How old were you when you wrote that?

 

First year of Sixth Form, so 17.

 

Holy damn. First fic? There was a shameful period about 7-8 years ago when I wrestled with the Polish language. I wrote a terrible thing called (translation from Polish) Harry Potter and the Maestro's Mirror.

It featured Harry being trained, in the worst Indy summer training fic fashion, under the direction of an old vampire exiled from his homeland for being too fucking awesome. I distinctly remember Harry and his master (yep, Harry called him "master") attending a posh Halloween costume ball. Malfoy was also in attendance and I had Harry beat the shit out of him in a fencing tournament.

That was my first HP fic, but it was actually adapted from a horrendous abomination with the same general setup, but in a different fandom. Saint Seiya, or Knights of the Zodiac. Old anime from the late 80s. I was a kid and that was the shit.

 

Wrote a terrible (but not super terrible) Ranma ½ fanfic that I will not tell you how to find.

 

Well, given that I started at the impressionable age of 25 my first fic can be found here on DLP. Basically I think my plan for it can be summarized as 'Delenda Est without the bits I didn't like'. Imaginative, I know.

Given the... lets call it lukewarm response I dropped it fairly quickly. It would be more than a year before I'd have another proper go at writing.

 

Mostly some unnotable oneshots, a memorable one in a smut involving Menace and apoc.

 

First Fanfic I wrote was about Neville and Harry being the only survivors from the war. They travel around the world to become stronger magically. Years later when their adventures take them to Egypt they stumble upon the story about the Library of Alexandria hoping to find the magic that they could use to go back in time and save everyone.

 

I wrote an extremely terrible oneshot that was under 1k words, and still received half a dozen positive reviews before I came to my senses and deleted it. I then outlined and started writing an epic 3 part HP/Lord of the Rings crossover that involved Bellatrix and Harry both being transported to Middle Earth. Halfway through, I realized how terrible it was and deleted it as well.

Haven't really written anything fanfiction-wise since other than a short Warhammer 40k story which is now deleted. At least I'm consistent.

 

Bleach. Hitsugaya/Karin fic. It was monumentally bad.

Edit: wait no. Before that came a Bleach semi SI set at the Spiritual Academy....posted on deviantArt.

 

Unpublished, unfinished and lost among a pile of Year 9 textbooks which are probably on a landfill site somewhere if they weren't recycled.

It was an alternate sixth-year H/Hr fic where Harry was depressed because he thought that Hermione wouldn't return his feelings.

Oh, to be thirteen and a moron...

 

This thing.
That's the only one I've published, though. I also used to participate in a pokemon RP, and I've got many, many ideas on my harddrive that I've been working on intermittently.

 

Started the Hero Trilogy about 12 years ago now. Was the first thing I ever wrote. It is godawful, but looking back over it I can see a swift and sure rise in my writing quality.

By the end of that trilogy, 1.2 million words later, I was still a terrible writer, but I'd figured out where polish needed to be applied. Still figuring that out. Always will be, I imagine.

 

It was in German when I was like 15 or so and it was a truly shitty Dragonball Z and W.I.T.C.H. crossover, where Future Trunks landed in Heatherfield and, well, yeah, hit all of the clichés.

Thankfully, I never posted it anywhere.

 

My very first fanfic, before I understood the very concept of fanfic, was a Pokémon story I wrote when I was about 11 years old, about a Charmander whose mother was caught by a trainer. I think it was technically sort of a crossover since I took inspiration from the Land Before Time movies, iirc. Go figure.

After a few more random original stuff I basically stopped writing for years, only to get back into things in my late teens. First one featured, once more, dinosaurs - because apparently this is a thing I do. It was a Harry Potter fic that featured Harry meeting Salazar Slytherin in a between-life-and-death world that resembled Diagon Alley, populated by nightmares. It never went on long and enough to explore the few interesting aspects it might have had.

I think I'd arrived at DLP by the time I started DSHND.

 

A piece of shit one-shot that I wrote when I was 10.
It's about Harry pwning Voldemort by transfiguring the air around him into a see-through poison gas.

It was terrible, needless to say.

 

My first ever fic was a one shot humiliation Congo for dolores unmbridge and by extension, fudge during unmbridge last few days at Hogwarts and the aftermath.

 

Drabs and dribbles in original fiction from 12-17. Then I started my first fanfiction project after stumbling into the fandom through various stories, the most notable that I can remember from that initial burst was HPMoR.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8152949/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Unknown-Ally

I had one chapter posted, two written and the first arc planned.

There was and still is so much wrong with the writing that I can't even go back and read it, through fear of a cringe induced aneurysm. My writing had hasn't gotten much better in those four intervening years, but damn was that hot garbage.

I still like the idea though, if only for nostalgia's sake. Malfoy gets a tip about a raid on his property and starts moving his darker artifacts to different local. He comes across the diary, writes in it and then promptly gets rid of it after noticing it messes with his mind.

A Hogwarts student gets it and the diary drains them dry. Then it becomes the story of a younger Tom Riddle fucking up the plans of his older self because he believes that he would be a better Voldemort and has no desire to be reincorporated.

 

You will be able to read mine in the WBA section as soon as I feel like the first chapter is good enough to be criticized. The feel of utter shame will be overwhelming. When do you know that something is good enough? It seems like a moving goal.

 

You shouldn't take this thread too seriously. If your grammar is a solid effort, the spacing of the story isn't eyebleed wall-of-text, and the concept isn't completely retarded... you're gonna be fine.

People will let you know what sucks, but what you should take heart in is we've all been there. And you'll get better.

For more objective advice, search the WbA for an author named 'tao'. Is your stuff worse than his? Then don't post.

Fact is, the *shame* won't come until years later, when you've come really far forward and then look back and go Oo. That, and trends/tropes change over time, so a lot of what we're all laughing about is our kewl magical trunks and the like.

 

I started writing a Knights of the Old Republic story that was a continuation of the Dark Side ending. Didn't get very far and I cribbed off this other fanfic I'd read with the same premise too much, though I like to think I had a couple original ideas. That was... 2006 or 2007, I think. Before I came here at least, and under a different username.

I had another story at around the same time, but they're both gone now and I haven't had the guts to write anything since then.