What’s a story that you worked on for while but completely scrapped later on?

@kathleenramm Haha! That story sounds intriguing though. I would have totally loved that when I was younger XD

Sooo, once I wrote a story about a girl that was an orphan during world war 1 (or two?). She lived in the alleys, and one day, while looking for food in the local garbage dump, she discovered a world full of fairies and tiny people that lived under the trash pile. She fell into their trash world and shrunk, where she met and fell in love with the young trash Prince. They lived happily ever after in their trash pile. The trash end XD

….However, right around that time, the cartoon movie Epic came out, which was similar enough that I got disappointed and quit it. Fun times XD

Hm… This question is tough for me to answer because I don’t often work on stories for a long time and then completely scrap them. If I work on something for a while, it means there’s something to the story that keeps my attention for an extended period of time, and even if the story is largely unsalvageable, I’ll still keep it around in case I find a way to save whatever I liked about it later.

Actually.

I do have a couple that I worked on for a long time and don’t expect I’ll revisit later. Both, actually, I was in the process of editing for publication when I realized they weren’t worth the work. One was a novel called House of Mages that was about a community of mages that was under tyrannical leadership by what turned out to be a demon. The main character was the demon’s daughter (who didn’t know her dad was a demon) and she was accompanied two of her friends, and the three of them stopped their community from being overtaken by her dad’s boss and his demon hordes.

The other was about… Wow, what was the main conflict? I’m completely drawing a blank now. I think it might have just been a trade issue, come to think of it. Trade had stopped between this fantasy nation’s capital and its region of dwarves to the northeast, so a wise old man got an elf fisherman, a ranger, and an assassin to go figure out what the problem was and they ended up deposing a cruel dwarf leader and… getting trade going again, I guess. I don’t remember why the elf was there. The ranger was familiar with the dwarves, and had history with the leader they got rid of. The assassin was trying to find her birth family, which I think only tied in because of a pendant that the dwarves had crafted. Trying to summarize it now from memory I’m wondering how in the world I got as far with it as I did; it’s totally incoherent. XD XD

But that second one did inspire a different book about that same assassin, which evolved into a giant fantasy trilogy that I’m still persisting with after four years, so… it wasn’t a total wash, at least.

There’s only one book I completely ditched (As in, although I had figured out most of the plot, I stopped writing and will most likely not restart.).

I called it The Lady Saphire, after the ship wreak the whole book revolves around. It wasn’t a bad storyline, it probably had a lot of potential, but lacked purpose. It was deleted when the computer crashed, and I never picked it back up.

@kathleenramm

Oof, painful topic. Can’t say I’ve had too many of these ideas, as no idea is too wild for my lil brain from when I wrote the most.

Though, when I was like, eight, my best friend and I wrote a book about two girls who got kidnapped and were rescued. That’s like, the premise of the whole thing. With a dorky happy clumsy crime-boss sidekick, an older thin sketchy pale crime boss, and a clueless confused police officer. I found the written manuscript (with hand-drawn pictures) and I showed it to my friend a few months ago. She suggested we hide/destroy it. It was so bad.

@kathleenramm

Prose. Plots are still a struggle, and themes and characters are both a lot better but still a little hit-or-miss. My prose is still a little bare sometimes, but it’s at least much less stilted than it was then, lol.

@kathleenramm

Oh dear. Peeks at random note book scribbles. Quickly hides them.

I started a few stories that I have never finished (most of them were for school. All one needs to know right there.). The last one was about Avery, Son of the Wood – *cough*. So basically, there are two groups of people, the Plainsmen and the Wood People (they were based a little off elves, just very human). The Plainsmen despise the Wood People and say they’re insane and aren’t worth half a boot’s toe. Of course the Wood People are brilliant and are led by a wise king(Avery’s father). It was interesting, but I haven’t finished it.

But upon talking this over with my twin sister, I realized how much one of my unfinished works (I never even got the first chapter done.) has influenced Eirtan.

The Exiles of Pike’s Peak was the working title. The premise was that many years ago, a country was overtaken, and the royalty forced to flee for their lives. They split into two groups, one dwelling in the plains, and one eking out a life in the mountains. They promised each other they would reunite one day and retake the throne.

That’s the background, but the plot never really got anywhere. Now after my sister mentioned it, I see where points have carried over into my current WIP.