Wednesday 20 March 2013

My writing: the story so far

Can I just say a huge thanks for the comments on the '10 questions on my writing' blog? They were heart warming, really. Why I am mentioning that in this particular post? Because I'm going to give you guys another peek into my writing. This time though in the projects that I did before I started writing that story 'The golden heart'.

I actually had a lot of fun browsing through my old stories. The first one that I came by that I actually have saved as a word document (before I did some drabbling in notebooks and though they for sure might have had some nice elements, I never turned them into actual sotries) was called 'Miss & Mister Dance'. I started the story in 2006 so that is quite a while ago. It was about a girl, fancy, rich, into ball room dancing, and a guy, always getting into trouble, and the typical street dancer. Boy meets girl, fall in love, dance together and well I guess the ending is fairly predictable here. I enjoyed writing it though a lot. It had some inspiration from 'Step Up', hence the usage of Gina Rene's U Must Be in the story. The total word count was 18.761 words. Not bad I would say. I wrote the story in Dutch in case anyone would like to read it, though I think some of you might have read it actually when I wrote it that long ago.

Then the next story to be found back on my laptop is 'Leven op het internet' (Life on the internet). I never came further than a word count of 6.043. Which is quite a shame actually, though at that point I must have not wanting to continue it for some reason. It was about a girl who seemed to be having the perfect and ideal life till her mother gets the message that she has breast cancer, her sister having boulimia and her boyfriend cheating on her. The first two subjects are things I have dealt with on a second hand basis (people around me have had it) and therefore I've started writing about it back then. Maybe one day I'll pick up the story again or something similar, who knows.

Then there's a short story on my laptop that I wrote for a competition, for which I never placed unfortunately. It has a word count of 848 words (it could be between 500-1000 words) and is called 'Warme armen en koude lucht' (Warm arms and cold air). It starts with the ending of the story where a girl is sitting in the snow with her by then boyfriend and reflects back on her disastreous day beforehand. Just like the previous two, this was written in Dutch as well. The story itself is not all too special, but I still like the way I build it up. Draw back: I named the main male character Edward (Sorry, used to be a major Twilight fan.)

From here on (end of 2008) I started to get into my fanfiction time period. I was actually surprised to find out that the previous three were "my own" stories, so I kinda lied in the other blogpost where I said that 'The golden heart' was my first real own story, I think I've just forgotten about those others, oops. 
The first fanfiction here is a Harry Potter story. There are a few characters in there that are from the real books (Draco Malfoy & Cedric Diggory (I had a Robert Pattinson crush, okay?)), but most of them, including the main character are my own. It tells the story of the younger sister of Draco, who falls unconditionally for Cedric...and let's say it doesn't end it romance and love only. The total word count ended in 37.453

Let's move on to the next story, talking about Twilight fanfiction...The story was called 'When history repeats itself' and it was the first story I fully wrote in English. I started it in the beginning of 2010 and partly co-wrote it with one of my friends. We wrote a lot of it inbetween classes, so much fun!
The story is set in the world of Twilight, but it doesn't include the original characters (besides Alice, I couldn't help but sneak her in). It's about a girl Liz and her family of vampires, who gets best friends with a human girl, who falls for her brother Ethan. Someone shows up from Liz' dark past and well let's say things get messy. Besides the fact that it has a lot of unfinished subplots (I never went into editting in the end), I still like the way the story turned out.

Then there is a story which I can hardly call a story as I never made it past the beginning of chapter 2. It was called 'Getting Safe' and was inspired by the movie 'Taken'. I think I just don't have the mind to write an awesome detective kind of story. Not sure if I could figure out the clues while writing...

Then there is another Twilight fanfiction, actually the sequel to the first one. It was called 'When the future is unpredictable'. I was in such a great mood to write it, had all these awesome ideas and never finished it. I actually got 14.673 words on paper which is not that bad. The main reason why I never finished it was because my love for Twilight was fading and well writing a fanfiction in that world in not so fun then all of a sudden anymore.

Then we have 'The Medallion' which I started in 2011. It is a fanfiction set in the world of The Vampire Diaries, but just like with the Twilight fanfiction it has my own characters, no Salvatores or Gilberts to be found here. It's set somewhere in the 1800's and tells the story about a human girl who lost her father and is struggling in life to keep up together with her mother. She gets the job to clean the house daily of the wealthy brothers that just moved to the town. But there is a lot more to these two men than the eye can see. She didn't get the job by accident, but for a specific reason that all has to do with the medallion she inherited from her father. The story reached a word count of 26.058 words, and even though that is not a massive amount, it's one of the stories I've really enjoyed writing. I actually put time into plotting the story and thinking thoroughly about character development. 
I started on writing a sequel to it, but then I decided to pick up my ideas for 'The golden heart' and left the sequel of 'The Medallion' unfinished.

So that's the story so far, anyone that actually made it to the end of this blog post? If any of you would like to read something mentioned above, let me know, would love to share. Though none of the above ever went into revisions and can therefore be seen as 'first drafts', so they are not mind boggling good.

10 comments:

  1. Yaaaay so much love for this post! I didn't recognize all of them... actually everything before When History Repeats Itself I didn't recognize :P But I did recognize the rest, because I followed all your stories and I loved them and still am loving them :D

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  2. All your stories seem really fun! I practised with fanfic when I was a lot younger (early teens) and it was quite fun. It was a Harry Potter one though about Draco (I found his character really interesting but I soon got tired of the Harry Potter series and never finished them to this day).

    I enjoyed really reading this. And btw, I would love to learn Dutch one day.

    Tell the World

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  3. Yes I remember all your fanfics honestly, even the cedric one :D hahaha. my memorie serves me well :D

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  4. I remember a lot of your stories! Especially the Twilight one. I read back on some of my stories a while ago, always a fun thing to do. :)

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  5. Nice to get a flashback on some of the things I read from you! I'd like to read the Harry Potter fanfic one day if you have it only somewhere? :)

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  6. I totally remember your Harry Potter fanfic! I loved it! And I remember the first Twilight fanfic as well! Fun post, Arlette!

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  7. Jij kan écht goed schrijven! :)

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  8. Didn't know you have been so super-creative and producive when it comes to writing. You go, girl!

    -Kati

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