Your writing journey.

[Ganyu]

Everyone has started at some point or another. When did you begin writing stories/poetry/etc? (If anyone says "When I learnt to write", I'll slap you because not every baby picks up a pen and writes Ramona lol) How much have you improved so far, until today? What aspects of writing do you think you've come very far with and improved the most?

[Suicune's Fire]

I wrote my first story when I was six or seven, although it didn't last long before it stopped. xD Since then I've written multiple stories, most of them just going for a few pages and then stopping. I've improved in the sense that I've learned better how stories and characters work, although I don't quite know how much my style has improved. Sometimes I look back at older writing and think that I like it better than my current writing style, but I was also very clumsy with wording, which is something I've (hopefully) fixed up.

[Dragon Master Mike]

I remember writing my first story when I was ten. Looking back on it, it was pretty awful. The sequal was slightly better, but still pretty bad. I was writing a third and final book to it, and it was slightly better than the previous ones too, but still pretty bad. I pretty much stopped writing for a LONG time after that, but a little over a year ago around the time I joined PXR I started writing again, and although I still don't think I'm that great a writer, I write much better than I used to. Honestly, I feel like I already write better now than I did when I joined PXR last year.

[Winter]

The first time I remember writing for the sake of writing when I was probably about ten. It was a Tokyo Mew Mew fanfic, and looking back, it was absolutely awful. It was filled with grammatical errors and randomly capitalized letters, plus the plot was suuuuuuuuper rushed. XD I finished it, but it was the only story I wrote for fun that I finished in the next six years. Not too long after that first fanfic, I got into RPing via Neopets and then PE2K, and my writing made leaps and bounds even though I never finished anything... And then I got to high school, and a friend of mine complained about how I never finished anything, so my junior year of high school was spent writing what would become a 20 page long Kingdom Hearts fanfic called Sinless, which finally made it online after a LOT of technical difficulties... Like my grandma spilling milk on my keyboard and killing several of my letters. It was far better than that first fic, but it was far from perfect (one of these days I swear it's getting the rewrite it deserves). I've continued to RP and write since, finishing several smaller fanfics and undertaking then not finishing one massive fanfic, mostly because I've moved on to trying to finish stories based on my own ideas.

I feel like my greatest improvement lies in description and wording. If you look at anything I wrote years ago, it's clear there is a huge difference between how I wrote now and how I wrote then. I feel like I've picked up a more poetic feel to my writing in general, and I love it. Definitely a long journey, but one well worth the travel.

EDIT: And obviously I got a lot more long winded.

[Scytherwolf]

If anyone says "When I learnt to write", I'll slap you because not every baby picks up a pen and writes Ramona lol

Go ahead and slap me, but I'm gonna slap you right back.

I've been creating stories since before I could write. Of course I wasn't actually 'writing' them, I was drawing pictures and then reciting the words to my parents so they could write them down. I actually rushed into learning to write around age four or so so that I could finally write down the stories myself. Of course these were very short and simple stories...I was four. But they were far more elaborate in my head. In kindergarden and first grade, we all had these "journal" things where we were supposed to write about our day...I just used it to write stories and would get mad because the space we had to write was extremely small and I could never finish them. xD

So yeah, some people DO start writing stories the moment they learn how to form words on paper. I honestly don't understand how that's weird or unbelievable. There are lots of people who start drawing from a very early age so writing isn't that different.

Since then I've never stopped. I'm kind of on the extreme end of the scale where creating and writing stories is my lifelong obsession/passion/what have you, and when I care about something, I really care about it. Always been that way.

[Ganyu]

Go ahead and slap me, but I'm gonna slap you right back.

I've been creating stories since before I could write. Of course I wasn't actually 'writing' them, I was drawing pictures and then reciting the words to my parents so they could write them down. I actually rushed into learning to write around age four or so so that I could finally write down the stories myself. Of course these were very short and simple stories...I was four. But they were far more elaborate in my head. In kindergarden and first grade, we all had these "journal" things where we were supposed to write about our day...I just used it to write stories and would get mad because the space we had to write was extremely small and I could never finish them. xD

So yeah, some people DO start writing stories the moment they learn how to form words on paper. I honestly don't understand how that's weird or unbelievable. There are lots of people who start drawing from a very early age so writing isn't that different.

Since then I've never stopped. I'm kind of on the extreme end of the scale where creating and writing stories is my lifelong obsession/passion/what have you, and when I care about something, I really care about it. Always been that way.
I meant that to be directed to anyone who wanted to troll and vaguely answer as such, but you didn't (I hope you weren't xD).

