A challenge. Faint of heart be warned

[PenStoryTeller]

A simple challenge to those of you have written a few stories here…

Go back to the first fan-fic you submitted here.

Read it.

Now assuming you haven’t gouged out your own eyes, re-write/re-edit it.

Then compare the two.

I recently did this m’self and it was..  eye opening. to say the least. ‘IT BURNS USSS!!!’ is the only phrase that does the experience of rereading my old fan-fic any justice. It also showed me in a very palpable way how much I’ve progressed in writing. Try it and see what happens.

[BronxWench]

Due to a small mishap, all my stories here got deleted, and so I’m in the process of reposting them. The very first fan fiction I posted here is undergoing edits. Much-needed, sweeping edits, because I can’t possibly repost it without fixing the mistakes first.

[Desiderius Price]

While I’ve glanced at my first fanfic (different site) written/finished fifteen years ago, do I dare read it?  Even more to the point, should I even edit/revise it?  There’s a bit of beauty that it *is* my first, warts and all, that revising it kinda takes away a bit of that early magic.  Sure, I can revise it, polish it up to my standards today, but at what point does it cease being my first story? 

I hear it in music.  Sure, some bands do excellent work after they release their first album, but that first album has a different knack, a different charm, a roughness, an edge that can become quite dull..

 

[CloverReef]

Man oh man. My first fan fic was written… in like the year 1998-1999. I don’t remember what it was. I imagine it was on pen and paper and about the show Breaker High with a lot of pregnancies happening. Most likely in script format. I think the oldest one I submitted on this site in particular – is probably Crossfire. I’ve always kinda wanted to go back and touch it up, because it is the pride and joy of my fanfiction era fics, and it is completed. I probably won’t, but I like to think about it. Maybe I should take this challenge on one of the easy ones. Like a oneshot or something. Does going the easy route defeat the purpose of it being a challenge?

Edited October 1, 2018 by CloverReef

[Praetor]

     I named the file I store my works in on my pen drive ‘The Torture Vault’ in anticipation of exactly this effect.  Most of my early works were either lost or were complete non starts until I began uploading.  I guess that’s a perk of starting comparatively late as well, my first fic doesn’t read any different from my more recent fics.  Which is actually something that bothers me, I feel like there should be some discernible evolution there.  

[CloverReef]

38 minutes ago, Praetor said:

     I named the file I store my works in on my pen drive ‘The Torture Vault’ in anticipation of exactly this effect.  Most of my early works were either lost or were complete non starts until I began uploading.  I guess that’s a perk of starting comparatively late as well, my first fic doesn’t read any different from my more recent fics.  Which is actually something that bothers me, I feel like there should be some discernible evolution there.  

I think different people evolve differently. I’m a fickle bitch, and tend to obsess over small techniques and details so my style changes rapidly. I’ve been writing 2/3rds of my life and yet if I look back at something I wrote six months ago, I’ll still find something to cringe about like “omg I was such an amateur back then!” But I can see how someone who starts writing late that spent their life reading  and subconsciously forming their individual style in their head, might be good right out of the gate. Wordsmithing even comes more naturally to some people where others have to practice and work a lot harder at it. 

[Desiderius Price]

4 hours ago, CloverReef said:

I think different people evolve differently. I’m a fickle bitch, and tend to obsess over small techniques and details so my style changes rapidly. I’ve been writing 2/3rds of my life and yet if I look back at something I wrote six months ago, I’ll still find something to cringe about like “omg I was such an amateur back then!” But I can see how someone who starts writing late that spent their life reading  and subconsciously forming their individual style in their head, might be good right out of the gate. Wordsmithing even comes more naturally to some people where others have to practice and work a lot harder at it. 

If you read my first, you’ll see the evolution in my writing, heck, some reviewers commented to the same effect.  Though it wasn’t until the sequel that I dropped that blasted present tense…

[InvidiaRed]

On 10/1/2018 at 8:39 AM, PenStoryTeller said:

A simple challenge to those of you have written a few stories here…

Go back to the first fan-fic you submitted here.

Read it.

Now assuming you haven’t gouged out your own eyes, re-write/re-edit it.

Then compare the two.

I recently did this m’self and it was..  eye opening. to say the least. ‘IT BURNS USSS!!!’ is the only phrase that does the experience of rereading my old fan-fic any justice. It also showed me in a very palpable way how much I’ve progressed in writing. Try it and see what happens.

I mean, grand inquisition isn’t my first but. I’d have to take it down and re-upload.

[PenStoryTeller]

On 10/1/2018 at 1:42 PM, Desiderius Price said:

While I’ve glanced at my first fanfic (different site) written/finished fifteen years ago, do I dare read it?  Even more to the point, should I even edit/revise it?  There’s a bit of beauty that it *is* my first, warts and all, that revising it kinda takes away a bit of that early magic.  Sure, I can revise it, polish it up to my standards today, but at what point does it cease being my first story? 

I hear it in music.  Sure, some bands do excellent work after they release their first album, but that first album has a different knack, a different charm, a roughness, an edge that can become quite dull..

