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In a painfully dull Physics lesson in September 2001, a girl called Jess and a girl called Hannah sat next to each other. The lesson was so boring that they started writing a story to keep themselves entertained. The story grew over several lessons, and finally the girls decided to copy what they had written into a blue exercise book they found in the teachers' desk in their form room. The Book was born. The story ended up spreading into four identical exercise books, and such traditions as the quote on the front of the book, the blurb and critics' comments on the back, Jess's picture in the middle and the reused final line for each part of the story came into being. |
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| Once 'Book One' was finished, Jess and Hannah thought it was a great success, decided that it was a fun creative outlet and decided to continue on another adventure, this time known, originally enough, as Book Two. They decided to 'borrow' another type of book from a different teachers' desk in the school and eventually ended up with some Geography books which were a deep green colour. The story remained largely grounded in reality but the storyline allowed the girls to expand their dramatis personae with many more celebrities and have many more adventures, including their first big argument in The Book. |  |
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Jess and Hannah ran into
trouble when they started to write Book Three. Coming
straight out of two superb separate book ideas from the first two books they didn't really have any
particular ideas where to go. They got writer's
block and although they started writing Book 3.1 in a yellow
English book, they quit before getting half-way as things
just weren't going right. Neither felt it was a
successful idea. It originally followed the girls'
journey after Hannah's brand-new PlayStation 2
malfunctioned and took them to different places in her
Sky Digital TV. Some characters from this ill-fated adventure eventually appeared elsewhere in The Book (such as Monkey, now found in Book Three, and
Nathan Hauritz, now in
Book Five. Jess and Hannah felt that the
story was going around in circles, so they threw it in
the bin. We now wish they hadn't because we would have
put it on the site as a piece of Book history. After much brain-storming, Jess and Hannah re-started writing Book Three. It was a success, although slightly worrying in its madness. A summer holiday of 2 months stopped the girls from writing any more whilst mid-way through Book 3.4, which slowed them up considerably. They found it a trial to finish Book Three when they returned to school as they were impatient to start Book Four, which they had lots of ideas for. Eventually the girls got so annoyed that they finishe Book 3.4 in 3 days. |
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Jess and Hannah were really happy to start Book Four after its predecessor, which was like a trip to the 60s on LSD. It was in the minds of both the authors to get back into something more 'normal'. Unlike some of the previous books, Book Four was completely planned out. This took away some of the spontaneous madness we saw in Book One (remember the dragons?!) but meant that the book was a lot more grounded and less fantastical. Jess and Hannah originally came up with the idea when they went to a fireworks party and spent the whole evening pacing up and down getting excited. They wrote the story in purple exercise books. |
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Book Five was a groundbreaking work of which both the girls are very proud. When they came to the end of Book Four, they went on the hunt for some new exercise books to write in and found some red ones. However, the lines were thin-lined. Concerned that this could mess up the comparative length of the new story to elder ones, they decided to make it into a flip-book. They worked inwards from the beginning of the book until they reached the middle, then flipped the book upside down and back-to-front, then worked back towards the middle. Book Five was also the first Book ever to continue directly from the last in a continuous plot. Additionally, Jess and Hannah also made the decision to write 5.1 completely about Jess, and 5.2 completely about Hannah, both covering the same time-scale. |
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Book Six has, frankly, been a pain up
the arse. Jess and Hannah started Book Six as normal, but, by the
beginning of Book 6.3, they tired of the plot and decided
to start again. So then restarted, but it was
interrupted halfway through Book 6.2 when Hannah went to
Australia for two months. When she returned, they decided
that they didn't like this Book Six either...(!)...so, at
Reading Festival 2003, whilst waiting for Placebo to do
their set, they started ANOTHER one. Then, during
September, Jess re-read some of the original two Book
Sixes, and said that she thought they were actually quite good. However, Version Three took seemingly ages to finish and Jess and Hannah got so fed up with it that when they finally finished it (cue much dancing on the Common Room tables), they couldn't bear to go back and finish off the others again. So they leapt onto Book Seven. After taking a nice break writing Book Seven, Jess and Hannah decided to be brave and returned to Book Six (now hating it even more, but determined to finish it). They started back on Version One which they finally finished in March 2004 after much general pratting
around. They then set on to Version Two to finish it off and again came
to yet another halt. It was tough going, the writing interrupted by their A Levels and then the long summer and their not seeing each other so much due to both having jobs and not being together at school all day every day any more. Basically each version of Book Six starts off at the same place (Jess and Hannah in jail) and the girls planned for it to end in exactly the same place (being squashed by a spaceship). There are similar things that happen in each version as well, similar characters and circumstances (and jokes). Jess and Hannah had a problem finding enough books to write all three versions of Book Six in when they came back to school in September 2003 after the summer holiday. They couldn't find any more of the orange exercise books they had previously been using and, in a desperate bid for continuity, they saw that the school's maths books were also orange, but had squared as opposed to lined paper. Jess and Hannah drew in margins and carried on regardless, even though the books are an ever so slightly different colour. In Version Three, 6.3 and 6.4 are maths books. But then Jess and Hannah found some of the original, lined exercise books (cue much swearing) and so Version One and Two were finished off in those. So there you go, the horror story that is Book Six. Guaranteed to scare some people's pants off if told in a dark forest at night in front of a log fire. Find out more about the perils of Book Six here. |
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Needing some light relief between versions of Book Six, Jess and
Hannah hurriedly picked up something very different, (a
French vocabulary book), and started writing Book Seven. They
decided to introduce some fun, and so made it a Christmas
special. The books they've written in are a lot smaller than exercise books and also have an annoying red margin down the centre of the page, but Jess and Hannah just ignored these facts and went for it. When it came to the time to draw a picture in the middle, because the pages are so small, Jess and Hannah turned the book around and drew a landscape picture. You can see in the example to the left (the Book 7.1 picture), the red margin down the centre of the page! |
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Book Eight is more than on the horizon however - they are now onto Book 8.2 and you can see their progress on the Book Eight site. Jess and Hannah had paused writing Book Eight as they finished off Book Six and are now able to focus all of their attention back onto it. Jess, eager to finish Book Eight, wrote the entire last chapter in one go. Roll on Book Ten. |
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And that's
as far as Jess and Hannah have got! You can read all of The Book
on this website. Follow the link below back to the Motherpage and go to the links for each book.
� Jess and Hannah 2005