"Bad" Stories and Old Ideas: What to Do With Them?

Hi there, my fellow nerds! 

Do you ever wonder if you should finish writing your stories? If you should just give up on your old ideas, or if they're actually worth writing? Well, this post is mainly my thoughts on that. :)

Before I get too far with this, please know that I'm nowhere near a professional writer! Being quite honest with you all, I'm almost fifteen years old, so I've got a lot to learn for sure.

Of course I'm not going to go into my life story here or anything, but I've been learning a lot about writing as I've gotten older, and about my writing style as well. I hope to inspire writers of all ages with my posts--whether they be younger or older than me. 

I've been writing (when I say that, I mean getting serious about it) for about five years, not counting the silly stories I scribbled as a six-year-old. I'm not J.R.R. Tolkien or anything, of course, but I quite honestly think my writing has improved since I first started.

But wait! About those "silly stories" I mentioned, can any of you relate? If you're a writer, have you ever written any awful, cringe-worthy stories, maybe when you were younger or when you first got into writing? You know, the kind that was filled to the brim with awful grammatical errors, shallow characters, and dialogue that made your ears bleed. The kind that you probably crumpled up and threw behind your bed to rediscover five years later.

Fortunately, I didn't keep my first story. It was called The Grand Cake, and it was about a handful of Disney fairies and their friends. I don't remember all of the "plot" (if you could call it that), but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with Tinkerbell getting angry at her friends, and then they ended up making her a grand cake, hence the title, to make up for it. Great plot, right?

Seriously, I don't mean to make this all about me. :P I hope I haven't lost your interest.

What I'm getting at is, I think all writers start off with "bad" stories. I'm a big fan of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but if you think about it, they probably didn't start off with wonderful ideas. They probably wrote plenty of bad stories before they were successful, because that's often how writing works. Sometimes good ideas don't just come to you as soon as you sit down with pen and paper--although it sure would be nice if they did!

Here is something that I found really inspiring:

Now, back to discussing the "bad" stories. If you've written any, I strongly advise you to keep them. I speak from experience. :( Honestly, I really wish I would have kept some of mine for a good many reasons. Yes, it was incredibly cringey, but I wish I could compare it to what I've written recently. Another good reason is that--just hear me out, please--there could actually be a good idea or two in one of those stories. Yes, I really just said that. In the midst of the misspelled words and awful dialogue, like a diamond in the rough, you actually might find a couple of hidden gems.

This happened to me. Being honest with you guys, I never did find any good plot ideas from what I kept of my old writing. :) However, when I scrapped an old story I wrote called Journey to Boulder City, I found a handful of good character names and places that I actually ended up using for a series I'm still working on. I strongly urge you to do this! Who knows? You might find something that you can work with, if you're willing to put the time and effort into it.

If you're interested in maybe finishing one of your old stories that you left alone, or that you're still kind of tinkering with, don't give up hope! I can't really tell you if your idea is good enough to make something out of. But I can tell you that some ideas just stick, and if you work hard enough at them, there's a good chance you can make something out of them. If worse comes to worst, you can scrap the story like I mentioned, or you can transform it into something different.

I think this is the best thing you can do with an idea you're interested in. I did it once with the story I mentioned, Journey to Boulder City. I think the idea itself was too far gone, and a bit too childish for what I wanted it to be, but I transformed it into something I eventually became proud of it. I took a few places from the world and recycled a couple of my character's names, then I went all in with a brand-new idea. And guess what happened? I got 6 rough drafts (and another in the making) from this new idea. Sometimes you outgrow an idea, but that doesn't mean you have to throw it in the trash. You can still make something of it.

You know, I still write stories sometimes that I don't consider "good". A few of them I've ended up liking, but the majority haven't quite turned out the way I wanted them to. I usually try my hardest to finish the stories, though. Like the tip I uploaded mentioned, it really is important to finish your stories, even if they aren't great. Because one day, there is a very good chance that you'll produce something good.

Don't give up your dreams. :) I know writing is hard, and it sure is a lot of work, but I truly think it's worth it in the end.

Good luck!