/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2687793]

Hey, /lit/.

Remember your first attempt at writing a story? And not the ones you churned out for school or whatever, the tale that you were convinced would change the literary world! Tell us about them.

Mine was a 12 page story named "Afro" written when I was about 6/7. A typical fantasy adventure influenced more by vidya than books. The title was the name of the main villain who was a giant brown creature with a big mouth. I had no idea that afro was even a word, same with "Satan" who was a wizard in the story. I thought I was just making up fantasy sounding names.

>my parents faces after reading it

[Anonymous No.2687799]

I wrote 40 pages of a novella about a romance during the summer.

I'm going to go back to it and finish it off this summer.

[Anonymous No.2687796]

bump

[Anonymous No.2687803]

>Using words you don't know the meaning of
I remember playing Unreal Tournament and naming myself "Pimp"

My story was about a winter storm of biblical proportions that was coming towards New England to wipe everything out. I wrote pages, but never got beyond build up. I wrote myself into a dead end after describing how people stranded on a highway built a family-sized fort out of bundles of clothing and junk.

[Anonymous No.2687808]

in 1st grade, mine was a complete rip off of the moomintroll books. i called them "the didds"

[Anonymous No.2687813]

I wanted to write a fantasy novel after playing Final Fantasy Tactics when I was in middle school. I couldn't figure out how to write transitions from battle to battle, so I wrote about how a magic cottage could be generated each time they finished a fight for them to eat and sleep in and they'd then travel to more fights via a portal. The last thing I remember writing was a fight in a cave that was pitch black except for the monsters green eyes. So each time the monsters opened their eyes to attack the heroes could see them. Otherwise both sides were basically fighting blind.

[Anonymous No.2687816]

>Satan the magician rising up and challenging the evil Afro.

I would pay money to read it.

I haven't yet attempted to write a serious story outside of school work, but I just have one question if I were going to: do we need another dystopian-post-apocalyptic story? Or do we already know that 'dictators are bad!'

[Anonymous No.2687817]

>>2687813
>tfw you and Japanese writers both couldn't figure out how to write the journey in between battles

[Anonymous No.2687821]

>>2687813

Being influenced by video games seems to really harm writing, all the bits that are important like how/why the battle is happening in a book doesn't really matter in a game and you forget to include them as a gamer trying to write, in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.2687823]

>>2687816
How about you write a story about how democracy is bad and dictatorships are more efficient if the dictator is benevolent and capitalist.

Write nonfiction about China is rising over US of A

[Anonymous No.2687825]

>>2687803
That sounds pretty cool to read, at least that last part.

[Anonymous No.2687830]

When I was in the third grade my elementary school had this group called "The Brainstormers" that would make plays out of short stories that the teacher picked. So one kid would win from each grade.

First I wrote a violent story about aliens which I knew my teacher wouldn't pick. Then I was looking at a Teeny Beanie Baby duck I got from McDonald's. My mom had sewn him a little red cape and I called him Super Duck. I wrote a story about how Super Duck wanted super powers like laser eyes but couldn't really get any because he was just a duck with a cape. The story ended with Super Duck saving a drowning duckling by simply swimming and realizing that you don't have to have super powers to be a super hero.

It was a very moralistic story that I knew my teacher would eat up. When the assembly was going on, I was still shocked to hear my name called. They interviewed me on stage and then I got to watch my story acted out with a goofy fat guy dressed as Super Duck in front of the whole school.

[Anonymous No.2687833]

>>2687830
My god, man, it's a really great ending, but that story sounds like you pushed a button on the appeal-to-20something-maternalistic-women machine.

[Anonymous No.2687837]

>>2687833

Right? It was a nice experience, put I honestly feel kind of fucked up knowing that I essentially sold out as a THIRD GRADER by not submitting my alien story and knew that I was doing so at the time.

[Anonymous No.2687838]

>>2687833
Not the same guy, and I may well be homosexual for all I know, but I thought it was adorable.

[Anonymous No.2687843]

>>2687838
It was adorable. Way too saccharine. But, hey, he learned a really important lesson in 3rd grade, which is to KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE and write for them.

Other writers might disagree, and tell you to stick to your guns, but those writers didn't get to see their shit acted out by a fat man in 3rd grade.

[Anonymous No.2687846]

>>2687830

Wow, that's a pretty cool idea. Wish my school would have done that.

Super Duck still sounds better than 90% of children's books today though.

[Anonymous No.2687864]

>dat heartwarming super duck tale

dude if you can draw this shit would blow up the children's market, I feel

[Anonymous No.2687878]

When I was six I read some Greek Mythology (some sort of abridged ya version, from what I remember), and typed out a luckily unfinished terrible ripoff of Hercules' labours on my fathers computer. The dude had a name that started with H and ended in -es too, and he had to fight a giant first, then hunt down some sort of terrible boar, that he burried under an avalanche he caused by shouting very loudly. After those two adventures (so after something like 10 sentences) I just got bored with it, I think.

[Anonymous No.2687889]

>>2687864

http://www.amazon.com/Super-Duck-Jez-Alborough/dp/1933605898/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=
1338668473&sr=1-1

Looks like I'd have to change the name to "Mighty Duck"....actually no...that was a movie. I don't know. I'll never come up with a name as cool as Darkwing Duck though.

....Super Dolan?

[Anonymous No.2687885]

>>2687830
My school did something similar. You would write everyday and your teacher would choose a couple of stories in your class to bring to parent volunteers so they could type it up and make a book out of it. The one story of mine that my teacher picked was about a goldfish that wanted to be a whale. It was a pretty pathetic story, and I even spelled whale wrong.

[Anonymous No.2687892]

Stream of consciousness short written when I was 13 about my first day of my second year of school (which was a boarding school). It's fucking awful.

