10-11

Jellyfish capture food by spreading their tentacles wide,
into a venomous curtain their prey couldn’t avoid even if they tried.

(Science note: Jellyfish often sting their prey with their tentacles, then use their oral arms, the thicker appendages handing between the tentacles, to pull their prey up into the mouth. Some jellyfish can digest their food directly through openings in the oral arms.

Page 12-13

Jellyfish live attached to rocks, docks, and the ocean floor,
and they live out in the open ocean where they can soar.

(Science note: Many jellyfish life cycles have both a benthic polyp stage where they are attached to the ocean floor or other surface, and a planktonic medusa stage where they float freely in the water.)

Page 14-15

Jellyfish dive deep into the waters in daylight
and rise up to the ocean’s surface again at midnight.

(Science note: Many jellyfish migrate from a depth of a mile below back up to the surface every day. One theory is that the jellyfish feed at night at the surface where there is more prey, and then travels back down to deeper, colder water during the day where the cold slows down their metabolism, making digestion require less energy.

Page 16-17

Jellyfish often give rides to their friends.

(Science note: Many ocean animals, like this crab, hitchhike on top of jellyfish, riding on top of their bells or inside crevices. Others essentially use jellyfish as their homes, swimming, hiding and living between the tentacles for shelter and protection.

Page 18-19

Jellyfish can make their own clone,
although exactly how they do it is unknown.

(Science note: Something here about polyp and medusa budding…)

Page 20-21

Jellyfish have fantastical names like:
Fried Egg, Lion’s Mane,
and Purple People Eater.

(Science note: Phacellophora camtschatica (Fried Egg Jellyfish), Cyanea capillata (Lion’s Mane Jellyfish), Pelagia noctiluca)

Page 22-23

Jellyfish are some of the most dangerous creatures in the ocean,
Their stinging cells have the power to stun.

(Science note: The Australian Box Jelly (Chironex fleckeri) is often believed to be the most venomous animal in the world. It has tentacles up to 10 feet long with millions of exploding cells that when touched shoot out tiny venomous darts. One sting can kill an adult human in less than 5 minutes, and the venom in one box jelly is enough to kill 60 adult humans.)

Page 24-25

There is one jellyfish that can grow from young to old
and old to young, as if hitting reverse on a remote control.

(Science note: When the Immortal Jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, dies in its medusa stage, instead of breaking down as most animals do, its cells reassemble back into a polyp, reversing from its adult life stage back to its immature life stage, which then buds off new baby medusae. It can, theoretically, do this forever.)

Page 26-27

Jellyfish can disappear alone and hide unseen,
and they can bloom to thousands, eating everything between.

(Science note: Most jellyfish polyps have never been found or seen by scientists as they are deep on the ocean floor. Jellyfish blooms happen when their populations increase to the hundreds or thousands quickly.)

Page 28-29

Sitting, waiting, blooming, jellyfish are content to wait.
Their time is coming, they are altering the ocean’s fate.

(Science note: Jellyfish blooms can wreak havoc to both the ocean ecology (by overeating available prey) and to human life by filling up fisherman’s nets, clogging up power plants, or making swimming areas unsafe. Many scientists believe climate change (warming water and ocean acidification) and human stressors like overfishing, pollution, and coastal development have led to an increase of jellyfish blooms and are sounding the alarm that this is a serious environmental problem that needs to be acted on.)

Page 30-31

Jellyfish! They are Cnidarians,
Ctenophores, Medusozoans, and Siphonophores!

(Science note: Jellyfish, or Jellies, is the informal name for a wide variety of animals, and therefore their taxonomic grouping is vague. These are the Phyla and Subphyla I have chosen to include in this book.)

Page 32

And they demand not to be ignored.

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Woohoo! I already have ideas of what I want to try in the next few versions of this manuscript, and also an idea for a totally different direction. That’s why it’s important not to get bogged down right now with grammar/rhyming/word choice/etc—I have to remain open and flexible enough to experiment and play and find the best way to tell this story!

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back next week with my first manuscript revisions for paid subscribers! The manuscript revising is often the hardest part (for me, at least) so thank you for you being here!

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<3,
Christine