Writing stuffs

[shadesong]

I wrote my first story when I was ten - a five-page sci-fi story. Four psychic teenagers, the crew of a starship that something goes terribly wrong with. Based, of course, on me and my three best friends.

The me-character was Sara. Basically just, well, me, but enhanced, and a copilot.

The interesting thing about this, as I think about it now, is that I was not the main character in this story... the main character, the pilot, was the character based on my abuser's son... my first love. *wry smile*

So. For you writers: tell me about your first story, your first characters. Sorry for the lack of detail on mine; this might be headed toward migraine territory, and my brain is jumbled.

Comments

[rollick.livejournal.com]

Wow, I don't remember when in my childhood I started writing fiction. That would be like remembering when I started walking. I pretty much started writing stories as soon as I could write, and as soon as I understood what stories were.

First actual story I remember writing was for an elementary-school "write a one-page story" assignment. (Mine was probably six pages long.) It was about a Martian named Quim Quap who had infiltrated the human military. During the final Martian assault on Earth, when he was manning some massive defensive station, instead of sabotaging it as he was supposed to, he snapped and started shooting down the Martian ships, and ultimately won the battle for Earth, sustaining fatal wounds in the process. I'm fairly sure he didn't have much of a dramatic death scene, he just lingered long enough for everyone to admire him a little, but I can't recall. I'm amazed that I remember his name.

In retrospect, that story can certainly be read as me saying "I am utterly alienated from my peers but I wish I was one of them, and I'd be willing to assimilate even if it killed me, if I just knew how to properly be like everyone else." All of which was true at the time. I certainly wasn't aware of any metaphorical value when I was writing the story; I just thought it was kinda dramatic and exciting, having this guy switch sides in the middle of a fight and save the day, and there really may not have been anything more to it than that. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[mightywombat.livejournal.com]

My first short story I wrote on summer vacation in 1990. It was a spy thriller, about... twelve pages? The main character's name was Jessica, and she was a cybernetically enhanced super agent. Needless to say, she kicked ass. I don't remember much else about it, other than the cool twist at the end. Looking back on it, I realize that it was total crap, but what can you expect, I was a sixteen yeah old boy... and a sixteen year old GAMER boy... The file died with an old hard drive, but I've still got it in paper form somewhere.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

I can't remember my first story. I know I was writing elaborate fiction stories since I first learned to write.

The first story I can remember was in grade school, 3rd or 4th. It was about me walking down the hallway at school and finding a dragon tied to a pole with a leash. Everybody else was afraid of the dragon, but I thought it looked sad, so I went up to it and untied the leash. It flew away... and that was the end.

[iroshi.livejournal.com]

I don't think I *remember* my first story. I wrote poetry, mostly, when I was little. I had stories in my head, mostly creating and inserting a new character into cartoons or TV series that I watched on a regular basis, but I didn't write them down. The first story I remember *writing* down was in junior high, which was merely a faux-journal that a friend and I wrote about the two of us (singly and together) with a particular guy. We knew which actor played said guy, but the guy himself was pretty much made up out of whole cloth. ^_^ It was strictly porn, anyway. The first real story I started was in high school, when I started to write a romance novel. I had my English teacher and several girls in my English class reading it like a serial, asking me each week what I had written. I only got about half-way through before I gave up on it, though. I had the same problem then that I do now: plotting/timing/building tension...there's a word for it, but I can't think of it.

Let's see, the character. I don't remember her name, off the top of my head, but I had like three names for her. One was a formal name, that only assholes and authorities called her. One was the name her friends called her. And her high school sweetheart had had a special nickname for her that no one else called her. These two had gotten split up when she was in high school, and he had just graduated. Her grandparents (she was orphaned) thought he was no good, so when he tried to write to her after he went into the Air Force, they destroyed the letters. She thought he wasn't writing to her, he thought she wasn't answering. He came back to town just after she moved, looking for her, and they convinced him that she didn't want to hear from him anymore. Actually, the book *opened* with him walking into the bridal clothing store where she worked, and his calling her by the old nickname throwing her into a flashback of the day he left.

I don't *think* I based her on me. I remember even asking my English teacher about that, and she thought it was fine... But then, I've noticed that any character you write with the qualities you admire (and therefore attempt to have yourself), people will think you're making a better version of yourself. I had a couple of people think I was basing a fanfic character off myself, when she was *consciously* modelled after my foster sisters. *shrug*

This doesn't, of course, count any shit I wrote for English classes over the years, because that wasn't *real*. That was just coursework that I didn't put any of myself into. And even if I had, I don't remember any of it.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

The first story I remember *writing* down was in junior high, which was merely a faux-journal that a friend and I wrote about the two of us (singly and together) with a particular guy. We knew which actor played said guy, but the guy himself was pretty much made up out of whole cloth. ^_^ It was strictly porn, anyway.