But saying that "when you learnt how to write", it's claiming that your very first word with a pencil on paper was the beginning of a story. (I'm not sure if that's common-practice because that sounds like a writing prodigy to me.) Furthermore fluency and clarity is discrete from penmanship, so just because you're able to write a sentence doesn't mean the sentence is understandable to everyone.

I'm not saying it's not impossible, nor unbelievable. In fact, I can relate to your account since I've been an imaginative child before and daydreaming is in itself a form of story creation (not to mention forcing my plushies to fight evil hiding in my house). I guess when I said "stories", I meant the formal, serious, kind of boring, definition (like throwing in everything English teachers have taught us about introduction, climax, endings, fluency, coherency, and what have you not). So technically, you started at four (or another age, I don't know, only you do :P). It's the same as how people who begin drawing from an early age don't always draw seriously on their first stroke.

It was interesting to read your experiences nonetheless~

[Scytherwolf]

I meant that to be directed to anyone who wanted to troll and vaguely answer as such, but you didn't (I hope you weren't xD).

But saying that "when you learnt how to write", it's claiming that your very first word with a pencil on paper was the beginning of a story. (I'm not sure if that's common-practice because that sounds like a writing prodigy to me.) Furthermore fluency and clarity is discrete from penmanship, so just because you're able to write a sentence doesn't mean the sentence is understandable to everyone.

I'm not saying it's not impossible, nor unbelievable. In fact, I can relate to your account since I've been an imaginative child before and daydreaming is in itself a form of story creation (not to mention forcing my plushies to fight evil hiding in my house). I guess when I said "stories", I meant the formal, serious, kind of boring, definition (like throwing in everything English teachers have taught us about introduction, climax, endings, fluency, coherency, and what have you not). So technically, you started at four (or another age, I don't know, only you do :P). It's the same as how people who begin drawing from an early age don't always draw seriously on their first stroke.

It was interesting to read your experiences nonetheless~
Oh, okay. Glad there will be no slapping then. XD

I'm not...really understanding what you're saying here, though. First word as part of a story? Probably not. But a first sentence...is that really weird? I thought of stories constantly, and that was my motivation to learn to write in the first place, so I would go up to my parents and have them help me write sentences for my stories. That was my learning process. I learned how to write through writing simple sentences (first with help, then without) to go with my picture stories, so wouldn't that fall under "when I learnt how to write?" I dunno, I don't understand this 'first word/first sentence' thing because learning to write is a process; you don't go from not being able to suddenly writing sentences. 'When I learnt to write' wouldn't just refer to the very first few minutes of that learning period...so yeah, I'm confused.

Woah, okay, we must be talking about completely different things here. I'm not talking about more "professional" sort of storytelling. I see a story as anything that has a beginning and end (or even just a beginning if it's not finished), has characters, has events, and comes from the imagination. It never would have occurred to me that those wouldn't be included under "stories," just like how it would be weird to me to not consider a child's first crayon scribble of a dog a "drawing." These things are, after all, how many people get started with creative writing and art. They're primitive, and they don't follow 'rules,' but they are stories. Heck, not all stories written by adults follow the rules of introduction, climax, etc. so I find that a weird definition.

My stories even as a little kid were often pretty elaborate (at least for that age, it seems) in my mind, and even included things like intros and climaxes (though I wouldn't know the term for those until much later), but the writing of course was extremely simple and left a lot out. I'm not sure I can answer your real question now, because I don't remember a time when I consciously thought "I'm going to write a serious story with all those things I learned in school." It was and has always been just "I want to write a story." And whatever skills I had at the time would go into it.

So yeah, I wasn't and am not a person who constantly thinks of all the technical aspects and takes it 'seriously' (as in, my main goal is not to be professional or publish-quality (though it'll be a nice bonus if I ever get there)), I pretty much just go wherever my inspiration takes me and do what feels right. My motivation to write stories is because I want to tell them and it's fun, so I guess that might be part of why I see it differently.

[Ganyu]

Ah, it's okay, it's just a miscommunication (on my part) and I think because we all have our own definitions. See, I won't discount such experiences like a child's first crayon scribble of a dog as part of the learning creative process (which it is very much, I agree on that). Though I define that stage differently as more of the time when the child discovers their talent and starts to use it and explore with it. It's the crawling phase where they are like "Hey I can do cool stuff with my hands!" These are all sketches before the real drawing takes place.

