Share Your Cringe-Worthy First Stories

Here's where you can air your dirty laundry of stories you wrote when you were just starting to put pen to paper - and you cringe when looking back on them, wondering what you were thinking!

I wrote a story about the Backstreet Boys and I, where one by one they were turning into vampires and werewolves and they were fighting over who got to hang out with me. Haha! It was a very teen-crush inspired plot line. I threw it away when the hormones cleared from my head, but I honestly wish I hadn't. I think I could have learnt from it, if only just to see how far my writing has developed.

Just for fun, share a short synopsis of your oh-bury-me-now story, so that when you become great authors we can remind you of your humble roots

My first story was written in size fifteen font, some type of crazy cursive scripts, and I changed the page color to yellow. It was about two kids who jumped in a well that lead to an alternate dimension, where they were stocked by an evil troll (which in my story were anthropomorphic alligators), with a crow with a matching class eye that allowed the troll and crow to share vision, and this is a long run on sentence, there were a bunch of these in my first story.

The first story I ever wrote was called "The acsident" and starred a young boy named Christopher Money Jenkins (not even kidding) on a quest to make the generic female love interest fall in love with him.

One of the plot points involved Chris pushing his best friend, who was allergic to wasps, into a "pile of wasps". Then he realizes that it's wrong to push people into wasps.

I stopped writing somewhere after he almost committed murder.

Y'all preceding me -- some fluty ideas. Might be a few rewrites are in order; these are all the kind of off-base beats that lend themselves well to the more detached, "mature" perspective age brings. Christopher Money Jenkins would be my main man, trolls and crows sharing visions in an alternate dimension tickle my fancies, and Backstreet Boys inhabit the nostalgic sweet-spot for the '90s generation.

Don't toss gold just because it's covered with a layer of dust.

Well said Prok!

Like I said, I believe that I should have kept my story. I actually thought that shared glass eye of Paracosm's story was pretty awesome too! I'd advice him to use that element in a new story or even polish that gold of the original story.

There's a great podcast series run by some great authors and interesting people called Writing Excuses. In one of the podcasts (http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/08/08/writing-excuses-4-31-line-editing-dialog/), they focussed on an early story of one of the published authors. This was refreshing, because they intentionally broke the myth that all published authors were proud of their work from day one. They advised beginner writers to just practice finishing their first few books, because that in itself is a key learning process that can't be skipped. No matter how we feel we fall short of the greats, we have to be more forgiving of our own shortcomings and push through until typing the words, "The End".

That's a struggle which I still have to deal with. I have to resist dropping my stories midway with a melodramatic cry of "what's the use!" just because I'm not writing as brilliant a story as I feel I 'should' be. It's so great to hear that even authors in the publishing world felt the exact same way. But worked through those feelings and finished anyway. Again and again.

My first story was unnamed...it was about a boy whose family was kidnapped and, naturally, the only way to rescue them was to go become a pirate...

The pirate went to go avenge them by simply capturing the guy that took them and he became his servant. Not enough death or rape. Not accurate in terms of how pirate stories go.

Anyway, it was based off of the plot of Sid Meier's Pirates!, but mine was dumbed down and I tried putting substance onto a game that isn't story-centric (the story in the game was really just a conceptual backdrop of ambience to allow the player the option to go on an intentionally cliched, but kid friendly, hollywood adventure/PotC parody).

Ironically I have since returned to the concept, since I love pirates, purged all of the videogame references and people surviving, and created the beginnings of a gritty tale of death, betrayal, rape, murder, debauchery, maiming, castration, treasure, women, more treasure, more women, ships, action, whorehouses, and more treasure.

Despite the gritty and dark and realistic nature that the revival has since taken I still stick to its roots.

I only wrote forty pages of it, which is a lot when you're ten.

