DISCUSSION: Your Very First Episode Story

Original topics: DISCUSSION : Your VERY first story . . . EVER! // DISCUSSION : Your VERY first story (Published or Not)

I decided to make a V2 of these topics and expand on them since there’s a lot of new community members here now and I thought it would be interesting to see some new opinions/see if some old members have changed theirs :slight_smile: You don’t have to answer all/any of the questions below but I do want to start a discussion about your first Episode stories.

Questions~

  1. What was your first story about?
    1.a) Did you publish it? If so… did you archive it once episode released the archive feature? :new_moon_with_face:

  2. What inspired you to start writing it?

  3. Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?
    3.a) If so, did they change your story ideas or influence you to change your plot?

  4. How far have you come since then?

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  1. What was your first story about?

A bad girl :worried:, who was a powerful black wolf :pleading_face:, who’s pack was destroyed :persevere:, and was mated to an alpha :tired_face:.
1.a) Did you publish it? If so… did you archive it once episode released the archive feature? :new_moon_with_face:

Thank my writing insecurities I didn’t.
And yes so fast.

  1. What inspired you to start writing it?

Cliche werewolf user stories
3. Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?

No yolo
3.a) If so, did they change your story ideas or influence you to change your plot?

  1. How far have you come since then?

I think quite a bit :joy:

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I answered one of the original threads, but I’m gonna play again.

1. What was your first story about?
It was a gang story love triangle :rofl: :sob:

1.a) Did you publish it? If so… did you archive it once episode released the archive feature? :new_moon_with_face:
Unfortunately, yes.
Yes as soon as I could.

2. What inspired you to start writing it?
I was bored. That kind of stuff was popular and I legitimately thought romance/drama would be my best genre :rofl: Oh how wrong I was…

3. Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?
Yes.

3.a) If so, did they change your story ideas or influence you to change your plot?
Let’s be honest, the guides are pretty useless for that. They helped me not have the worst directing in the world (although it was pretty bad).

4. How far have you come since then?
Leaps and bounds :rofl:
Even my second story (which is NOT archived) embarrasses me now lol.

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Ooh!

What was your first story about?

It was a mystery story about a girl named Aaliyah Blackwell running away from her past but trying to keep the bodies hidden.

Did you publish it? If so… did you archive it once episode released the archive feature? :new_moon_with_face:

Yes to both, hahaha.

What inspired you to start writing it?

Uh, I always had a thing for characters hiding from their past and trying to keep their stories buried lol. To be honest, my story was based on one of my sims 3 gameplays.

Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?

Yeah and I believe there were tutorials on YouTube or the old forums, I think.

If so, did they change your story ideas or influence you to change your plot?

Lol, yes they did. I learned that all the ideas I had in mind weren’t about to work out because I barely knew how to add animations to my dialogue.

How far have you come since then?

A long way, haha. I’m no longer scared of the portal and my recently publishes stories do not cause me embarrassment and agony. :rofl:

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:sob:

:heart_eyes:

:heart_eyes:

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A girl whose boyfriend cheated on her. She took him back so she could get revenge when they went on a vacation to a wood cabin with their friends.

I did publish it! I archived it as soon as I could!!

I think it was one of the very first user stories written on the app, back in classic style. I guess I read all the stories on the app so started writing my own?

Yup! I read all the guidelines and all the tutorials. The tutorials were very basic, Raquel and Imogen were the OGs. They helped me code quite a bit, but I felt a bit lost when I returned from a break and overlays were magically a thing.

I know what overlays are now? There are no words to say how far I’ve come. I never had characters appear on the screen without walking on or be facing the wrong way or things like that, but now my plot ideas, dialogue and directing have approved beyond belief.

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i did my first story on mobile in the app but i Don’t remember it now. i only remember the first story that i did on pc

it was about 8 girls in highschool that was having a normal then one day a mysterious person is texting and threating them

Yes i did published it , that time i didn’t know the archive feature existed.

mystery stories and my bff’s ideas

nope. but i kinda read a little bit during writting my story.

nope because i’m unstoppable and this is my story

Billions of miles

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This girl named Christina Hellbent but I think I changed it to Bella White? Her dad owned some sorta school for non-humans. Her mom was a human unlike the dad whose name was whack. I think that’s all I remember. I could’ve published it but I guess I never did?