But if I understand you completely, I think you were walking when most would be crawling. You already knew what you were doing with your gift. You're some sort of an innate natural storyteller! ^o^

As for me, I learnt how to write at three but I only distinctively remember doing anything close to writing when I was four and that was in Sunday school. It was about how I thought the heavens were divided into three layers with the sky being the lowest and God's residence as the highest. And how different type of angels live in each layer, and I wrote this through the perspective of an angel (I think it was a messenger, I can't remember the details). I think that's the earliest moment I had that I remember doing something remotely close to writing stories.

[FedoraChar]

My best friend growing up actually got me into writing my own stories! :D I can't remember how old we were, but we were really into fantasy and often play-pretended being elves and rangers going on magical quests and all that. We actually had those duct-taped padded swords and would fight with them and everything. When we got older, we did RP's and Warcraft games. One day, he decided that we should try writing down our own story, and although we never got far, it really got me into thinking, "Hey! I can come up with my own stories and adventures and write them down to keep!"

I don't really remember when exactly I got into writing fanfiction, but I believe it was through playing Pokemon FireRed, and might have been partly influenced by the Dinotopia series. I had restarted the game several times because I kept wanting to experience the story over and over, and one day I realized that, "Hey! I can come up with my own story for a Pokemon adventure!"

I think I felt really attracted to Pokemon because it's universe was so vast--anyone could be a Trainer, and they could have any type of Pokemon they wanted. That meant there were thousands of stories that were waiting to be told. Dinotopia inspired me because the series had so many different authors who wrote in their own unique perspective of the world, and I thought I could do the same with Pokemon.

I started out as a noob on Bulbagarden, but grew disillusioned with it and left. Later on, I came to a lovely little place called Pe2k where I met a fantastic group of authors who ultimately helped me to improve my writing and get to where I am today :)

[Scytherwolf]

Ah, it's okay, it's just a miscommunication (on my part) and I think because we all have our own definitions. See, I won't discount such experiences like a child's first crayon scribble of a dog as part of the learning creative process (which it is very much, I agree on that). Though I define that stage differently as more of the time when the child discovers their talent and starts to use it and explore with it. It's the crawling phase where they are like "Hey I can do cool stuff with my hands!" These are all sketches before the real drawing takes place.

But if I understand you completely, I think you were walking when most would be crawling. You already knew what you were doing with your gift. You're some sort of an innate natural storyteller! ^o^

As for me, I learnt how to write at three but I only distinctively remember doing anything close to writing when I was four and that was in Sunday school. It was about how I thought the heavens were divided into three layers with the sky being the lowest and God's residence as the highest. And how different type of angels live in each layer, and I wrote this through the perspective of an angel (I think it was a messenger, I can't remember the details). I think that's the earliest moment I had that I remember doing something remotely close to writing stories.

Oh dang, I missed the reply to this! Well, better late than never I suppose. xD

Oh, okay, so you were more talking about stuff after all the initial learning process had been complete? I think I understand now, I was just confused because for me writing stories overlapped with learning how to write and I guess I see the process as more ongoing then having clearly defined stages like that. But I think I see what you mean, as in writing after all the 'basics' had already been learned. So yeah, I really just misunderstood. xD

Haha, maybe! I was definitely one of those people who just knew they wanted to tell stories for as long as I can remember; my earliest childhood memories are of me imagining stories. XD I dunno if I'll ever be really, really good at it, but it is something that I will always love to do.

And yeah, that definitely makes sense as people get inspired to write stories in different ways/in different stages, so it would be a unique experience for everyone. Plus I've seen people who only started writing stories when they were teens/adults and they were very good at it. It's really interesting to me to see how people started storytelling, so this thread is fascinating to me, haha. xD


And that's really cool how you played all those games, too, Char! It's really neat to see what inspired people and I know I felt the same way about pokemon when I first discovered it as a child.

Strangely enough my first experience with publicly posting my fanfiction was on neopets. xD Then Deviantart, then Pe2k and Fanfiction.net. Before that it was all written in notebooks and I never shared it.

[Neo Emolga]

My writing journey used to be pretty strong, but it came to a screeching halt a while ago.

I used to write a lot of relatively scrappy fiction stories that were never shared with anyone before moving onto Pokémon fan fiction. Those past novels were mostly fantasy, and I'll admit some of them got a little weird but were at least good for experimentation purposes and allowed me to test the waters. Most of them were lost, but they weren't really worth keeping anyway, as most of them never finished and I couldn't figure out where to go with them.

