Discussion: Authors' Writing Growth

Briana_M · April 30, 2019, 12:12am

Wow, a lot has happened over the course of your Episode life. I wish my situation was similar to yours because my stories weren’t gaining a lot of reads during 12 hours. I used to think my stories weren’t good enough

Dr.Smile07 · April 30, 2019, 12:53am

Lmao, I don’t even know you, but I already love you (and I don’t love many people in real life) I absolutely commend your work skills because those are a lot of lines and episodes and stories. As for the contest stories, I don’t blame you for writing so many because it’s just so fun to get an idea and start with something new.

–On topic–

Idk if I have much author’s growth. It’s complicated because the advice people give me to “grow” contradicts. On one hand, people tell me I should make my stories more fun and in line and watered down and comprehensible. So I gave them The Pregnancy Curse and they’re like “Too cliche. Too fun. Too comprehensible, flat, overused, watered down, I want DIFFERENT!”
So I gave them The Bar on 23rd and they’re all like "Too different. Too risky. Too complex for me to understand. I want SIMPLE " and I’m over here like: What. The. Heck. I feel like the subjectiveness of what makes a story good is what keeps people from measuring their true growth. For example, some people use reads to see how good their stories are when in reality reads are as man-made as the concept of time is. Chain Reaction is the most popular story, for goodness sakes and it’s watered down garbage in my eyes. You know who can measure your writing growth without counting on readers or stupid people or reviewers or your mom? You. You because if you dig deep enough, you KNOW when something is off. You know when the tone is inconsistent or the characters suck because when you turn off the filter in which you see your story as your story, you can make some major changes for you to be satisfied with what you see. Heck, I haven’t updated in months and you know why? Because I know something is off in my story and I refuse to continue until I identify and fix it. THIS AN OPINION PEOPLE IM NOT TELLING ANYONE TO DO ANYTHING CAUSE THIS IS THE INTERNET AND IT’D BE RIDICULOUS OF ME TO SIT HERE AND WAIT FOR YOU TO DO AS I SAY WHEN I HAVE HOMEWORK I NEED TO DO RIGHT NOW BYE.

LeeFunkEpisode · April 30, 2019, 3:56am

wink

Scotti? I’m blanking on who they are. Haha. I’m glad I’m not the only one who has partaken in contests. I realized that partipating in the most conests could also be a challenge now ‘-’

LeeFunkEpisode · April 30, 2019, 4:47am

I’m curious to hear (read?) your writing growth timeline because (in a non creepy way) I’ve read one of your earlier stories, Popular Girl Gone Bad and your most recent Sophisticated & Deceived.

I read S & D first, so when I read PGGB I was totally taken back like whaaa these are from the same author? There’s such a difference between the two (not just in style xD) - but like tone and voice of characters (I hope that makes sense).

LeeFunkEpisode · April 30, 2019, 4:55am

I know you creepy grin kidding, just seen you around on the forums

Thank you and-

I love this quote and “homework I need to do” because I understand/relate to both. I don’t know how to explain it but I do come across that feeling of this is off. I need to change it.

jazzysab13 · April 30, 2019, 7:24am

You’re my mood

jazzysab13 · April 30, 2019, 7:31am

You are literally amazing wth!! You definitely have made a huge growth in your writing and like that’s just beyond amazing! I’m gonna go and read ur stories now because I rlly feel like I’m missing out on your writing journey bye

Hannahnevin · April 30, 2019, 8:03am

That’s amazing

I’m currently in a creative writing group, it only lasts 6 weeks but I’m getting much more out of it than I thought

Briana_M · April 30, 2019, 2:36pm

Yeah, well I wrote PGGB when I was 12 years old (shocking right?), and then I shared it and wrote on the Episode platform when I was 15 years old. The thing about S&D is that it wasn’t going anywhere; I constantly felt unmotivated while I was writing it. I’ve discontinued it earlier this month because of discouragement😞

Dr.Smile07 · April 30, 2019, 4:41pm

Lol. Yeah <3.

Dr.Smile07 · April 30, 2019, 4:46pm

I wanna scream right now so I’ll edit this comment later with something sweet when I get home cause I’m at school and I can’t think of the words to express this right now

LeeFunkEpisode · June 7, 2019, 5:40am

lil bump <3

Annieways · June 7, 2019, 6:28am

I started writing on Episode two years ago. I was looking for a good comedy story but it took me a while until found one, which was Infamous by Kayla Sloans. I felt like we needed more funny stories on the app, so I decided to challenge myself and you could say I was inspired by Kayla’s story. My first story had very basic directing, no plot and very short episodes, but I still thought it was good until I realized it wasn’t
I never discontinued a story, I finished all of them, but I did remove the first one from the app and I’m planning to revamp it sometime?
I’m more proud of my most recent works, but I know I still have a lot to improve on. I became better at directing, but I improved much less than others because two years ago I didn’t really see any mind-blowing directing, and now I see it even from authors who just published their very first story and I’m impressed. I will try to work on this, but I feel like I will be always more creative with writing dialogues. I definitely needed this time to became better in writing, I like how easily my ideas flow nowadays, and I don’t have to force myself to write anymore, I just enjoy it.

loveyourself · June 7, 2019, 12:54pm

I feel like my writing has grown a lot. My first story, Cruelty of Ice, was in Ink. I joined the forums while writing this story. It was pretty bad. The dialogue, directing and character development. It had about 40 reads. But it was so bad, so I pretty much discontinued it. I think I might delete it. Or rewrite it in Limelight…

Then, I wrote my second story, the sequel to Cruelty of Ice, Rest in Payback. In this story, I used a customization template, and this was around the time Limelight came out. They just updated their skin tones. The directing was much better in this story. I was up to episode 2 when I heard about the Thriller contest.

My third story, Thriller: Best Served Cold. The directing became even better, and I first used the flash-forward technique in this story. And I loved it. This was also one of my few stories where I used limited customization. Sadly, I missed the deadline. I might work on it another time.

Another contest comes, College Days. I wrote what is, personally, one of my best stories to date. College Days: Mysterious Northview. The directing was amazing. The characters were even better (@NelidaU knows, she loves Venetia) and the dialogue was pretty good. This story has 3 fully released chapters, and is a mystery-fantasy. It is also quite diverse, both with humans and non-humans.

My fifth story!! Number 5! I celebrated this a little. A few months back, the Clue contest was announced. So I got to work. I worked very hard while writing this. The directing was incredible and the best I’ve ever done. The main character is black so I used a limited customization template again. I spot directed almost the entire story, finally learned how to drive a car in and out of the scene, and used overlays! I also used chapter and warning overlays rather than splashes. The overlays were tough to code, not gonna lie. I released the story a few hours before the deadline, and enjoyed writing it so much, I’m planning to release chapter 4 soon.

My writing came a long way from nearly 2 years ago. Moral of the story: work hard, but enjoy the work you put in!

Love, Carmela