Story Regrets

I used to be absolutely terrible with cramming everything into the first chapter. I still do that, but I like to think I've gotten at least a little bit better.

I used to always do more telling rather than showing in my stories like having the characters fall in love by chapter three and have them drop dead in love without really explaining why. Gosh! Horrible!

Not establishing Jimmy's life more in Mortality. While I'm not exactly sure what I would have done, I feel like I could have written a bit more before the point where I actually began it.

Um, well, when I first started on this site like 6 years ago, I totally had a thing with emo boys and I made like a 60 chapter story just revolving around an emo love affair. Wow I'm sorry. I feel so guilty.

isadora in bloom:

Um, well, when I first started on this site like 6 years ago, I totally had a thing with emo boys and I made like a 60 chapter story just revolving around an emo love affair. Wow I'm sorry. I feel so guilty.

Everyone made this story. We all had that phase.

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Not doing all my research. I'm getting too lazy to write science fiction.

@ C418
IT'S SO SHAMEFUL.

@ isadora in bloom
Mine still exists on my old account, but I dare not go into that.

When I first started writing, I had a real problem with making my characters not have any real friends. They were all super lonely for no apparent reason and it didn't really make any type of sense.

Not having my characters have any real stable relationship with their parents, which is the total opposite of how I am with my parents in real life so as to why my characters don't have stable relationships, I have no idea. And when I started writing, whenever my main character ended up with his/her romantic interest, everything else like ceased to exist except for their drama? Yeah.

I would always have the misunderstood scene girl that falls in love with the bad boy/band member. And to go along with that, I'd also have the blonde cheerleader that would try and do everything in her power to destroy the life of said scene girl.

My stories would lack detail. Majorly.

Each chapter I would change the point-of-view or even have it change mid-chapter.

I never take enough time in my stories for a romantic interest to fully grow, I always rush into it. I'm a little better about it now, but I look back at some of my old writing from 5-6 years ago when I first joined this site. I also lacked in detail, and now I feel like I provide too much detail at some times, making some chapters in some of my stories exceed 5,000 words.

The more time passes, the more I regret Generation Why Bother as a whole. And 99% percent of those regrets are absolutely fucking up the gender ratio. I can't believe I made such a ridiculous mistake and just completely overlooked it - but at least I've learned from that. It's just "whatever" at this point. Nothing I can do now but not make the same dumb mistake again.

Not. Planning. Shit. Out.

Obviously that doesn't really apply to drabbles and one-shots so much, but chaptered stuff it absolutely does. I can't tell you how many stories I've started that I know damn well I will probably never finish, and I know now that it's because I didn't plan them out enough. Like, I know a certain degree of spontaneity and all that is good for writing, but I took it way too far with my older works and it resulted in stories that were all over the place, barely (if at all) organized, and ultimately doomed.
Like, I try not to over-plan, I try to allow some wiggle room for spontaneous sort of ideas and things like that, but for every multi-chaptered work I do now I have at least one outline (usually several) for it. I find that keeps me on task better, makes my stories better and less likely to go all over the place, and gives me an actual plan so I can really think seriously about getting shit done.

TL;DR Planning stories out helps so so much, and I regret that I wrote so many ultimately doomed fic with barely any (if any!) real planning.

I regret not naming any male characters Storm because of fear that Mibbians would think it wasn't realistic and ignore the story.