I wrote a small few Pokémon fan fiction stories before Trial of Juno, but it was ToJ were it really took off and ended well. Since that finished, I haven't been able to pick up writing again. I come up with great ideas, but most of these ideas just end up as an RP because coming up with characters isn't one of my strong points (so when other people come up with the characters, it honestly makes my work easier). Hence, that's why I got more into RP writing and hosting than novel-writing.

I think the big turnoff for me was finding out how difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and luck-dependent it is just to get a book published from my own research and reading personal experiences of published authors who made it clear they didn't think it was worth it. I really want other people to get the opportunity to read my stuff and I would love to see their feedback, but getting it out there is very difficult without getting stuff published. I have read a LOT of published stories that I thought were junk and personally knew I could do much better, but publishing stuff is just too hard. As much as I'd love to hold a paperback copy of a book I wrote with my name on it and awesome cover art right in a bookstore, it just feels like one of those things that's never going to happen. I just don't know anyone who works for a publishing company, and it seems like unless you do and have close friends in that line of work who can help you sneak past the chopping blocks, getting your stuff through the door will be too hard.

I honestly don't know when I'd pick up writing again. But I guess the situation with publishing is what drove me to write fan fiction in the first place, as I figured since this stuff can't get published anyway, no need to care about using copyrighted material and trademarked characters. But yeah, I found doing it in the form of RPs kind of makes people need to read it in order to participate. Most people seem to really like my RPs, so that's pretty much the place I've settled into.

[Noblejanobii]

Is it bad that I interview myself using this question every time I take a shower? XD

My writing journey? Well… I would have to say I didn't really take an interest until the sixth grade and even then I didn't really take it seriously until about half way through tenth grade. But I was definitely showing signs of my writing talent in the second grade. See, I kind of consider myself like Mumble from Happy Feet. Everyone around me could draw like amazingly. Like I mean you want them to draw the Mona Lisa? Done. The David? Child's play. You name it they could draw it. Me? You want a stick figure? You get a bunch of misshapen lines put together that might vaguely look like a person. I was always made fun of because of that. At my school, everyone had an artist inside of them, we just had to find it. But I didn't have an artist inside of me. Then, one day, I got bored. I was all caught up on My Little Pony and I had finished my homework, plus my neighbors were out of town for the week. So I decided, hey, I'll write my own My Little Pony adventure. So I did. Pinkie Pie went to space with Rainbow Dash (who, I will point out WAS NOT A PEGASUS at the time). I never finished the story and I have no idea where it went. But when I showed it to my mom, she realized that no I didn't have an artist in me. I was meant to be an author. However, if any of you have ever met me in real life and met my mom, you'll understand that whenever my mom pushes me to do something, she shoves me over the edge, to the point where I don't want to do it anymore. She pushed me so hard to continue writing that I lost interest. I didn't pick up a pencil again until fifth grade.

In the fifth grade we got a history teacher who forced you to write essays at the end of every test. Everyone hated her, except me. I quickly became the best essay writer in the grade but I never really took an interest. Then sixth grade rolled around and I got the same history teacher plus my favorite english teacher of all time. It is because of these two that I developed the writing techniques I have today. My history teacher gave us a test on the fifth day of the school (the Friday following the monday we came back to school). When we came back on Monday, she handed out the tests. Everyone failed, except one person. This one person became known as the curve buster because they got a 100 on the first test. Care to guess who made that 100? Me. The history teacher bragged about me to the entire class and even went so far to say that my essay was better than any student of hers in the eighth grade. That statement right there made me want to write again. Had that never been said, I probably would not have been so receptive to my english teacher.

Now my english teacher was a lot like me. She was somewhat aloof, goofy, and only seventeen (she skipped a lot of grades and get this, her older brother (who was eighteen) was a senior at the school she taught at. He made a mean Jack Sparrow impression). Everyday she had a writing period. Sometimes it was called a DYK, other times it was a Great Scott!, and one time I believe it was "a student's idea." Anyway, she would have a random fact or writing prompt on the board when we came in. We were to take out our journals and write about said prompt or fact until the music stopped playing. We could write in any fashion we wanted as long as we wrote. For some reason, I always write stories. I can remember doing something about flaming foxes, car races, treasure hunters, and more. I always had so much fun writing these stories and sometimes I didn't even realize that the music had stopped. My teacher loved my stories even though I never could finish them. She worked with me to get my stories to flow better and gave me many creative ideas.