Gameplays on an app I forgot the name of.

It was on mobile creator, :face_vomiting:. I didn’t even know guidelines existed.

I’ve never really thought about it but pretty damn far! I didn’t even know what an overlay was—

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I’m sorry :joy:

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This is so embarrassing to post but here it goes:

1. What was your first story about?
I- nooooooooooooooo

It was supposed to be a romance story and I had the audacity to title it “Hell’s Angel” :sob: I really thought I did something

1.a) Did you publish it? If so… did you archive it once episode released the archive feature? :new_moon_with_face:
No, didn’t even come close (thankfully). It was archived faster than I can put this emoji: :computer_rage:

2. What inspired you to start writing it?
Probably Twilight or something. I think I also just thought it’d be cool to write about, too

3. Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?
Tutorial guides, yes. I also watched a lot of Joseph Evans. As for the guidelines… I honestly can’t remember. Sorry @Tyler!

3.a) If so, did they change your story ideas or influence you to change your plot?
N/A

4. How far have you come since then?
For one, my descriptions are longer than two sentences and way more elaborate, so that’s progress. I also think my directing is better, plus my story telling in general. The first and only chapter of this is literally me trying to set up a dressing game so the MC can go to her first day of school :woozy_face: I stopped at around 50 lines or so because the coding was hard. All in all, I’d say pretty far lol

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There are these three different people who could possibly this mysterious, reclusive billionaire’s kid. For some reason, I never thought beyond that premise and never really had much of a plot. As such, no. It sits blissfully in my portal, dying a slow death.

Even back then, I really didn’t think I can write a romance story. I think I was partly inspired by Real Hollywood with some plot ideas, but they’re so disjointed.

Back then, it even surprised me that people could write their own stories, let alone how they should be written. That being said, I don’t think there was anything egregious. As for tutorials, I remember back when the guides were less … user-friendly I guess so I kinda tried

I actually figured out how spot directing works for starters. In general I write and direct slightly better, but dialogue’s still a thorn in my side sometimes

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Lol! It was titled…hold on to your socks, it’s so freaking creative!!

Winter and Summer

It was about the 4 seasons (not the hotel) split into four sectors? I guess? And there were people that lived in each season. The MC was the Princess of winter and her LI was the prince of summer. Of course, the winter and summer seasons hated each other and DUh the winter princess and summer prince fell in a love that was fOrBiDdEn.

Practically a fantasy Romeo and Juliet. Ugh.

I didn’t publish it. One of the things I’m thankful of my perfectionism for.

I had originally planned the plot for some anime fanfiction so I already had it in my notes and even part of it written down. I just transferred it over and made original characters to replace the anime characters.

AHA! I didn’t even know they had content guidelines back then! (I wasn’t writing anything that broke guidelines anyway) I did however glance at the directing guides while I was writing it. Neither of them changed the course of the story.

Considering I had to make completely new backgrounds back then to get the effect I wanted that overlays offer now (because I joined when we didn’t have custom overlays)…so so so so so so sooooooooo far :joy:

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Lmao I wrote my first Episode story in summer of 2019 at the age of 24, so it’s sadly not as hilariously cringey as some of these answers. :joy:

Technically, I have two “first” episode stories, one that was always intended as a sandbox (and still is), and one that I intended to (and did) publish, I’ll talk about the latter.

What was your first story about?

It was mostly just my “Donacode boot camp”, and contained 2 independent short stories and 2 small games lol. They’re interesting, but their main point was to get me used to this medium before I started on a story I cared about.

Did you publish it?

Yep! And it’s still on the app to this day (5 and a half months later lmao).

Did you read the tutorial guides…

Nah, I went with Joseph Evans’ tutorials.

…and guidelines…

Yeah, skimmed these, they’re pretty self-explanatory. I mean, they seem self-explanatory, the ‘don’t use the characters to display sex scenes’ and such, but the exact line of what gets a pass and what doesn’t, that starts to get blurry, ie. the line between credit and promotion, the line between pop culture references and trademark infringement… but that’s something for a whole other topic lmao.

