Horrendous stories I wrote as a child + what I learned from them

 

Hello lovely people! Today I’m doing a tag created by Abbiee. I saw it on her blog around a month ago and knew I had to do it. And then I was tagged by Amanda at SKG Fun (an amazing blog),  so here I am. Thanks, Amanda!

Now, before I begin, let’s note that I didn’t finish every one of these stories, because I was a scatterbrained young writer who abandoned things she got bored with in favor of new, shiny, glorious ideas.

HAHAHA WHO AM I KIDDING. I still am that scatterbrained young writer.

I also don’t actually have real titles for most of these. The files were usually just named after the main characters. (Who had… really weird names. I kind of had a thing for them.)

All of them are fantasy, because I didn’t write anything but fantasy with the occasional splash of historical fiction for three or four years. No joke. Only recently I’ve started branching out into different genres.

One last note: I have so many files on my computer with these abandoned stories (I counted once a long time ago and the story-count was over 80) and they are all horrendous. Some more so than others. BUT SADLY there is only so much room in a blog post and nobody wants to listen to me ramble all the live-long day.

So, here are (just a few of) my cringey, dreadful stories that I wrote forever-and-ever ago. Hoorah.

Hope you enjoy.

I told you I had a thing for weird names.

So, I wrote this three or four years ago when I was obsessed with fairy tales. Like seriously obsessed. I read through most of all the different “colored” fairy books – The Red Fairy Book, Blue, Violet, etc. And I decided I wanted to write my own fairy tale, which is how this oddity came into existence.

It’s one of the few I actually finished, and it’s… remarkably short. 268 words long. I can hardly even write a scene that short now.

• So there’s this girl named Raziela (shocking, I know), and she lives in a cottage. With her dog, Jock, that her fairy godmother gave her when she was a baby.
• I don’t know how old she is exactly but I’m pretty sure she’s around ten.
• Apparently there are no such things as parents.
• And she’s walking in the woods –
• and she runs into her godmother. Who just happens to be a –
• YOU GUESSED IT. Fairy. Obviously! This is a fairy tale!
• clichés everywhere help
• Her fairy godmother (whose name is… Adenine. I WARNED YOU.) gives her a piece of paper and I’m not even going to tell you what she tells Razzy to do with it because it’s weird and would take too long to say.
• So Razzy does the thing with the paper and pours it over her dog’s head and he turns into a boy. And then her godmother Addy appears and guess what? The boy is her long lost twin brother!
• Yaaaay.
• His name is… wait for it.
• RAZIEL.
• HA.
• They hug and live happily ever after the end…
• Except when their house got attacked by ogres.
• THAT IS LITERALLY, WORD-FOR-WORD WHAT I WROTE.
• Somebody help.

I’m not sure but I think I might have showed this to my family. Proudly, I’m sure. NOOOOO.

Don’t name your protagonist and her long-lost brother Raziela and Raziel. Just no.

Fairy godmothers that fix everything are cliché. DON’T USE THEM.

The absolute best way to end your story is by having ogres attack the protagonists’ home. (Kidding… kidding.)

 

I’m not even going to put the last part of the title because it’s just too embarrassing and why did I do that anyway.

Another of my pitiful fairy tale attempts. I honestly can’t remember if this one came before or after Razzy.

I wrote one version of this first, and it was absolutely dreadful. And then a month or two later I decided I still really liked the story and rewrote it. It actually turned out pretty funny.