The first ~*proper*~ story that I wrote was called bridges. It was about a girl and her friends sneaking into a haunted house on the protagonist's birthday. The haunted house turned out to be a surprise party! Then the mayor of the town invited the protag upstairs to give her a present, which was a cursed necklace, that ended up killing the protag. I never ended up giving the mayor a motive. >.<

Here is the first story I wrote in English when I was nine years old (my mum helped me a lot). Preserved are all punctuation and spelling issues. Enjoy.

Natalie’s Birthday

Natalie’s best friends are Lily and Brenda. And today is Natalie’s birthday.
She will be ten years old.
She got book about dogs as a birthday gift from her mother in the morning.
The next day Brenda and Lily go to buy a gift for Natalie. They buy her
a diary. It’s very beautiful.
They also bought a necklace.Now they go to buy a card.
Then Lily and Brenda leave the shop.
Brenda says: ”Let’s go to my house!” That’s what they did.
Lily suggests:”Let’s wrap the presents.” On the card they write:”Happy
birthday Natalie! from Lily and Brenda.” Then they dress up for the
party. The party starts at four o’clock p.m.
It’s two o’clock.
They have two hours time before the party.They start to think what to do.
They decide to play Monopoly.
They play for a long time, and Lily wins the game.Brenda looks at her
watch. It’s time to go to Natalie’s. Her address is 45 Bridge Street.It’s not
far away.
Natalie is already at the door.”Hello! Come in.”she says.
Two other girls,Wendy and Katherine, are already here. They have pretty
clothes. Lily says: ”Oh! You have pretty outfits!”
Somebody knocks at the door. There comes the last guest.
”Her name is Amanda,” tells Natalie. Amanda steps in. She says:”Hi!”
”Welcome,Amanda!” says Natalie.

Natalie’s home is cosy. She has a goldfish. Its name’s Fiorella.
Natalie has no other animals, but Katherine has a rabbit. ”Its name is Binky,”
tells Katherine.
They haven’t been talking long when Natalie’s mother already brings them
something to eat. On the tray there are some snacks: meatballs, pizza,
salt biscuits, carrots and cheese sandwiches. The girls sit down at the
table. Brenda and Lily drink lemonade, Wendy and Natalie drink cocoa and
Amanda and Katherine drink juice.
Soon it’s time for the dessert.
While waiting for it, they play a round of memory. This time Amanda wins
the game.
In the next moment, Natalie’s mom comes with the dessert.
There is a strawberry-cream cake, chocolate, lollipops, ice-cream, biscuits,
sweets and chips. After eating Natalie unwraps her gifts.
Katherine has bought her a book, The Lord of the Rings. Natalie likes it
very mutch.
Wendy gives her a set of crayons and a note book.
Amanda gives her ”Ice Cold” from the book series named Replica. Lily’s
and Brenda’s gift is a necklace and a diary. Natalie likes her gifts a lot.
After unwrapping the presents they decide to watch tv.
”Who wants To Be a Millionaire” is on. The program lasts 45 minutes
”What’s the time?” asks Wendy.
Katherine glanced at her watch. ”Oh! It’s half past six!” tells Katherine.
It’s time for the girls go home.
Natalie says: ”Bye bye!” to everyone.

THE END

Here is my first story. It's amazing. Darn right I would be proud of that movie.

(written when I was seven.)

Emergencey Bike Spys:

Chapter One:

Lucy Patcon was in her Office. She had long blonde hair in a plait. Her twinkling brown eyes shone like stars. Suddenly Maria burst in. Maria had long brown hair dangeling over her shoulders. Her eyes were lighte blue jewls. 'Princess Sarah-Louise has been kidnapped,' she said getting her breath back. 'No magic this time,' said Lucy. 'It's not like making daisy chains.' They got on their and helped each other onto the Superbikes. They drove to the city. Lucy saw they needed to find Sarah Louise. People just can't be trusted she thought-

@Spotswood, I think if you had written the debauchery version of your pirate story when you were 10, you'd need therapy! It's best that you saved that for later haha!

