Your First Writing Mistake

"What’s a mistake that you made in your FIRST EVER fanfic?" Did you not plan it out ahead of time? Did you use a Mary Sue self-insert character? Did you not know how to dispose of your villain, so they conveniently fell off a cliff? Here are some first writing/fanfiction mistakes from the FanFiction subreddit. What's your answer? :)
Link to the original Reddit thread: / whats_a_mistake_that_y...
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[@captaincanterberrystudios6920]

To those asking why nobody told them: Some Fanfiction communities can be very supportive sometimes.

[@NothingOfNoteToSeeHere]

Too supportive at times. It is hard to get better via constructive criticism when no one dares, even when asked!

[@bananabro1010]

@@NothingOfNoteToSeeHerethis is why I ALWAYS give constructive feedback if I have it, if I see they are open or requesting of it. Because I am also open and requesting of it. In every end note I ask for feedback, and I rarely get it. Which is fine. But I always do the favor of giving it if I have it.

[@rutyqutykandi1361]

@@NothingOfNoteToSeeHere I've sometimes saw fics from obvious reasons grammar mistakes I want to point out, others which want to get to the point of there story so fast they skip any emotional impact, and more recently read one that was so verbose that if you deleted half the descriptive words there wouldn't be an act substance. A thing most these fics had is that the user would moderate who could post, it just told me they don't accept feedback.

[@Geyser39]

It's rude to make comments criticising people for something minor like spelling, fanfiction is a homemade gift, you don't complain about homemade gift unless upu desperately need to lose the high ground.

[@NothingOfNoteToSeeHere]

@@Geyser39 What if an auther, i.e me, wants exactly that criticism to get better at writing? Still rude even when I ask for criticism?

[@rainsparks29]

a girl at my school got expelled for writing smut about one of the staff, so... it can always be worse y'all

[@KH-uh8pp]

And i thought my fanfics were bad... 💀😬

[@K-K-Kingston]

Holy sh!t why???

[@mynameisreallycool1]

Oh my lord. If I was that staff member, I would die.

[@YataTheFifteenth]

Holy shit and I thought that's just a stupid backstory for a video game character

[@eliquos]

WHAT.

[@thedumbone1683]

My first mistake was not writing it. There's been too many ideas that get forgotten because I'm just too lazy to write it out lol

[@bogwife7942]

this is where an ideas doc comes in handy. you gotta word vomit them out to save 'em for later

[@leaftiger12]

@@bogwife7942Yup. I’ve labeled a google doc “Random Notes” for this purpose.

[@A-Dino-Named-Mennany]

SAMEEEE. I keep on thinking "I want to write a fic about this", AND THEN I NEVER DO! Sometimes I even think about the wording I want to use in certain scenes, even the start of it, but I _just. don't. write it!_

[@Adamfaraday]

Yes!!! The lethargy and simultaneous anxiety are like concrete to my fingers!!!

[@qwertykeyboard5901]

That was a blessing in disguise for me! Pruned out almost all of the garbage childish ideas like teleportation and mars colonies.

[@giantpinkcat]

As someone who started writing fics when I was 13, I can't even remember when I made my first writing mistake because of how many I made.

[@pixeldraws]

that's... too relatable.

[@markipliertrash1562]

Oof

[@G-Cole-01]

yeah

[@persialionheart]

Same 😅

[@warcatfurever101writeroffanfic]

✨Same✨

[@natalia9093]

My first fanfic was a Slenderman horror story written as a part of a TEST in SCHOOL. IT GOT FUCKING GRADED.

[@sheatemyheartt]

Well.. what grade did you get?

[@therealopaartist]

@@sheatemyhearttan S. For Slenderman. Duh.

[@The4drph]

Me too (it was Harry Pitter tho)

[@ladymandible2056]

I had a friend that legit drew the operator symbol on his wrist. And was completely confident in that he was a proxy. And so one time he got a piece of notebook paper, and drew the operator symbol on it with a message that said: "If you recognize this symbol you're one of us..." And a very childishly gorey fanfiction paper clipped to the back. And by God I was in love with this boy holy fuck

[@Redoxenfree]

Writing "farting" out the door rather than "darting", and then publishing it. I didn't realise until someone pointed out the flatulence right after the funeral divorce. (The character got divorced in a funeral for their own son. Major sad.)

