Here, I'm presenting "alternate scenes" from my Alex Gets Punished (AGP from here on) series of stories. These are fragments - or in some cases, complete chapters - that I wound up rewriting. Each will come with notes on why they were changed.
As such, there are spoilers here for various AGP-verse stories. You have been warned.
First up, we have the original beginning of The First Time, Take Two. Like all the AGP stories, this is in third person, but it sticks mostly to Alex's point of view, with us getting Alex's thoughts and feelings, but not Justin's.
I started that way because AGP mostly used Alex as our viewpoint character, and it seemed good to keep consistency. In particular, the ending of AGP was from Alex's point of view, with us not seeing Justin's thoughts, so the reader could experience Alex's surprise and shock on discovering that Justin remembered their night together.
However, while I like to think I usually do a good job of writing Alex, I am male, and because of that, I only have descriptions of what sex is like for women to work from. Since this story was really going to basically be a single sex scene, I had a hard time writing it from Alex's view, which initially motivated the switch to Justin. Secondly, since AGP had primarily been from Alex's view, I decided that writing TFTTT from Justin's view would help differentiate the two stories.
Lastly, I knew from the start - even before I'd decided to actually write TFTTT - that Alex's wish that "any physical damage to or changes in my body resulting" would be undone meant that she'd once again be virgo intacta afterwards. (And I also knew that Alex didn't expect that - all she meant that part of the wish to do was prevent her from getting pregnant.)
Now, at this point, Alex already knew that - but Justin didn't. Since this was going to involve a bit of a surprise for Justin, the same reasoning that impelled me to write the last chapter of AGP exclusively from Alex's view applied here, making it simply make more sense for this story to be from Justin's view.
(Careful readers of the series will note that Alex's view is usually the one followed in the stories, with Justin's view sometimes being taken instead. This is deliberate on my part, to imitate the show: the use of third person imitates the external presence of the camera, but the show is definitely centered around Alex first and Justin second, so my stories are as well.)
But enough about viewpoint. Here's the original version of the start. More commentary following.
1:55. Alex stared at her clock and swallowed. Two o'clock, he said. And be in my underwear. Well, I didn't need to set an alarm - no way I could sleep. She went to her mirror, looked at herself in it, brushed her hair for what was probably the fiftieth time that night, then looked at the clock again.
1:59. She stared at it, waiting for it to change. He didn't say what else to do. Just to set my alarm for two, and be in my underwear. Alex glanced at herself in the mirror again. She'd picked out a pair of blue-and-white bikini-style panties, and a white bra with lace around the edges. She hoped Justin would like them - she thought they were cute, but they weren't what she'd call sexy.
She looked at the clock again. 2:01, it said, and she stood there looking at it and fidgeted. Should I go to his room? Should I get into the bed? What does he want me to do? Alex thought she'd never felt this nervous in her life - the lump in her throat felt like it was the size of a baseball, and she didn't think she could have spoken right then if her life depended on it.
So of course, that was when the door opened. Justin stepped in, silently, then closed the door behind himself and locked it, equally silently. Then he looked his sister up and down, his gaze frankly appraising. Alex started to cover herself with her arms, stopped before they moved more than a few inches, tried to make the gesture look natural by putting her right hand on her left wrist.
Justin took a step forward that brought him just a few inches from Alex. She looked up at her brother's face and swallowed. Usually she could read him like a book, but she'd never seen this - this slight smile, and the almost-hungry look in his eyes. Those eyes raked up and down her again, and Alex blurted out nervously "Is this okay? Is it what you wanted?"
There was no answer - not in words. Instead, Justin placed his hand on his sister's cheek, cupping it with his thumb under her chin. His other hand went to the small of her back, and Justin pulled Alex against him, then brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her. She stiffened as his lips pulled on hers, then put her arms around him and held on.
His thumb pulled on Alex's chin, opening her mouth slightly, and Justin's tongue slid in and gently but firmly probed her. Tingles went up and down Alex's body, and she pressed herself against him more firmly.
A few more seconds passed, then Justin broke the kiss. His hand moved to Alex's hair, and he stroked gently through it.
So, besides the viewpoint change, this version starts with Justin coming in a little late, instead of early. In this version, Justin coming in late helps to highlight Alex's anticipation and uncertainty... but in the Justin-viewpoint version, we can't see those directly anyway, so he comes in early instead, putting the focus on Justin's eagerness to resume their physical relationship, and the fact that he likes keeping Alex a little off-balance.
The clothing Alex is wearing stays the same - reminding us of Alex's relative innocence and inexperience - and her line "Is this okay? Is this what you wanted?" does as well, since it lets us see her uncertainty in both versions. In this version, though, Justin is silent. My intent was to have him be silent for most of the story, once again keeping focus on Alex's uncertainty about how Justin really feels... but with the viewpoint shifted to Justin, that made no sense any more, so in the final version, Justin starts talking right away.
Since this version never got past the first draft, the description of the action is a bit more sparse than in the final version, but the action itself remains almost the same, with Justin beginning by cupping Alex's chin, his hand on the small of her back, then kissing her. Switching viewpoints also let me throw in the "her lips tasted faintly of strawberries. Oh. Lip gloss. Right."
That's a detail from one of my own first kisses. They say to write what you know, and I like throwing in little things like that... and sometimes big things as well. I was glad that the viewpoint switch let me throw that in.
If I'd continued the story from Alex's viewpoint... well, I don't think it would have come out as well, which is why I didn't. It definitely would have been a very different story, with Justin's silence through most of it. It's possible that I wouldn't have come up with Justin giving Alex 'the rules', since I came up with that while giving Justin more to say, and I think that would have been damaging to the series as a whole.