- This topic has 18 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 11 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
What’s a story idea that you worked on for while, but completely scrapped part way through the writing process? Why?
I have MANY. However, the one that sticks out to me most was a story I wrote when I was nine to ten-years-old.
It was about a girl name Beatrice who lived with her Grandma in an un-mobile mobile home. The entire town despised Beatrice and her Grandma. Beatrice thinks it’s because they are jealous of her epic side-kick cow, however it’s really because they are extremely annoyed by the epic side-kick cow. So Beatrice’s only friend is her grandma and of course, the epic side-kick cow.
One day she goes to a park and meets boy on a park bench who is enthralled with the book he is reading. Like, the kind of book that you’d still make time to read even if the world was literally ending and your essay is due in 2 hours.
Before the book boy leaves, Beatrice says hello to him and to her surprise he actually kindly greeted her back. Something that no one has ever done to her before. After a quick meeting, the book boy quickly says goodbye and runs towards the forest where is house apparently is located. Beatrice was about to leave as well, until she realized the book boy had left his book behind! Oh no! Little did she know what she was getting herself into when she took on the task to return the book to the book boy.
It was a very childish story, and my writing was… what you’d expect from an average nine-year-old. But I have fond memories of writing it.
I scraped it simply because I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen next, and everything I tried to come up with was… weird? Didn’t make sense? Something remencinent of a wack Disney sequel? Something like that.
Anyways, my eleven-year-old self was much more interested in writing a story about an Angsty Teenage Glassblower. Ha. So goodbye Beatrice and her epic side-kick cow!
What about you? What’s a story you’ve scrapped and why did you ditch it?
@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
"It's easy to be caught up in stardust and whispers when reality is so dark and loud."
Hmmm… maybe I’ll go back to Beatrice and her cow one day. Because yeah, now looking at it there’s a lot of cool ways I could direct the story.
lol. Nothing like a movie or book coming out with a premise oddly similar to the one you are working on to crush your motivation, haha. That’s happened to me at least once before, but I don’t remember what it was.
What’s kind of funny, is that your story also sounds like something my younger self would enjoy! I absolutely loved fairies when I was younger.
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.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
@kathleenramm My second short story I was going to start. It was going to be about characters in a story who were going to be fighting these monsters at the end of the world, but they were kind of like actors in a movie setup with the Narrator as the director. The story would alternate between them inside the Story and their lives outside of the Story. I got through a couple scenes and made up the characters but I never did get beyond that. Which is a shame because at the time it seemed like a great idea to me.
Lately, it's been on my brain
Would you mind letting me know
If hours don't turn into daysThere’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.
First Grand Historian of Arreth and the Lesser Realms (aka Kitty)
Fork the GorkTwo words.
Hunterclone Run.
A VERY badly done Star Wars: The Last Jedi fanfic. I’m not even going to mention how many plot holes and strange twists in the story there were.
I actually finished it, and realized it was really pathetic, and was going to rewrite it but never did.
Actually, I have a much better example. Lizard Bass (I know, it’s not the best name) was a cute story about a little lizard who makes friends with some fish and dinosaurs. And then the velociraptor got captured by a helicopter, and the lizard had to find a time-traveling white tiger who could help him save his friends. At least I think that’s what happened. I don’t quite remember because I never finished it.
Where'd I get ya this time? The liver? The kidney? I'm runnin' outta places to put holes in ya.
House of Mages actually sounds pretty cool. What was wrong with that made you not go through with publication?
Woah, that’s a cool idea. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an idea like that. It sounds like a tricky story to write, but you should totally try going back to that story when you have the time.
It’s really a shame how your computer crashed, it’s always fun reading old work no matter how much of a train wreck it is. Plus it also ends up giving me new story ideas as well.
What was the premise of The Lady Saphire?
@keilah-h
A time-traveling white tiger is brilliant. Even if you don’t go back to write that story, you’ve got to put Mr. Time-Traveling Tiger in a future story of yours.A LOT of things, lol. The characters were all one-dimensional, the plot meandered, it was theme-less, the villain was incredibly non-threatening (especially for being a demon), my prose was lousy…
I was only about… 15 when I was working on it? Which doesn’t necessitate that it was awful, lol, but I’ve grown a lot with my writing in the few years since. I could probably rewrite it now and make it work, but I would need to do all of my prewriting and draft it all over again because so much of it didn’t work in the drafts I have, lol.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
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.
Ah, yeah. I think we’ve all have written stories all too similar to the traits you described.
Out of all the things lacking in House of Mages, what area do you think you’ve improved the most in writing since then?
@anatra23
Haha, that’s hilarious. It kinda reminds me of the first story I wrote which was literally just the story of the Tortoise and Hare except with different animals.Yeah, I was super creative with my writing back then lol.
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.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
@kathleenramm
No way! My first story was fanfic too!! XDOh dear. Peeks at random note book scribbles. Quickly hides them.
I started a
fewstories 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.
You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you... Are you brave again? -Aslan
Ugh. That is VERY annoying. I have had similar things happen, and I could have sued someone.
A funny story though: So I have a country in one of my WIPs that is called Dorwin. The citizens were called Dorwinians. Imagine my shock when I read the Hobbit and found out the elves have Dorwinian wine. The amazed, even fascinated, horror. How did I, having never read any of his books, have stolen a name? Or more accurately, how could Tolkein plagiarize me?
I ended up tweaking the name a bit, but now I can’t remember which was which, so I’m just sticking with what I have and hoping for the best.
You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you... Are you brave again? -Aslan
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.