[@_Unoffical_Norahhh_]

Major sad indeed

[@froggychair6270]

🚪🏃💨

[@milla5454]

IM CRYING IMAGINING THIS AHAHHA

[@cutiefox19]

This might seem like a small issue but, making a character who cannot see colors (achromatopsia) describe a character only by what color they were. On multiple occasions.

[@VectorJW9260]

Lmao. I have an entire fantasy race that can't see colors and I definitely try to make sure I only use light and dark. This is also reflected in the set design as well.

[@mhmmhm5995]

That sounds like quite a funny mistake 😂

[@vexywexypoo]

LMAO THATS KINDA FUNNY

[@naturescorruptedinfactorie8062]

My first thought was when the blind man can see you pickpocketing him in Bit-Life

[@Panzystubbedtheirtoe]

@@naturescorruptedinfactorie8062uh oh! The blind man saw you and ran off!

[@cornbabylaughter]

pressing "set different publishing date" instead of "has multiple chapters"

[@giuseppemassari9970]

4:10 I actually respect the fact they made their intruding author notes bold, because sincerely, it’s easier to mentally skip them if they aren’t in the same lettering as the story

[@BlindStarLily]

Oh man, this took me back to a memory that made me cringe myself into the fetal position. Age nine or ten, shared the Sonic X, self insert fanfiction I wrote in my little pocket notebook - with - my - f a t h e r- My soul will never be clean-

[@YourWaywardDestiny]

Your father was likely having a grand old time seeing your child brain do its thing and you have nothing to worry about. At age 9-10, you can perceive media, but not always absorb media. That is a great concoction for absolutely unhinged combos that adults are too hung up about logical details to even conceive of.

[@freshcupofangst]

At least you showed it to him willingly. Do you know what it's like to have your mom approach you one day about the lego ninjago fanfiction your little 10-12 self had been writing for a few weeks and tell you that she'd read a chapter of it before she'd even started talking to you about it, and the way that she found it was because you'd been posting it on this website that you were supposed to be using primarily for education, but you were also using it for the social aspect it had, which included a "newspaper” function that let users post their stories on the site, which, little did you know at the time, notified the parents who signed their kids up to the site whenever their kid posted something to the newspaper? And let them read it? Which meant for the whole time you'd been writing and posting the fic your mom had been getting emails about it with full access to each chapter, and you didn't know? ...And of course the chapter she just HAD to have read was the one that you dedicated to your online friend who was inactive on the site and had a really heartfelt personal message to them at the end of the chapter...? Yeah...I don't know what that's like either...

[@BlindStarLily]

@@freshcupofangst While I don’t know what that exact memory is like, I do know what it’s like to have your mom discover your fanfiction and read it aloud to the household to shame you about it... Kindrid spirits, my friend-

[@kiera6326]

⁠@@YourWaywardDestiny”At age 9-10, you can perceive media, but not always absorb media.” That’s interesting, what’s the difference?

[@YourWaywardDestiny]

@@kiera6326 A difference in understanding the nuances and messages in the unspoken story telling. What might be obvious clues to an adult audience about the narrative is not always so obvious to someone who has never encountered it before. There's a metaphor for death in the cowboy riding off into the sunset that genre savvy people see so often, it's cliché at this point. Some kid seeing a western for the first time? Right over their head. They have no clue and might invent their own meaning for it, or decide it means nothing at all.

[@DizzytheAnimator]

I think my worst mistake was making the chapters too short. It also had no plot when I started it and the plot that it had later was rushed and done awfully. The villain wanted to kill celebrities that I (the mc) was a big fan of and I decided to stop him by myself.

