I wasn't sure what to write about this week, until I hit upon something I haven't seen very many of we writers talk about: what was the first book you ever wrote? Not early stories, not something that started off just for fun and somehow turned into a book along the way, but the first result of you deliberately sitting down to write a book.
My first book had the unfortunate title of THE BLESSED, and if I ever have a writing career, I will credit it with this book never seeing print.
The book itself was classic fantasy. Heroes with swords and other medieval weapons, lots of riding around on horses, dark forces at play, and dragons. So many dragons. Much of the plot (at least as I can remember it) involved both the return of dragons to the lands and the arrival of an unusual kind of magic. These two were of course linked, largely via a group of dragon-worshipers, and it was up to five heroes (the titular Blessed) gifted with the power of five of the world's gods to track down the source of these happenings and put a stop to them.
This story took me three years to write, and I had no idea what I was doing.
A lot of the plot was inspired by the early Final Fantasy games, which were my favorites back in the days of the NES and Super NES, so the book had kind of a classic RPG feeling to it - building the party over the course of the adventure, everyone with a different elemental power, stuff like that. It was also an enormous story, easily over 200,000 words judging by the file size.
No, I'm not opening up the file to check. I don't want to see how bad I really was back then. Because trust me, I was bad.
I opened the story with the main character waking up from a dream. The heroes found each other because destiny said so, almost literally. Every single character had their own POV sections, often swapping from one to the other without warning in the middle of a chapter and swapping back with even less warning. I had no idea how to decide what scenes belonged in the story and what didn't, so I included everything I thought up. And not only did the book have five different chosen ones, there was a sixth person who believed he was chosen and went about telling everyone that he was.
I killed that character off at the end of one chapter, having the group's main adversary gut him while the two of them were fighting. That was the last chapter available at one point when I let Rena read it, which led to her stepping into the middle of a fencing match I was in to threaten my soul for the next chapter.
Maybe I wasn't very good back then, but I did know how to pull off a cliffhanger.
It's been years since I gave this book this much thought, and it is kind of fun to look back. I tried re-plotting the book once, with a better title and a darker way of going about things, and it worked out all right at the time; I still think of redoing that tale from the antagonist's point of view. But considering how many stories I have warring for dominance in my head, it's not high on my list.
So! Your turn. What was the first book you ever wrote? What do you remember about it? How did it go? And would you ever let anyone read it?
For a while in high school I was determinedly writing a high fantasy "book" about a female knight, and then I wrote a sequel about a lady bard who fell in love with a dragon but the dragon thought she was better off with the prince -- none of it is good, and I *have* tortured myself be rereading some bits and pieces more recently. High school writer me... well. I had a lot to learn.
ReplyDeleteBut it still does have some good bones as far as the big picture concepts go, I guess. Part of me always wants to go back when I remember these old stories, and try rewriting them again into something that isn't garbage but I never seem to be able to find the time, and there are always other projects I'm more excited about when I DO have time.
I'm with you there, on all accounts. No matter how bad something seems, there are usually seeds of good ideas in there somewhere. That's part of why I've considered going back to my old stuff and doing villain POV, as I think it could be interesting to have someone who thinks they've killed the Chosen One and then learns they haven't.
DeleteYou should go back and rework it. I'd read it.
ReplyDeleteThe first full novel I wrote was also a mess. And so amateur. But I rewrote it a few years ago and came up with a much better story. It became CassaStar, my first published book.
Good to see something like that came out of it. ^_^
Delete200,000 is a big first try. And if it's worth redoing, I say go for it. My first one was a MGer titled Just Justice (Dot) Com. It was a mess, but actually received several full requests from the 7 queries I sent out. After reading the book, I don't think those agents will ever talk to me again though.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, I have way too many new ideas to go back to an old one for now, though who knows. *shrug* And that's awesome that you got full requests for your first work! All I got was my usual silence and rejection.
DeleteThis is the IWSG question for August--well first "thing" we've written and mine was a short story. So the answer to your question will be different! The first book I wrote was a young adult series about teens working in a movie theater. I wrote it before realizing that YA books weren't really a thing in the 90s. They were so unpopular, it was all series (Sweet Valley High, Nancy Drew, etc.). It picked back up after Harry Potter, but I tossed that YA series out and started writing category romance because it was the closest thing I could find to what I wanted to write.
ReplyDeleteHuh! I didn't mean to get ahead like that. The first "thing" I wrote was back in second grade, far as I can remember, and it's not worth a blog entry. >_<
DeleteI have a copy of my first book saved to my Google Drive. It's just under 50K, the first thousand or so being pure info-dump. I kept a couple of the character names, the Trapped in Another World trope, and the main relationship. I reworked everything else.
ReplyDeleteI've saved all my books, whether I want to ever touch them again or not. >_< But I hear you about keeping some things and reworking others. Considering how many books I've written starring different versions of the same two characters... yeah.
DeleteThe first book I ever wrote was called Egged On. It was a murder mystery with a modern, intellectual Nancy Drew type sleuth. Confession: It started off as a cathartic way of killing off the boyfriend who had just dumped me, and the inspiration was one of my friends offering to egg his car. (That he loved more than any girl.)
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing about it is that I paid to have a few copies printed up in cheap binding ... and some of my friends still have a copy. Every once in a while, they threaten to bring Egged On into daylight again, and I have to bribe them with martinis to keep it buried.
That's hilarious. ^_^ I do sometimes worry that someone who's done pre-reading for me long ago will pull out a printed copy of an old book and forcibly remind me how bad it was. Oi!
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