On the author's website
for The Walking Dead: Real Monsters fanfic, she put up all the things she thought of putting in the story before changing her mind for various reasons, they are as follows (spoilers below):
- She was thinking of giving up on writing Real Monsters due to how hard writing chapter three was.
- To be more specific, she cut the original planning of chapter three into the current third and forth chapters. But she split it in such a way that she had little to work with for the third chapter. That's why it was so hard.
- Four people were going to be in Nate's group all together for the majority of the story instead of just three (if you don't count the baby). The forth member was an unnamed teenager who had a scientist for a dad.
- Vaughan and Charlie were going to be Chinese and half Chinese respectively.
- Charlie's Japanese side of the family were going to be part of the yakuza. She was even going to have a yakuza tattoo.
- Chapter five was going to be about the day after Nate's group escaped from the clinic, with everything being relatively peaceful until they met Wyatt and Eddie.
- Instead of a comforting hug, Nate and Charlie were going to have comfort sex in the barricaded room.
- There was going to be a scene where the trio had to run away from zombies in a forest. Nate and Charlie would then climb up a tree while Vaughan wouldn't because he didn't know how. There'd then be an option to help him up or leave him.
- The flashback/dream sequence of episode 4 where Nate remembers Casey's funeral was almost a flashback to the aftermath of Nate and Casey's father murdering Casey and Nate being forced to help bury him.
- Charlie was going to be a serial killer.
- Charlie was going to be racist towards white people.
- Nate, Charlie, and Vaughan were never supposed to have a polygamous relationship with each other.
- The creator recently made a summary of an alternative version of Real Monsters. Here were a few of the main changes:
- Charlie and Nate had a baby together named Kasey who died.
- All three of them were homeless in chapter one.
- Nate was framed for murder by a gang before the events of the story. Said gang end up being the bandits they meet in chapter 3.
- Charlie was aware that Vaughan had cancer from the beginning.
- Dr. Nāgá had her leg cut off and walked around in crutches.
- In chapter 3, when Nate goes into the tent and finds the book talking about the doctor camp, there was going to be a bandit sleeping next to the book.
- Chapter 4 could've been titled "The Calm Before".