@Demeter, you're lucky (?) you have a copy of your first story word for word! When I started everything was written in the spare school workbooks I stole begged or borrowed... in a way, I was like one of Spotswood's pirates, finding treasure buried... in my mind? Sort of?

@StellaThomas, can't wait to see those jewels and stars shining from these girls' eye sockets! Send us all tickets to your premiere.

@HighTop, you've got something going there, you've even identified the missing ingredient - motive. That's totally fixable

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Spoiler

EDIT: Did not know I could @ people! Trying it out...

The first stories I actually remember had a lot to do with horses. Me and my second-grade friends would run around and save horses from really bizarre situations (like at one point they were set on fire in China for some reason).

The first one I remember the whole plot of was a story for class in 3rd grade. We were learning about England so we had to use places we learned about in a story. My best friend and I went to England, where we discovered that famous landmarks were being stolen (like the hand from Big Ben). We somehow met the Queen who totally put two American third-graders on the case Somehow we tracked the thief down to the wax museum and found out it was one of the Queen's guards. I think a leaky pen was involved in this. We then had tea with the Queen and lived happily ever after.

I probably have this still, but it's several states away. And I def think it should be a movie. You can't deny it would be better than "Winning London".

@niteowl - that actually sounds amazing. Like, really. Not like "lolz amazing!"

I'm not completely sure what qualifies as my first story.

I wrote a bunch of stuff back in kindergarten and then all through school, but more often than not it was for some assignment - like "think of an ending for this story" or "write a story about your meeting with some famous person".. which all ended up long and weird in my versions, but I can't see them as completely original (although they had almost nothing to do with whatever they were supposed to be based on xD One was about some fox and a bird, in which they both died of cold/hunger/wounds from hunters' traps, and another about some prince and some doors in a castle, which went on and on for pages about how he had to solve some snake's riddle to save a girl named Oleander, who in the end turned into a flower or something like that and he could only see her when he'd pass through those doors 'cause she could never leave the garden behind them.)

But anyway, there's this one story I found recently, which is pretty hilarious.

First of all, let me tell you that it's written in hand and each paragraph is in different colour. I'd post it in its original form, but it's not in English, so have a summary:

Basically, there was this girl, a princess, who really wanted to get married, but had no one to marry. Then one day she walked around a graveyard and met this mysterious pale stranger, and thought to herself something along the lines of "what a charming yet strange gentleman. I wonder if he's available and if my parents would approve."
Her parents did not, I think, but they got married anyway and absolutely no mention of her parents or the fact she as a princess was made from that point on.
At first he was nice and charming, but then eventually he started forcing her into doing things for him, cleaning everything, adhering to his every word and making children.
Somewhere along the way, the readers also got this precious bit of info: "But little did she know that he was in fact a rare kind of vampirezombie, and was up to no good" - and all their kids were just like him. They had twelve(!) of them, and she was essentially a slave to all of them, husband included.

One day, he told her (and I quote), "Wife, go to the volcano and throw yourself in it." and (again, quote) "she did't like the idea of it, but knew she couldn't defy him, so she went and did it anyway." Then the story goes on a bit about how she explores the inside of the volcano at night, and realises she's finally free and alone.
Then there was the epilogue - the next morning, the villagers (who apparently go check out the inside of a volcano every day, idk) found her lifeless body, drained of blood, with 13 bite marks.

I think it was titled something like "Love that kills". I was apparently never fond of "happily ever after"s.

etherealember wrote:@Spotswood, I think if you had written the debauchery version of your pirate story when you were 10, you'd need therapy! It's best that you saved that for later haha!

Trust me, I need therapy, period.

I remember writing a story called "Magic Juice" in second grade, and reading it to the whole class.

It was about a girl who found a bottle and drank the contents ("it tasted like halfway between a ham and a hot dog") and through that, was able to transform into a toucan and a cheetah at will. She used the power to terrorize the bullies on the playground.

lol.