[@hoothoot1791]

to be honest, the fact you decided to stop him by yourself sounds funny to me

[@deen7530]

@@hoothoot1791 I'm just imagining a preteen kid going full John Wick to protect their celebrity crushes

[@markipliertrash1562]

Wow-

[@brare45996]

Yeah mine had approximately 1 chapter per page. Like, chapter 11 (the final one which I never finished) started on page 11. And apparently chapter 10 is a little less than half a page

[@DizzytheAnimator]

@@brare45996 that was the length of the prolonge. Most of the rest were like 2-3 pages and the longest I think was 4

[@CrazyUFOKid]

when i was writing the backstory for my creepypasta OC as a child, i was aware of all the overused tropes and took note of them. (getting bullied, wearing a hoodie, etc.). i ended up giving her those tropes anyways. pretty based of little me tbh.

[@mehizcringe]

GIRLIES, GAYS AND THEYS *THIS COMMENTER’S PAST SELF IS NOW WHO I WANT TO BE AS A WRITER!* 👏👏👏

[@liv.s.]

i want to be like you when i grow up

[@rushingwater2.0]

I wrote my OC with my experience and got told it was “basic” and “overdone” But it’s FUN to give characters these things, it’s why everyone does it

[@BlindStarLily]

Oh man. I thought I was sooooooo much better than other CRP fans because my OC was neither bullied at school, nor wore a hoodie. She did, however, have a shitty stepmother, wore a stupidly long scarf, had red eyes and was a teenager who killed with a kitchen knife. I am so glad that I dropped her into the trash where she belongs. Granted, I used aspects of her appearance (straight dark hair, rosy complexion) for my current CRP OC like five or six years later. I guess that means she was in the spare parts room of my brain and not the actual garbage disposal.

[@elenahaya1195]

"If people use these all the time,they gotta be great,right?" -OP when little

[@callmesummon]

My biggest mistake was not planning it and entirely going off the initial idea 😭 nowadays I have very detailed checklists for each chapter so I can actually tell the story I want to tell properly

[@koineko.]

unrelated but ROTTMNT PFP >:D

[@callmesummon]

@@koineko. eyyyy

[@aldenheterodyne2833]

Huh. You must be great at writing stories. I get a craving for something I want to read, find that it doesn't exist, and then daydream it onto a page. The fun part is reading it and revising the scenes. I pretty much just write disjointed scenes that I want to see. I have one framing device that mildly works with that: it's just an older version of the character reflecting on their past. I remember the past nonlinearly, so it somewhat excuses the nonlinear storytelling.

[@onlineskitty]

i tried doing this but it just got insanely stressful for me 😭 so i kind of try to wing it while also keeping a general outline of what i want to do in my head

[@justanonbinarynerd-ne9tt]

I DID THAT FOR A WHILE!

[@magicalgirllaurie]

Now that I think about it, my first fanfic was when I was 12 in English class creative writing and I wrote like half the first Avengers movie except they were all dogs. Nick Fury was a Scottie dog. That’s all I remember.

[@tsifirakiehl4250]

Honestly, I would read that.

[@oak..]

​@@tsifirakiehl4250tbh same lol

[@hannahmetzger4880]

I bet Steve Rogers/Captain America was a golden retriever, and Tony Stark/Iron Man was either a German shepherd, a Doberman pinscher, or a great dane, LOL. XD.

[@CallMeCrazyCallMePoor]

Oh God, I was given the option of writing an additional chapter of a book to serve as my report. My poor English teacher had to read my imitation of Jules Verne.

[@lunas_gamingworld9422]

OK why do I actually want to read that

[@kirbyridingyoshi28]

Making it out of obligation, not because I wanted to. I'm autistic, and so growing up my parents hired a bunch of people to support my learning, and for some reason these people were REALLY fixated on getting 9-year-old me to write. The first thing I wrote was a terrible "stranded on an island story", and then when I was told to write another, I decided to write fanfic for this Dragon City knockoff I was into. I never finished it because I had no idea where to take the plot, and didn't enjoy writing it at all lol

[@therealopaartist]

Probs wanted to be part of your success story if you DID have knack for writing and got famous. Like an “i was there from the BEGINNING! I’m the one who PUSHED them to start writing!“ thing.