FIRST VERSION

• Elwyn is a goose girl who’s engaged to her sweetheart Harlan (who’s a shepherd). (I kind of had a thing for goose girls. Don’t ask why. I know nothing about geese.)
• There are no paragraph breaks, just breaks for every scene.
• A random prince of randomness (his name is Wilmet) happens to drive by her and stops because she’s so beautiful. (YAY CLICHÉ!) Then he asks her to marry him. (YAY INSTALOVE!)
• She says no because she’s betrothed.
• I used the word betrothed and lover a lot.
• #help
• Wilmet obviously kidnaps her and carries her off to his dungeon because she won’t marry him and asks her every single day to please marry him and she says no every time because she still loves Harlan.
• Ellie gets romantically pale because she isn’t getting enough food and is wasting away.
• Harlan brings her a letter, slips it through the window, and runs away.
• It’s from her grandmother (who is a fairy! Surprise!)
• I’m just kind of going to skim over this part because it’s more cringey than the rest, but the gist of it is that a dwarf named Kael comes out of nowhere, teleports her to her long-lost parent’s kingdom, and reveals to her that her parents are king and queen of a random country of randomness that was taken over by the Evil Uncle™. Apparently just today the Royal Parents defeated the Evil Uncle and therefore the Royal Grandmother sent for Elwyn.
• Huzzah.
• Elwyn is reunited with her parents. Waterworks ensue.
• She marries Harlan and they have eleven children. YAY. HAPPY ENDING.

Elwyn basically did nothing the entire story.

Then I rewrote it so that it was sliiiightly more interesting and actually a little funny.

Some of the additions included:

• GLORIOUS PARAGRAPH BREAKS
• a sarcastic Elwyn.
• also a slightly snarky Kael
• not as many uses of the words betrothed and lover wooo
• a mean goose named Hilda
• a Queen who faints at everything
• Elwyn’s wedding preparations being a disaster
• lots of scenes ending with “Mother fainted” or “at least Mother didn’t faint.”
• Elwyn getting her geese as a wedding present
• mother fainted. the end

 

Don’t do the instalove thing. Please. Or the she’s-so-beautiful-everyone-falls-in-love-with-her thing. Blech.

Let your protagonist actually do something, and not just be transported around by magical elves and dwarfs and godmothers.

Don’t try to write romance at age eleven.

Well, it had a few names, but no real name. It was a really strange fantasy story that I’m not even sure where I was going with it because I ended it at a little over 6,000 words. It featured a widely varied cast of characters and focused on three main characters.

Some bits and bobs about the horror:

• A farm boy (Colin) and his mother (Ilka) lose their home.
• An orphan boy named Trouble and his best friend, a girl called Spark (yeah, she had flaming red hair and an impish personality. ohhh the clichés) live in an orphanage together.
• A whole hierarchy in the orphanage. It actually was kind of awesome. Diplomatic missions and rival schools and stuff. Yeah.
• A bunch of really bad characters descriptions
• And the accents ohhhhh the accents
• someone send help please
• A princess named Cypress whose father wishes she was a boy. And guess what. She thinks it would be a good idea to disguise herself as a boy and run away. Obviously she has a perfectly trim boy-like figure. (Yeah THAT’S really realistic)
• That was such a bad idea.
• Just no.
• Colin makes friends with Trouble, whose mother brought him to take refuge in the orphanage.
• Then Trouble’s mother comes back and reveals that he’s a sort of mutant (I AM NOT EVEN GOING INTO THIS UGH.). Help.
• And obviously they know it’s her because they look into her eyes
• Spark and Colin are in the same room as Trouble so they insist on going wherever his mother is taking him
• because they’re such good friends wooo
• like Colin has known them for one day
• and they go off into the woods to this weird mutant camp
• why are they even going with this woman
• #strangerdanger
• and all of the sudden Trouble’s this awesome tracker and stuff
• because it’s in his blood apparently
• Cypress (remember her?) is going after the mutant people because she wants to make her daddy proud
• and then it ends with Spark wanting lunch. No joke.
• I obviously didn’t finish this one.

Please don’t write accents that you don’t know a thing about.

And don’t send your characters off with strange people for no good reason.

I really like writing orphan characters.

So! Hope you enjoyed that. I didn’t get to do half of all the ones I wanted to do, because the post was getting long. I might make a part two, if y’all would be interested in reading it! : ) Hope you have a wonderful week!