 

Oh I hear ya. I’m not saying you should remove the old one or destroy it…or even publish the revised version. Just to perform this as a writing exercise. The reason is many aspiring writers tend to hit a point where they are plagued by self doubt. This happens to pro writers too. Sometimes looking back at what you’ve done can give you a bit of perspective. It can also advise you as to what your style may have lost as you developed and what you can do to get it back.

[JayDee]

I looked at my first fanfic recently. My eyes are still bleeding. Mind, my most recent fanfic has much the same effect. Did you know you can write for years and never improve? If not, google the legend that is Andrew Troy Keller / ATK and be amazed.

[Desiderius Price]

3 hours ago, JayDee said:

I looked at my first fanfic recently. My eyes are still bleeding. Mind, my most recent fanfic has much the same effect. Did you know you can write for years and never improve? If not, google the legend that is Andrew Troy Keller / ATK and be amazed.

Bloodshot eyes could just be a symptom of something else….

[JayDee]

Sure, sure, but there’s other symptoms – the ominous latin chanting, the sun suddenly covered by thick cloud, the nearby dogs all howling at once, the creepy ghost girl refusing to come out from the attic. As soon as I close the old fanfic file it all instantly stopped.

[Desiderius Price]

12 hours ago, PenStoryTeller said:

Oh I hear ya. I’m not saying you should remove the old one or destroy it…or even publish the revised version. Just to perform this as a writing exercise. The reason is many aspiring writers tend to hit a point where they are plagued by self doubt. This happens to pro writers too. Sometimes looking back at what you’ve done can give you a bit of perspective. It can also advise you as to what your style may have lost as you developed and what you can do to get it back.

Definitely not removing it, nor do I think I’ve got the best writing.  Heck, english/lit was my most hated subject back in school, and I sucked at it, just scraping by enough to pass.  Nor is writing like this common among my peers in my line of work, so I’m definitely of the opinion that it can always get better.   And better I’ve generally gotten, you can even see it *in* that first story; even some of the reviews commented on this.   That first story started off with present tense, script like, and wordy; but I’ve learned to focus the dialogue a bit more, add in detail, and even put in the occasional “mental peek” inside a character’s head.  In that story’s sequel (which I’m now revising, again), I had thought was to mix in some first person POVs, but unless it’s just one character, that plain is hard to follow. 

Another improvement that I thought was good was long chapters, to try to make it “less” intimidating, so I clumped the chapters together into mega-chapters… until I realized I had 11 chapters for 500k…. one of them was 107k, so I had the Prisoner of Azkaban in a single chapter, with really lousy formatting so it was all together.  Strangely enough, people still read and reviewed it.   My current revision effort is undoing *that* change, undoing some of the edits that I had made along the way.

So, yeah, it’s definitely been a learning process, even bought some how-to-books on improving my writing (only partially read).  Having @CL Mustafic do a bit of reading/feedback on my original material helped a bit too.  Biggest tip I’d make is to avoid write+post, to set the draft aside for a some time, after a bit of the next chapter has been written, before going back to proofread; as I find that waiting makes it easier to spot typos/grammar/etc – sure, not perfect, but it cuts out most of the bad stuff, and it’s a nice balance for posting serially for fanfiction/amateur writing.

[Desiderius Price]

9 minutes ago, JayDee said:

Sure, sure, but there’s other symptoms – the ominous latin chanting, the sun suddenly covered by thick cloud, the nearby dogs all howling at once, the creepy ghost girl refusing to come out from the attic. As soon as I close the old fanfic file it all instantly stopped.

So, this old fanfic is a pain in the neck? 

[InvidiaRed]

19 hours ago, Desiderius Price said:

So, this old fanfic is a pain in the neck? 

Ah.

The tape hungers.

[swirlingdoubt]

On ‎10‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 1:30 PM, CloverReef said:

Man oh man. My first fan fic was written… in like the year 1998-1999. I don’t remember what it was. I imagine it was on pen and paper and about the show Breaker High with a lot of pregnancies happening. Most likely in script format. I think the oldest one I submitted on this site in particular – is probably Crossfire. I’ve always kinda wanted to go back and touch it up, because it is the pride and joy of my fanfiction era fics, and it is completed. I probably won’t, but I like to think about it. Maybe I should take this challenge on one of the easy ones. Like a oneshot or something. Does going the easy route defeat the purpose of it being a challenge?

Hah, mine is about that old, too, but not on AFF. I haven’t been consistent with writing but I did produce some horrors in my adolescence, some still on ff.net (anything I didn’t post there is lost forever, as hard disks are no longer supported, anywhere). If I went to my very first posted fic on ff.net, I don’t think it would be possible to update it. There is nothing salvageable about it. It is 15 sentences of mindless violence and obscenity.

Some teenage years were spent writing JtHM and Invader Zim fanfiction that is not so bad. Yet, the maturity level of my additions matched the maturity level of the source material, so I see little point in updating those.