[@angrybirdscricket]

When I was like... 8 years old? I wrote a Warrior Cats fanfic. Before finishing the first book. Wich, among other things, resulted in me naming a character Sandstorm, and then being absolutely devastated when I read the second book and Sandpaw _became Sandstorm_

[@rosetintmyworld3725]

I wrote what I consider my first "real" fanfiction at 13, it was a pregnancy fic. It didn't start as one but there was a big plot twist halfway through that, if I remember correctly, a guy in the group had been impregnated by an alien at a time before the fic even starts (even though that was definitely not canon), and they are now just getting diagnosed with pregnancy. I grew up watching my mom play Sims 2 and she got one of her male sims impregnated by aliens and that just really stuck with me, especially once I started playing the Sims 4. And I still write pregnancy-related content on the regular, a lot of mpreg too, I'm 21. I think I have a problem because I'll never have kids of my own.

[@kathleenwoods8416]

there are worse ways to deal with that feeling, but I'll admit to some curiosity, as I'm not above reading pregnancy fic & liking it & its kinda cool to know where it comes from on an emotional level for some people.

[@madepines3455]

Oh boy.oh no.

[@carpenterthehivewing]

PLEEEEASE IM DYIBG

[@wolfless8088]

When I was 12 I wrote a not-the-best self-insert pokemon fanfic. My biggest mistake was telling my cousin about it. She called me cringe for liking childish things and I was so embarrassed that I stopped liking pokemon. I found it a while ago and I still look at it fondly.

[@flickcentergaming680]

This gave me an idea

[@emperorblob7886]

​@@flickcentergaming680what's the idea

[@tinypinkittycat]

If anyone criticizes you for liking what you enjoy, remind them that there are plenty of adults who like "childish things"! Artists, animators, authors, illustrators, mascots, employees at public places meant for all ages, etc!

[@igor-korobitsyn]

A lot of people say that they regret writing their first fic in the first place because it was that bad. I personally don't. It IS terrible, and I did cringe when I was rereading it, but... I think the first thing I have ever writen in a way HAD to be terrible, so the second one could be slightly better. And the third one, and so on

[@bxttercxp_swxxts]

If you cringe at your past work, that's how you know you've improved

[@Theawesomeninja_XD]

As someone who's been writing since childhood, I love my old stuff. I cringe so much at the comics I made when I was 9-13; the less developed drawings, the fact that there was no plot, the fact that I accidentally made a yandere (yes that happened). But I wouldn't have improved without it. I wouldn't change a single moment of that time. And as the person above said: If you cringe at your past work, that's how you know you've improved.

[@tinypinkittycat]

Exactly, especially with fandoms, and people who act toxic in general!

[@stygian6642]

This exactly! The only way to not make some of those 'mistakes' is by never writing anything in the first place

[@_BubblGum_]

i… honestly cant tell if i regret my first fic or not. yes, it was cringe, yes it taught me how to write, i made friends from it, and people really liked it… but it was also disgustingly problematic and had many dark topics that my younger self should not have been writing about, even if my younger self was going through a lot at the time. i feel terrible whenever i think about it now, but at least ive improved from that point.

[@whizzerbrown1349]

Started writing before I learnt the difference between there, their, and they’re… As a linguistics major, I teared up while re-reading those 💀

[@transjeffdr]

My biggest mistake was trying to avoid clichés. While I understand why that's advice people give new writers, it's important to understand WHY the clichés work before you try to subvert an idea you don't understand out of fear of getting bullied by grown adults online (plus the avoidance of cliché is so common it actually invents more clichés in the process. so.) Just have fun with what you're writing, don't stress yourself out too much, I guarantee that most people can tell when a fanfic author is enjoying themselves + it usually makes the story more enjoyable

[@Kureemy]

I once wrote a fanfic wherein Chapter 1 was just full of descriptions and exposition, whereas Chapter 2 was where the story started.

[@Theawesomeninja_XD]

I don't think the plot in my au started until chapter seven of part 2 Unless the sub plot in the first part counts (which was like chapter 10)

[@tsifirakiehl4250]

I think what you had was a prologue, and your second chapter was the real Chapter 1.