How far have you come since then?

Relatively far, actually; I now spot characters whenever possible rather than using default positions, I kinda got the hang of how to write and direct without breaking up my flow, I’ve become more used to the choice in animations, I’ve figured out how to get overlays onto the scene without them ‘flickering’ from point 0.0, I’ve learned to control GIMP rather than letting it control me…

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  1. Well it was about a love square (3 love interest lol). Mc was a rich girl (I featured her in my newest story but now she’s already 50 and she’s an aunt lol)

  2. A. Yes I did. I was about to hide it but no, I figured it out it would be no use. Besides, I already made a new episode account since my old one was made in android phone.

  3. From my favorite songs “Imagination” by Shawn Mendes, I even picked the title from the lyric lol.

  4. I did read the tutorial guide but I didn’t read the guidelines :joy:

  5. I stopped writing for 3 years then I started again in 2019 and now I’ve published 2 new stories and I plan to make more!

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1. What was your first story about?
Nothing, basically :smiley: It was a romcom, but the plot was non-existent. It was just random dialogues with occasional, unnecessary drama.

1.a) Did you publish it? If so… did you archive it once episode released the archive feature? :new_moon_with_face:
Yes and yes. I archived it like, 6 times. I did so many “revamps” because at the beginning I didn’t even know that a background had different zones, lol. Then when I finally figured it out, my characters started teleporting, so you can imagine how crappy my directing was… After fixing some directing, I made the story visible again, then I archived it to merge some chapters because they were super short. I was pretty happy with the outcome, until one day when I reread it and I was like, “wow, this is trash”, so archived it again. To be honest I want to rewrite the whole thing because it really bugs me, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever do that.

2. What inspired you to start writing it?
Hmm, okay… I only started writing it because I barely found any funny stories on the app, and I thought there was too much pressure on Kayla Sloans since she did all the hard work. I basically wanted to help to keep the comedy section alive :laughing: If anyone is wondering, I don’t think I was much of a help, lol.

3. Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?
I’m pretty sure I read the guidelines after publishing :see_no_evil: I never read the tutorials, because I wrote my first few episodes on Mobile Creator, and when I went to the writer’s portal, I tried to understand the system generated code, and I wanted to learn everything else on my own.

3.a) If so, did they change your story ideas or influence you to change your plot?
The guidelines didn’t change my story ideas because they were within them anyway.

4. How far have you come since then?
Pretty far I would say, because I’m getting much more feedback than I used to, and people seem to enjoy reading my stories. I like to think it’s because both my writing and my directing skills got better, but I still have a lot to improve on and I’m planning to work on this.

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  1. What was your first story about?
    It’s an action story I started more than a year ago and it had so many versions that it doesn’t feel like a first :rofl:
    1.a) Did you publish it? If so… did you archive it once episode released the archive feature? :new_moon_with_face:
    Yup, this month. I’m proud of what I have done, but in 2 years, if I feel it can be improved I will archive it to revamp it besides the usual directing nitpicking, I swear every time I read it I find something out of place :tired_face:

  2. What inspired you to start writing it?

Other episode stories, criminal series and my torturous mind :sweat_smile:

  1. Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?

I read them because I started on Mobile Creation then went to the Portal which seemed a monster to me at the time. But with so many versions, some parts got forgotten, many thanks to @Annieways for pointing something that I didn’t think thoroughly about

3.a) If so, did they change your story ideas or influence you to change your plot?

They didn’t change much but I did sweat when the guidelines were clarified :joy:

  1. How far have you come since then?

From the first draft to what I published, I have come far so far but I still have a lot to learn. :blush:
At least making overlays and editing BG is easier now that I somewhat understand Gimp.