[Anonymous No.2687894]

>Ten years old
>Always did specific projects each term
>One term we had to get into pairs and create a picture book that we would then read to grade twos
>Pair off with my bff, we got this
>Story is about an evil race of golem-esque dolls whos evil princess is kidnaped by the good guys, a race of porcelain-like dolls because they wish to obtain the secret of her life energy
>The evil Golem knight has to go and rescue her
>The good guys eneded up being smashed to peices because of some stupid reason, the 'moral' of the story was "dont provoke those stronger than you"
>the teachers face when

[Anonymous No.2687900]

My first big attempt was in sophomore year of high school.

Roughly 150 pages of space-opera mixed with religious sci-fi and an enormous amount of beta-forever-aloneness.

Major influences were Iain Banks, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip K. Dick at the time.

[Anonymous No.2687906]

>>2687878

I love that kind of ignorance we all had as kids that just meant we would attempt something like that thinking it would go unnoticed, haha.

Now if I attempt to write something I'm just paranoid that the idea isn't my own and I've accidently stolen an episode of Quantum Leap or something. But at like six I would have just called it Quantum Jump and would have given no fucks.

[Anonymous No.2687916]

I'm not even sure if I ever attempted to really write a story. I was really into comics and Mark Twain as a kid, but if I try to think about doing something creative I can't think of anything. The only thing that I recently discovered when I was going through some school notebooks etc. was that I apparently wrote a poem about autumn. I've read through it and I was astounded at the level of depression you can detect in these lines and I wasn't even really depressed. It has somewhat of a Rilke-ean flavour to it (we were required to memorize a poem every week and I really liked the Panther etc.), it's not even that bad for a ~12(?) year old I think.

[Anonymous No.2687927]

I had to write a 1 or 2 page historical fiction in the 2nd or 3rd grade, but I expanded on it.
It was about a peasant boy in London named Ricco (Yes, I stole it from the thief lord. I couldn't think of a name.) He lived via thievery. He decided to stow away on a ship to the new world, thinking that he could be an apprentice or something once he was over there.
Looking back, I feel like the writing was pretty solid for my age. Too bad I never have any ideas anymore, and on the rare occasion I try to write it turns in to some weird meta shitfest.

[Anonymous No.2687942]

>>2687927


>Too bad I never have any ideas anymore, and on the rare occasion I try to write it turns in to some weird meta shitfest.

I know that feel. But yeah the premise for your story doesn't sound too bad. Did he ever get to the new world or was it just an aspiration to keep him going kinda thing?

[Anonymous No.2687950]

>>2687894
>the 'moral' of the story was "don't provoke those stronger than you"
Holy fuck, I just lol'd hard.
You were an awesome ten year old.

[Anonymous No.2687964]

I think I wrote Doom fanfic in middle-school, does that count?

[Anonymous No.2687966]

>>2687942
The story ended with the coastline in sight.
Most of it took place on the boat, with the depressing shit wrapping up in the first 10 pages or so. He was caught early on, but the sailor took pity on him and helped him hide.
It's pretty fuzzy in my memory, and I don't have a copy.
I do recall thinking I was a comic genius, because at one point the sailor tells him to act like peaches or something (he had to hide), and the kid dove in a crate and said "do not be alarmed. I am not a child, but a sack of peaches".
Good times.

[Anonymous No.2687971]

>>2687966

>and the kid dove in a crate and said "do not be alarmed. I am not a child, but a sack of peaches".

I chortled.

[Anonymous No.2687972]

The first story I ever recall writing was in first grade.

It was about pink and purple ducks that lived in a pond that a urban development group was going to fill in and build over.

I didn't get much further than that.

[Anonymous No.2687982]

>>2687972

I'm sensing a tie in with the super duck story mentioned in this thread.

Could be big /lit/!

[Anonymous No.2688012]

>>2687982

>>super duck attempts to halt the housing development
>>super duck is flattened by a bulldozer because he has no superpowers
>>A few dozen white suburbanites move in on top of the filled-in remains of the old pond
>>They all live betaly ever after
>>the end

[Anonymous No.2688175]

I've wanted to write about Human Nature forever, but, so far, not working out.

[Anonymous No.2688675]

When I was 12 I wrote about 10 pages of what I didn't know at the time was fan-fic. It was when I played kingdom hearts and was about Cloud Strife. Didn't change his name, just had him fight monsters with a cool dog sidekick. Was fun. I think the only reason I wrote it was because I got this nice, velvet covered blue notebook from Borders and wanted to use it.

Realized I have it in my drawers, so here's a few gems from it, lol:
>First person POV, I am cloud
>Drawings of Cloud all over
>called "Journal Vaquinix"
>tons of made up words for creatures that I probably thought sounded cool: Keedle, Soul Splin, Witch King, Lulalee, Eock, Limb Golem, Zhot
The first line:
>The breeze was so swift that it pierced my skin, and when passing over my gauntlets, made a soft whistle
Yea. Want more of this beautiful story?

[Anonymous No.2688862]

When I was about 12 I wrote a story about a fictional war where a bunch of guys are captured by the enemy and put in a cell together. they constantly backstab each other so that the guards will favor them, but then one day the prison is bombed and they all escape. Trying to survive in an unfamiliar country, they realize that they're only chance is to work together, despite everything that happened when they were POWs. It ended with one character getting rescued and everyone else killed, and he reflects that he doesn't really deserve to live. My brother was in Iraq at the time, so maybe that had something to do with it.

[Autist !!kZEFQaMUdBz No.2688871]

Earliest I remember was getting published in the 5th Grade, for an 'invitational' writing camp to a local college. Still have the book, and if I recall correctly, it was the longest entry in it.
>it was and still is horse shit