What were your first written stories about?

@theducktator

If I remember correctly, John Adams fell down George’s chimney and landed in a boiling pot of oatmeal.

Oh my word, I was laughing out loud when I read this! And this:

but one of them had started a rebellion which had to be put down, and he was sentenced to have his hair dyed with glitter and wash all the palace dishes “except the knives. He can’t be trusted with them.”

Oh the horror of the glitter dye! Lol!

Anywayyyy… my first stories were not quite so dramatic. The first one I actually remember writing I did on paper when I was about six, and I roped my brothers into helping me. We basically created characters based on ourselves, and I let them name their characters, which maybe wasn’t the brightest idea, but it’s kinda funny. The three MC’s were Elizabeth, Ben, and Gummy (my youngest brother was like 2 at the time). Essentially, someone started leaving clues for them to follow, sort of like a treasure hunt. I don’t remember what the end of the treasure hunt was, or if I even finished the whole story. It was supposed to be a chapter book, but my chapters were like three paragraphs, if even that, lol.

I think I had a handful of other short stories that I never completed, but as I got a little older, I started writing stories based on my family’s vacations, with fictionalized characters based off my own family (adding a sister that I never had but wanted, lol).

At one point, probably in middle school, I was inspired by the game Forbidden Island and wrote a story about six siblings who fell through a doorway and all ended up in different parts of the island and had to try to find each other while facing the dangers of the island. They each were given certain abilities that correlated with the roles given to players of the game (like navigator, messenger, etc), and once they found one another, they had to discover four hidden treasures and get off the island before it all sank under water.

I should go back through some of my old notebooks and read some of my old stories… I bet I’d find things I forgot about.

@whalekeeper

The first stories I wrote were for a writing circle I was in when I was very little. I know I wrote an story about a pet bat which was named ‘Bat’, and one called ‘Pontoon Boat Catastrophe’, which I still have, actually. I posted it over a year ago in Sara’s ‘what’s the cringiest thing you’ve ever written forum’.

After that I had one blatant Green Ember ripoff (that I wrote one page of) and one contemporary that was an obvious combination of two other contemporaries I’d read.

Im sure there was more but I don’t really remember any of them.

The first story I remember writing…

Well, a long time ago… I mostly just started a bunch of random stories with phrases like “There once was a little girl who was very, very, ugly” or “Charlotte was a cat who didn’t like mice” (I liked the name Charlotte for no explainable reason) and then left them at a few sentences long and forgot about them. I still find these almost story beginnings in random files, although most of them have met their end by now.

I remember dictating a story for my (older sister? Dad?) to type for me. I had gotten about two sentences in and decided to change a word as I went. My typist, instead of making my edit, proceeded to write down every word I said. The story ended there. XD

But the first story I got really serious about writing came when I was probably 11? 12? In it “mysterious” 13 year old Tabithena, her little brother named Mitch or Michael, and their two younger cousins (all orphaned, of course) were setting out to save Felinatimathia from the ravenous pirate dogs–or wolves since I wasn’t sure which sounded more dramatic (Tabi and family were cats of course), along which journey they would find out the truth of their parents deaths by plague and murder, find the true heir to the throne, and meet a bunch of traveling master archers who would all be astonished at Tabi’s skill with a bow but contribute absolutely nothing else to the story. Oh, and there were pancakes.

I may have finished the second might be 500 word chapter. I don’t remember.

I have often said that the first story I “wrote” was a picture book about a fairy that looked like a banana peal. I was between 6-7 at the time, I don’t remember.

My actually “written” stories include several I wrote for school, and some I wrote just for funsies. I found a folder of them recently, and laughed till I cried.

One was about a girl named Sarah and her sister who had a secret fort in the woods and had stick swords that they defended it with. One day their house.. or the bank… was robbed, and they save the day by chasing down the guy with their swords because he thought they were real. The End.

My first “chapter” story was about two-three “chapters” long, and four sides of paper counting the illustrations. It was about the tiniest flying squirrel named Chichi. She wanted to join in a race because she was old enough (like, 7) and very fast, but the two bullies in school (Ha-Na and another that has slipped memory) tell her she’s too small. She is very sad, but her family (ie. brother and parents) convince her not to listen to the meanies. So she races, wins first place, and brings home a huge prize of several thousand chestnuts. She takes a nap. The End.

Then there was a tall tale about the tiniest cat ever who outsmarted the pound owner. And then there was also one I started about a girl who could only speak in song.

So yeah, obstinate, undersized girls with great families (unless they were orphans) and apparently secret powers.

I also wrote poetry. There is one that chronicles a storm, and another about a cat that ate a bird. Then there are several that are so vague and ominous it’s hard to read them without laughing ruefully. (Fun Fact: Rueful was one of my favorite words for a while. As was aggregate/agate)