What I Would Do if I Showed You My First Surviving Attempt at Writing a Book

I first tried my hand at writing many, many years ago.
I don't quite know when I first decided to write for pleasure. For the first couple years that I consumed this earth's resources, Playmobile and reading were much more important in my life then something that might be considered "learning." Did I ever hate school back then. However, as happens with so many readers, the idea that I wanted to write books myself started manifesting in my brain. I'd take a wild guess and say that I first tried writing outside of school in grade three, and attempted my first longer story sometime in grade four. The seeds of writing had been planted.
The first story of any length that I wrote was based on some old computer game I played. The game, Warlords: Call to Arms, was set in a fictional world where there were a bunch of races of elves, men and orcs who all sat around and did nothing while your chosen race slowly conquered them all. Being an extremely original individual in grade 4, I decided to copy the entire premise of the game and write from every single races' point of view. At the time I thought that this multiple perspectives thing was genius.
Unfortunately that story went downhill quickly, and was scrapped at about 1000 words. Feeling defeated, I abandoned my blossoming writing career for half a year.
Then one day in grade five, I found myself playing Sims. As I've already mentioned several times on this blog, I saw my Sim writing away and thought "how hard can it be, really?" Three hours later I had the story that I'm going to be presenting to you now.
This is only about 600 words of a 40 000 word epic, and even in that short time I managed to insult people who had no parents and achieve perhaps the best opening line of all time: a slightly dramaticised version of "You have been accused guilty!"

It's that bad, people. Lets just get it over with.

Prologue
 

“You” The next few words would decide my fate. “Have” my world was going to be thrown even deeper into turmoil, and I knew it. “Been” I bowed my head as I awaited my fate. “Accused” I prayed he would not say the next word. But then he said it. “Guilty”. My name is Luke. And this is my story.

Chapter One

A Flash of Green Light

Yes, my name is Luke, and I was the average fifteen-year-old. I got good grades, had many friends, and was notorious for being sneaky. That was before my life changed. I was really no different from everyone else. Not yet, anyway. It was a beautiful late August day. The sun was streaming through my window and the birds were singing somewhere off in the distance. It was also the day that would change my life forever. It was Thursday evening, and I was doing the one thing that separated me from most everyone else: I was reading. In an orphanage. Yes, I am and was an orphan. Both my parents died when I was just a few months old, leaving me to fend for myself. None of my friends knew that I was an orphan, though, aside from my companions in the orphanage. I was way too proud to tell them. But that’s not important. Believe me, a volcano erupting and WWIII happening in the next five minutes would have been nothing compared to what happened next. At the time nothing seemed out of place. I was lying on my bed reading a thick book that I had been working on for quite some time. It was entitled Space Travel and Our Campaign for Mars. To put it frankly, it was one of the worst books I had ever read, not that I had really read many. It was saying how if we tried to go to Mars, we would run out of food, be hit by a meteorite, or our bones would decay, plus some scientific gibberish that I would never understand. I didn’t even get why anyone would even want to go to Mars. Besides, we can already send satellites and robots there and it’s just as if we were there anyway. I would love to have some good history or historical fiction books but what do I get? Garbage. But none of that is really important at the moment. Because of course, I could tell you what I think about it and really anything I choose to tell you about, because there is more to tell. There’s always more. But instead of telling you my inner musings, I will tell you about how my life changed on that fateful day. How my quest to save mankind and then being hunted by them all came together. It all started with a slight breeze seeming to come through the room, ruffling the pages of my book although there had been virtually no breeze up to that point. Then there was a low-pitched moaning sound, getting louder and louder with every fleeting moment. My eyes jerked up from the page as I started panicking and looking around frantically, trying to find the source of the noise. And then all at once, there was a blinding flash of green light at the foot of my bed. I stumbled up, yelping in surprise. And then something stepped out of the light.

...

Yeah. I told you it was bad.

Let's break this down into a few parts, shall we?

First, there's the opening sentence, which makes little sense in any possible context. From what I recall that scene was supposed to take place later on in the book, although I can only hope that the judge had sobered up by then. I have a sneaking suspicion that I forgot about the opening line by the time that scene rolled around.

Then, there's that bit about orphans which basically says that it's shameful to not have any parents, which is completely false. As well, I said that my protagonist Luke kept this fact from his friends, which would be A). Nearly impossible to do, and B). a pointless thing to write into the story, as the only friends that Luke encounters in the story show up in a cornfield 20 000 words in.

Thridly, even in that little blurb I struggle with getting to my point. It's like "My life changed that day. Then I read a book. But that's not important, 'cause my life changed. I'm an orphan, btw. Did I mention that my life was changed that day when a funky thing stepped out of a funky green light?"

I kept beating around the bush, and frankly I think that I still struggle with this today.

Looking back I can instantly see how greatly my work was influenced by what I was reading at the time. In particular I was influenced by a novel that nowadays I can't find the name of, despite extensive googling. The book was about a kid who's framed for some crime or other and so spends his time evading the police and unraveling the mystery of who committed the actual crime, and why. All I remember from that book is that it had a really unsatisfying ending, and that the protagonist was sprinting away from cops 90% of the time. This dude should have been caught about a hundred times, but he always seemed to escape at the last minute. Looking back on it, that story was unbelievable, and incorporating a bunch of similar police chases and escapes into my own story made it unbelievable as well.

Even in this first chapter, I can pick out distance things lifted from other stories. That whole blurb about space travel probably came after watching a show on the subject. I have a strong feeling that the line "... because there's more. There's always more" was lifted from an actual book, probably A Series of Unfortunate Events. Naturally, it was worded much better in the original. 

Even the protagonist is clearly a Mary Sue character who's simply an idealized version of myself. Unfortunately, Luke was clearly an idiot. So perhaps I was too.
There are just so many pathetic things about that manuscript. Half of the action was taken from other stories, it didn't really make sense, and I didn't have a damn thing planned ahead at any point in the writing process. It was a jumble of the most appealing parts of other books combined to make a disgusting excuse for a story. I'm not too proud of the stories quality.
On the flip side, I am glad that I wrote the thing. I could feel myself become a better writer the more I wrote, and that simply made me want to write more. Practice makes perfect, right?
I may be posting more of that story later on, if I want to mooch off my previous writings or anyone misguidedly asks for more. Until such a time, thanks for reading. Be sure to leave a comment letting me know how your first attempts at writing went! (Please? ;)

-Mark