However, when my mom heard about my writing abilities can you guess what she did? Yep, she pushed. And I once again dropped my interest in writing. Then ninth grade came into play and I met my favorite English teacher to date. He loved my essays and encouraged me to enter writing contests. While I've never placed in one it has gotten my name out there. He helped me discover that I'm actually a great writer for plots of movies and such, which is why I win film awards every year I enter and I have been invited to attend a film camp from the New York Film Academy this summer.

Then tenth grade came and my chance to become a full on writer came my way. I had the chance to attend a full on writing school in my area. All I had to do was audition. But guess what? My mom pushed, harder than I had ever seen her push before, and the audition didn't go well. I didn't get accepted. I was sad for days but then it was like the floodgates opened. I suddenly could write like never before. I have come to realize that the reason I can't have my mom pushing me is because when she does, I get SEVERE writer's block. Now, about half a year after the audition, I have started many stories that I plan to finish one day. Currently I am focusing on two stories, one fanficiton, Tri-Kappa Labs which has two chapters up so far and a third chapter appearing soon on this website, and one original story called the Knights of the Flock which has two chapters and part of a third written down but only part of one typed. It might be a while before KoF appears on here as a result.

Never the less, my writing journey is far from over, but I need all the support I can get. I am still in a artist vs writer situation where about 98% of people around me in real life are amazing artists that can draw a picasso on their first try and I can barely make a stick figure. As a result, I still get bullied and don't have the self confidence I should. The more people that read and leave good comments on my stories, the more likely I am to continue them because I know that means I have fans that actively look at my stories and I have a drive not to disappoint them. So please, if you like Tri-Kappa Labs, please comment so that I feel motivated to keep it going. That goes for anything you see me write. You like it? Comment! An update should follow soon after.

[LKWayvern]

For a really long time I loved reading, but I never even thought of writing. I always associated writing with essays and book reports, and I hated(and still dislike) doing those.
Then around fifth grade I got a netbook computer.
It didn't go on the internet, but I could still type up projects and things on it.
And one day, I'm still not sure why, I decided to write my own story. I tried to write several stories. Most of them were terrible. Pretty much all consisted of poorly thought out characters, rushed thought, and a Mary Sue-ish self-insert as the main character. At some point my netbook's charger stopped working, and it died. So I stopped writing, but I kept reading.
Then I discovered the internet. I suddenly came upon fanfictions. Looking back, none were really REALLY good. But one particular Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fanfiction I read made me think 'That is so cool. I want to make something like that.'
The night I discovered the internet, I posted the prologue to my first fanfiction, Mystery Dungeon: Dusk Storm.
It was much better than my original fiction, but it was still terrible. The protagonist was an overpowered Fakemon, a self-insert, and a Mary Sue. The two partners were one painfully happy-go-lucky Eevee with no backstory or personality beyond 'cheerful', and a seriously overpowered Snivy that could conjure any seed she wanted out of thin air.
I tried to continue MDDS, but the characters were just dead. They had no past. The plot was vague, at best.
Eventually, it died.
I wrote various other fanfictions in the months that followed, and I read fanfictions and comics like crazy. And slowly, my writing improved thanks to learning the do's and don't's of writing through both experience and observation.
And one day, I started writing my longest fanfiction yet, The Path to Where I Stand. I had been RPing with two specific characters lately, and I wanted to explore their pasts througha fanfiction, since their pasts were rather poorly thought out. But TPTWIS became something more.
For what felt like the first time I had defined, lively characters. A plot that I could follow. And then, suddenly, I got ideas for what happened after the history part stopped. For an entirely new adventure, with those two characters and their friends.
Twists happened that I had no idea would occur, but in retrospect it really was inevitable. I brought back MDDS, but improved it dramatically, with much more fleshed out main characters, a much less overpowered protagonist, and all new characters who breathed new life into the stale old story.
It gave me a kind of satisfaction at how my new and old stories were progressing. Like things had come full circle.
But then a few months ago, I got a weird kind of writer's block. I knew exactly what I wanted to happen, but no matter what I tried I could not get it to come out right on the screen. I updated less and less, and got more and more worried about both the quality and quantity of my writing.
I put both TPTWIS and MDDS on an indefinite hiatus about a week ago. However, I still wanted to write something. I asked a friend's permission, and started transcribing a comic of his into written form. The plot and the dialogue is already there, I'm just reiterating it. I feel like it's helping, somewhat, since I can write much more slowly and think less about the story.
...I guess that's the path to where I stand. When it comes to writing, that is.