This is my life! In 7th grade, my friend Shenita and I did this...our guy was Todd. Gorgeous. Popular. Copied all of my test answers, but didn't even know my name. Of course, in our story he was suave and debonair. Until he was evil, in which case he got even sexier.... I wrote all the porn parts. Shenita was a Christian. A Christian with hormones, but a Christian nonetheless. And everyone in Home Ec was reading that as a serial, too... a group of girls around the table gasping and blushing... that led straight into my pseudo-VC-Andrews period. I still *have* this stuff, you realize.



D

Re:

[iroshi.livejournal.com]

*Nobody* saw that journal that Kim and I wrote except us. It was first-person, as if Kim and I were actually living it. *giggle* I'd write an entry, then hand it off to her the next day so she could read it, and then she'd write an entry... I found out, years later, that Mom had picked it up and read it one day. She never told me she'd read it. Apparently she didn't mind her 12-year-old writing porn. *giggle*

I don't still have any of this stuff. I still have poetry that I wrote from back in junior high, but none of this unfinished fiction stuff.

[bookofnights.livejournal.com]

The first story I wrote was in 1st/2nd grade. (I started it in first grade, but didn't finish till 2nd. My mom wouldn't "let" me come out and weed the yard with the family until I finished that story. Looking back, I think "why did I want to weed the yard?".)

It was about a far sighted snail, and based on the idea that all other snails are short sighted, which is why they wait until they get up to the wall to start turning right or left. He was ostracized of course, for his "difference" but eventually welcomed by the other snails.

No metaphor for my life, nope none at all. Move along, no metaphors to see here ;)

[crackerbob.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I wrote two stories in third grade... I'm not sure which was first

One was about a boy whose parents continually nagged him to eat his vegetables until one night he ate too many vegetables and woke up as a grown up. It was very similar to the movie Big, though I hadn't seen it at the time.

The other was about a redwood who decided to get revenge on the developers who cut down all his friends to build a mansion by falling down on the mansion and destroying it.

As I recall, I wrote both in the first-person viewpoint, and that's still the viewpoint I'm most comfortable in.

[elorie.livejournal.com]

The one that springs to mind was a science fiction story I wrote in seventh grade about a girl travelling to join her family on Venus...part of the point of the story was the fact that blue-green algae had been used to terraform Venus and make it livable, by converting the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to oxygen. And the algae had been genetically engineered to resist sulfuric acid and to survive in Venus' atmosphere....

This was long before I'd ever head of James Lovelock, of course. I think it's a pretty cool concept, even now.

By comparison, the story I wrote when I was older about a girl who lived in a haunted house pretty much sucked.

[two-star.livejournal.com]

I think in the 3rd or 4th grade I wrote a story about a sentient jack-o-lantern that gained senses when the appropriate sensory organs were carved out of it. Around my freshman year in high school, I had a whole series of space opera / comedy stories planned, (highly derivative of Douglas Adams, of course, although I planned to play the science as straight as possible.) But I only ever actually wrote a couple pages of a couple of them. That sort of grew into a whole future history with multiple alien races, tying together several ideas for stoies that I never got around to writing.

And then I read Schismatrix and realized that I didn't believe in the space opera future any more, and I left that all behind.

I'm really horrible at actually getting stuff written, and so the only stories that I've ever completed I did when I was taking creative writing classes in High School and college. The one that I spent most of my effort on in the high school class is what I'd consider my first decent, (if not publishably decent,) completed story. I have a copy of it (http://www.xprt.net/~munizao/scribble/ellie.html) up on my website. (Note to THers, I mentioned this on the list not too long ago. Same story.) But its characters were the first characters that inhabited me and spoke to me. Rathan, Amelin, and Tarri are all different sides of me. I don't think the other characters are based on anyone in particular. And the grief that some of the characters have experienced has nothing to do with my own life.

(And you didn't say I shouldn't read or comment on your journal, only that I shouldn't keep you on my friends list, so I'm taking advantage of the loophole.)

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Owen.... *hugs* What I basically meant - and yeah, I was all muddleheaded - was that I wanted the people who talk trash behind my back gone. Just sick of finding out that kind of stuff.

If you don't want to tell me the problem, you don't have to, just as long as you're not telling people what a bitch I am. And you can put me back on your list if you want, as long as *if* you say anything, it's to my face....

Or not. But I have no problem with you reading and commenting.


P

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Hmm, the oldest story I can remember was basically a rip off of Jack Chalker's Rings of the Masters series (the galaxy colonized with different wierdass genetic mutants for each planet). The main character was a flying squirrel-morph private investigator who had to travel the galaxy, transforming into the appropriate species for each planet, to stop REAL aliens from setting off more Nova Bombs, and pretty much failing miserably.

