Fic Talk > I Challenge You....

Reading your own stories...challenge

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mare:
I forgot about the server thing! LOL Duh!! Makes sense then.

Rose:
LOL awww. Yeah I remember that vividly. Those were the days of the lightening layout lol.

mare:
I still use the lightning layout or the generic old one. I use the generic old one on this too lol

Ellebeth:
OK, I went ahead and did this one for my first-ever story. This is for dreamalittlebi gger, who said my first few stories back in the day couldn't be as bad as I said they were. Try me. :)

Name of story: One Week
Year you wrote it: 1999
Summary: (You can use the one from the site or make a new one up now):
Stepsisters from California go to Hawaii on vacation and find themselves staying in the same hotel as the Backstreet Boys. Brian saves one of the girls from drowning while she’s learning how to surf, and they have a thing going on. The other one hooks up with Nick. The whole thing turns out to be a dream. (Mostly because I decided I was over writing fanfiction, abandoned it for more than a year and didn’t know how to end it.)
Main Character: Natalie (narrator), Brian


1) Did you feel your characters were strong?
God, no. They were one-note idiots. Natalie was exactly what I wanted to be in college when I was a freshman in high school, and Michelle was basically a slightly more likable version of the ditzy girls I hated at that age. Natalie had an aircraft carrier-sized chip on her shoulder about being hurt by an old boyfriend, a completely foreign concept to me since I was two years away from having anything remotely resembling a boyfriend. And I had absolutely no concept of what the guys were like.

2) Was your plot consistent?
It was consistent insofar as there weren’t any gaping plot holes. It was just as thin as cheap toilet paper. And the end was shite.

3) Did you have many filler chapters or sub plots?
PFFFFT. There might have been three chapters that WEREN’T filler.

4) What is something you are proud of concerning this story?
Not riddled with typos. Dialogue is basically readable. Those were hard attributes to come by when I was reading/writing fanfiction back in the day. (Apparently, I was running with the wrong fanfiction crowd.)

5) Did you find any major problems or inconsistencie s?
Oh, where to start? The whole story is totally implausible. Why would the guys all be in Hawaii together, minus both girlfriends AND entourage? Brian was engaged by the time I started writing this, and I actually had absolutely no idea – and furthermore, had he been single, why would he have been so entranced by a 19-year-old? Nick would probably go to jail for hooking up with Michelle. Why would the group go to an 18-and-up club when it’s apparent only the 17-year-old has a fake ID? A 19-year-old couldn’t even legally rent a car or check into a hotel, especially one as fancy as the one where they were staying. Yes, dumb 19-year-old protagonist, missing a few days of college classes WILL kill you. Hitting your head on your surfboard will not knock you out – I know, because I’ve done it – and hot Hawaiian surfer guys will not even notice you exist, and there will not be a hunky guy there to save you if you do mess your shit up. Nobody’s, but NOBODY’S pickup lines are as bad as the guys’ are in this story. (I think I borrowed half of them from my then-crush, a dreamy exchange student with a tenuous grasp of English.) You would probably get arrested for sleeping on the beach, unless your hotel has a private beach, and theirs isn’t even on the beach. I went to Hawaii with my family shortly before I started writing this (and I was a huge fan of The Real World: Hawaii, which was on not long before we went), and it’s very obvious to me that I wrote the story basically as an excuse to set a story there. Unfortunately, I didn’t describe Hawaii nearly well enough to make it the character it obviously was.

6) Something interesting that you took away from this one?
I apparently named the protagonists’ dad/stepdad after Tom Hanks’ character in You’ve Got Mail (at that time one of my favorite movies), and I’m not sure whether I did that consciously. Also, man, I retained a lot of useless knowledge about Hawaii in order to write this story.

7) On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate this one?
3

8) Did your opnion change from you wrote it originally?
Yes. I thought it was really great then, and I got a lot of positive feedback on it. Now I can hardly stand to look at it.

9) Would you recommend this one to anyone?
If you want to feel like a clueless tourist in Hawaii, sure.

Final thoughts and comments about it: (If you think everyoe else should give it a chance or not etc...)
If you’re really curious, Google “KTBSPA Fiction.”
Also, fun fact, I finished my first-ever piece of fanfiction on that Hawaii trip – a very early version of “The Boys on the Bus.” Sometimes I think I should have published that first & waited on “One Week,” but then, among other consequences, you wouldn’t have this wonderfully ranty self-evaluation.

Dreamalittlebigger:

--- Quote from: Ellebeth on December 09, 2012, 11:08:17 PM ---
If you’re really curious, Google “KTBSPA Fiction.”


--- End quote ---

OMG. I'm reading One Week now (only because I'm really curious about the "one-note idiots" you had as characters, as you say) but I'm laughing because my story (Secrets) was hosted on your site?? (My pen name was Carla back in the day) Dude. Small world.

Also, best find ever! I am totally dying at work, laughing so hard. :) (At the coincidence, not your story :) )

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