[Felly]

I started writing when I was about 10. I would do RP on the first forum I'd joined, and I eventually discovered a site called AnimeSpiral. That site ended up closing down, unfortunately, but I moved over to FF.net where I post most of my stuff nowadays. I've mainly done fanfiction, but I've dabbled in original works as well. When I was in high school, I discovered NaNoWriMo thanks to some friends, and I started doing that too. These days, I've been dabbling in Pokemon fanfics for URPG, and I do my original works for NaNoWriMo. I have a Harry Potter fanfic I've been working on for some time too, but it's dropped off recently. I might pick it back up again eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, and finish it eventually.

[Homura]

I remember looking at some Pokemon fanfics as a high school student and thought I could do better. Looking back, a lot of my stuff was actually just garbage. Haha

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Wow this is an oldschool thread. Cool topic though :O

I remember writing my first story in like the first week of grade one. The teacher read us a book about a farmer and a cow or something, and we had to write what happened next. I filled up the whole page and then I wasn't sure if we were allowed to use the next page of the exercise book (xDDD) so that story ended very abruptly. The next story I remember well was in grade four (10 years old). I pretty much spent the whole year working on the same story and filled up two exercise books. It was about a magical school (this was before Harry Potter was a thing) where the kids made potions to do different spells and I ended up being a scientist, wizard and astronaut. XD I used the kids in my class as characters and ended up getting in trouble as one of them got turned into a massive beetle and was entered into a race... so had to change their names. xD After that I REALLY loved writing! In grade six I had a story I'd written published in the school newsletter which is still one of my proudest moments. And shortly after I started writing Pokemon fanfics and really getting into that community. I wanted to be an author in high school but I knew that wasn't really a good career choice and decided I'd just keep it as a hobby. My writing really dropped off maybe 5 years ago or so when I had to focus on my PhD. (I still do a LOT of writing but now it's boring sciencey stuff xD). I'm constantly reading, having ideas for stories and dreaming of publishing something one day though! I keep waiting for that ONE IDEA that's really gonna make me wanna write again, but it's hard. I'm definitely gonna focus more on it from now on though.

[Neo Emolga]

Hmm. Forgot about this thread. Interesting to see what I wrote several years ago and how I feel about things right now. I was on the brink of giving up back then. Now... not so much.

I haven't gotten agent representation for Wildcaster: Secret of Taika, but I haven't given up. I still have several other agents I could try and lately I've just been pretty busy with a lot of other things going on. Job interviews, my brother's wedding, and several other things. I NEED to get back on that.

Originally, I was going to continue Wildcaster with a sequel called Wildcaster: Season of Darkness, BUT... I'm thinking of pulling the plug on it. Secret of Taika is funny, interesting, comical, and has plenty of great adventure, action, fantasy, and all that lovely jazz. I still think it would make an awesome novel and a lot of heart went into it to make it as good as it could be.

But this attempt at a sequel is just killing me. I have a whole playbook for dealing with writer's block and the number of times I've had to resort to it for this thing is just abysmal. It's gotten to the point where I originally felt like gripping it by the neck and pulling it back from the very beginning and make the entire story, which was about half-written by now, take a completely different direction. But that would mean nuking more than 60 pages worth of stuff. Essentially the entire story save for the brief recap stuff and the exposition. What would be the plan? There is none. That's the big problem, but what I have now just feels bland, mirthless, and there is an alarming amount of nothing much happening but "it has to or else it just wouldn't make realistic sense." I'm thinking of just letting the original do its thing but letting it be that.

In Secret of Taika, oh, there's plenty of juicy, fun combat scenes, great humor, and fun fantasy elements. The only thing is two of the characters, including the main viewpoint character, learn Taika (magic) quickly, but they pay a lot of money for it and they essentially pay the price by using a contraband method of learning it. Otherwise it would take them years and that's not very interesting to read about nor does it fit in considering the whole story is a race against time. And the illegal form of training only takes them up to an intermediate level. I figured this was fair. It bites them in the back later on when they're found out about it.

In Season of Darkness, just filler, filler, filler. There is only ONE brief combat scene and it doesn't happen until page 55. I also find the characters stay put in one location for way too long. It's such a slow buildup and I've tried to change it so many times but it still ends up being the same kind of mess. I don't feel like starting over and honestly, I think I'd rather work on something completely different. It just feels too much like a sequel was never meant to be and over the past few months of having not added a darn thing to it, I've come to terms with the reality and just feel it's time for something else.

[AD]

I have a lot of unfinished stories.

My journey is a trail of those stories dating back to the 90s...