The fun part (to me, at least) was that the universe was specced out in detail by randomly generating planets and alien races using a really old version of the Star Trek RPG. I had about fifty planets with continent layouts and major cities noted, and pictures of the major race(s).

I wish I still had that kind of free time. <:3

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

That does sound fun! I'm actually writing a comic book, these days, and I know what you mean about no time.... kid and full-time job and stuff... I have to rigorously schedule writing time.

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

The first story I remember writing was in sixth grade. I wrote a story about two time-travelling telepathic cats. I remember that a classmate wrote a story (if you could call it that) simply retelling a Star Wars dogfight except placing it around Jupiter. And the teacher thought he was a genius because he had illustrations. I remember being miffed.

In junior high, I started writing a series of stories about myself and a group of make-believe friends. I was a latent mutant whose powers were triggered by dropping acid one day. After discovering my powers I fled to New York City and found a bunch of mutant animals and together we fought evil. Note: This was BEFORE TMNT. I didn't hear about those turtles until high school. No, my stories were more based on the X-men idea of mutants. (So yeah, not totally original.)

The stories expanded in high school and I was writing about a group of dimension-jumping thieves called the 4-Dimensional Pirates, or 4DP. This time using real friends as characters. Some characters died, some retired, some moved on. These stories linked into my M.E.T.A.L. Inc. stories. And the crowning achievement was writing about the daughter of one of my original characters (Carrissa had been raped by our arch-nemesis and impregnated with a child that gestated inside her in a matter of hours; afterwards she quit and vanished for years; turns out she became a freelance demon and no one knew what happened to the child) trapped on a World of High Adventure being rescued by Slane Hyperman, agent of M.E.T.A.L. Inc. I got an award for that in high school. The only copy of the story was promptly lost by a friend I'd lent it to.

hmm. I've rambled. Sorry.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

I was four. I got my mother to teach me the alphabet, and I wrote it phonetically.

It was about some little boy who thought everyone had forgotten his birthday, but then he turned out to have a surprise party.

I know, I know...how could a four-year-old come up with such an original idea, you ask? Well, I think I got it off Sesame Street. So I guess I wasn't really writing it in the sense it was really my own work.

And just for the record, the last story I managed to actually finish was about a ten-year-old psychopath who murders his brother. Pleasant, eh? ;)

[whitecrow0.livejournal.com]

I can't remember what my first story was. I wrote a lot of poetry and short fiction when I was young. In fourth grade I wrote "Thomas Explores the House," which was about a boy and his two friends encountering secret passages and cobwebs and ghosts. That year, I also wrote a Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman ripoff about four girls with wings and bird-beak helmets who needed a fifth member for their team to help them fight a demented mask-wearing man of evil. All of the girls had names that began with "C" for some reason. The fifth member of the team emerged into their universe from this one by opening a door she shouldn't have at a planetarium. The story was called "The Door to Outer Space."
In fourth grade, I also wrote "The White Stallion," which probably made Alex Farley throw up.

In sixth and seventh grade, I wrote stories about a moon of Saturn and the mythical beasts on it. Unicorns and dragons and creatures I made up. I also was in love with Pern at the time and created my own world just like it, except instead of "Thread," the menace was "Grain," which is really embarassing to admit, and girls could ride green dragons (which at the time, the books said they shouldn't.) I illustrated those stories too. But I don't have much left over from my childhood; I get very destructive with my stuff.

[phantom_wolfboy]

Hmmm. I don't remember the first story I wrote; I was always writing stories. My favourite class was English because we had the creative writing part. I remember the son of a friend of my parents, with whom I was forced to associate, always wanted to hear this one story about a snowman that came to life and battled the army, only to melt in the nick of time. That one I probably wrote in grade two or three. In grade three or four, I wrote a 12 page, double-spaced on one-side of foolscap, profusely illustrated Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche called, A haunted House on Venus. For some reason I no longer remember, I wound up reading it to half the school (ie--officially).

The first story

[alphafem.livejournal.com]

I wrote my first story when I was 6 years old. I don't remember much about it. It featured myself and Scott, my current crush at the time. It was a tense mystery filled with atmosphere and suspense. Or as much as a six year old could muster. I remember there was rain and it was night.
And about the interactive journal, my friends and I did something like that in high school too. We'd pass notes back and forth between classes written by fictional characters. We called them 'soap notes' (short for soap operas, of course) because everytime our heroines were happy, something would happen to ruin it for them. At times it almost became a competition to see who could make the worse things happen to the others. We had kidnappings, miscarriages, divorces, misunderstandings, deaths, disappearances, reappearances. You name it, it happened during the three or four year period that we were doing this.
I still have most of those notes, as well as pretty much everything I've ever written. Lots of fun to go back and read them!