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  1. My first story was an attempt to adapt a terrible story I wrote while I was in high school. It featured lots of teens doing bad things, and I’m leaving it at that.
    1a. Nope! I did use three of the characters in a story that very much did pan out.
  2. Just wanted to see if adapting said crap story was possible (for the record, I could certainly code the thing now, but it’d never pass the guidelines, so I’m not gonna do it).
  3. Nope, just used Mobile Creator plus trial-and-error in the Portal.
  4. Well, my coding is much better, and the plots make more sense, so there’s that.
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  1. What was your first story about?
    1.a) Did you publish it? If so… did you archive it once episode released the archive feature? :new_moon_with_face:

The most basic fantasy cliche ever: the chosen one :woozy_face:. I even mentioned TCO once in my story to refer the MC… Cringe :skull: But, there was a catch to it, the MC wasn’t chosen, she became “it” unwillingly, and she didn’t have to save the world (she much or less destroyed it). It’s archived, and no one will ever read it because I put it on loop. (I hid it because I’m converting it to a webtoon, not because I hate it :flushed:)

  1. What inspired you to start writing it?

A manga/anime :flushed::flushed:. I wanted to try writing and at the time I was getting heavily inspired by it (and I started reading Episode daily) so I just wrote it here.

  1. Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?
    3.a) If so, did they change your story ideas or influence you to change your plot?

Yes I read the tutorial guides but they weren’t much help, I used them whenever I needed to copy paste the “overlay create” command. I’ve also read the guidelines, didn’t have to change it anything. In fact, I wanted to follow everything throughly and because I was underage and had to have my legal guardian permission to publish it so I made my mom read every chapter I’ve written. She was my proofreader. (Fun fact: Last year, my mom asked me why I don’t ask her to read my stories anymore, I’ve said that I don’t have anything right now and she asked me how & why considering I had forums and portal open all the time… little did she know all I do is hangout on Instagram while creating characters :woozy_face:)

  1. How far have you come since then?

The biggest growth is on directing, for sure. My biggest problem with the story was creating realistic dialogues but now I think I’m doing okay on that, also, outlining is always a pain in the a** but now it’s kind of getting better. :thinking:

I might be in the minority here, but am I the only one who likes their first story? Lol

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What was your first story about?
Gotta be honest, I was looking back at it and this thing doesn’t even have a set plot. All I can really tell is that it was supposed to be a comedy but the only funny part is how bad it is :’) Very glad it was never published. It did have thousands of lines of (regrettable) code, though.

Let’s not go into inspiration because I have no clue what younger me was thinking :sweat_smile:

Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?
I did! I think at some point I had read almost every page of the old guides ahah. My story didn’t break the guidelines so they didn’t influence me all that much.

For some reason I missed the fact that the left, right, center etc. stage positions existed though, so all of my characters were spot-directed, which would have been fine. . . if it was good/okay spot directing. It was not.

How far have you come since then?
I’ve definitely improved my directing a lot. I like to think my stories now have actual plots, too. I’m yet to publish a story, mainly because since then I haven’t been able to stick to one for super long, but I think I’m getting better at that. Many, many, WIPs have helped me.

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What was your first story about?
It was started in 2016. It was about a babysitter who falls for the kid’s older brother…

Did you publish it? If so… did you archive it once episode released the archive feature? :new_moon_with_face:

I did publish it, and it is terrible and embarrassing! I didn’t know how to use layers and very terrible spot directing! I didn’t know the purpose of & and I even have characters facing the wrong direction while kissing… Bad! hahahaha. I remember being so excited when it had 30 reads!

However, I did not archive it, although I do think about archiving it! But somehow it still generates some reads each month after 3 years! No idea how! People are crazy I guess…
I wrote 31 chapters and discontinued it. It was at an OK spot for an ending, but it wasn’t great.
That’s what happens when you start writing an episode story with zero plan and no end in mind!

What inspired you to start writing it?
Other stories I read on episode. :man_shrugging:

Did you read the tutorial guides and guidelines before you started writing it?
3.a) If so, did they change your story ideas or influence you to change your plot?
Yes, I used the tutorial guides, guidelines and forums. They did not influence my story. I didn’t understand the guielines, but I did have to go back and fix some things later once it was reviewed by episode, but not much.

How far have you come since then?
Over 3 years later! I’ve written five different stories now. (3 complete, 1st discontinued, 1 in progress, and 1 being converted to LL)

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