[@9124Nove]

My first fan-fiction mistake would be that I was always eager to upload my chapters without proofreading them. I was enthralled seeing how my audience reacted to each new upload. You can imagine the horror and cringe I felt years later when I finally proofread it and found SO MANY grammatical, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. There were even times when I left an unfinished sentence in the middle of a paragraph. Funnily enough, my readers were awfully kind to rarely mention any of the mistakes. In the end, they enjoyed the story and were okay with glossing over my mistakes.

[@wrightcember]

my first fanfic was written in my notes app when I was 12. it was a fanfic that my friend asked me to write of her dating mettaton. it was honestly kinda good but the pacing was garbage

[@adraabouji1937]

I started writing fics when I was 9. In Wattpad. My first fandom was MLP. I wrote stories based around Sunset Shimmer, because I was literally obsessed over her at that time. And no, I didn't write because I had an idea. I purely just wanted to satisfy my obsession with making Sunset the top in everything. So I wrote the most cliche story ever. It literally had like, 100 words per chapters, and overall the story had around 10 chapters. I'm not kidding.

[@BeanKally]

Not a fanfic but a 9 page book I was super proud of as a kid. It was kinda a mess since I was like 8, but my favorite part was that the characters were on an airplane and I wrote “the plain landed” That sounds like several casualties waiting to happen

[@but_heres_the_homestuck]

the plain landed

[@sherriecargal]

the plain landed

[@celestial-lw3td]

hahahah me too, except for me it was at 8. I wrote like, what, 30-ish pages in relatively large font and made my main character the generic bullied girl 💀

[@breakingthechains38]

My first fic wasn't terrible (aside from having 21 "main" characters for some reason), but my first major mistake was pretty bad. Read someone's fic and decided I didn't like their writing style... so I rewrote it in my own style. I was originally going to keep it to myself but some friends peer pressured me into posting it. When the original author eventually found me and called me out, I got mad even though they were completely valid. I did end up rewriting the stolen bits, but also ended up dropping the fic because I was so mad at them for making me change it. I was 14 at the time and now will never rewrite someone fic without their permission. I will borrow concepts, but I will never just yoink a fic. I still feel bad for going off on them even though they were right and I ended up deleting my wattpad account.

[@dbarrett1539]

I'm 19. I've been on both sides. I stole a concept when I was 13 (and did it poorly! I'm still embarrassed!), and I've had my fic plot stolen. At first I was like... uh... this is literally my fanfic, but written in different words. Then I felt incredibly flattered. Someone was inspired by my writing. I had an active impact on someone's life, and they wanted to put their own art into the world. That's so sweet to me? It's absolutely what I want? I've been reading fics for 7 years and I only have three bookmarks -- this is one of them. Of course, I completely understand that others may not feel like that. But it's just a positive experience on a little plagiarism. At the end of the day, we are literally writing fanfiction, it's not that deep

[@YoCelKreSunt]

21 main characters howwwww

[@G-Cole-01]

@@YoCelKreSunt take a number and get in line, you'll get one (1) sentence eventually

[@faveless]

​@@YoCelKreSunt lots of POV shifting

[@helenaborgespeixoto7598]

​@@dbarrett1539Do you have a link for the stolen fic? Cuz that sounds really interesting!

[@savonhlee6385]

Writing a self insert character for a rpf, while pretending to be a straight girl (I am a pansexual man), and not really knowing the people I was writing about other than one person. It was full of bad cliches, writing mistakes, and unrealistic scenarios, also, I had no idea what was happening until I finished the chapter.

[@molasses3850]

First mistake i remember making is publishing a fic without having it beta read. Now, this isnt much of a problem on its own, but i graphically described two panic attacks (TWO!) without knowing anything about them. I didnt do an ounce of research, i just took "panic" and ran with it. Literally. The character literally fled and told himself it was a panic attack. Both times.

[@Theawesomeninja_XD]

I have a similar story. I managed to successfully write a few panic attacks by accident. I didn't even notice until my discord server with other creators was trying to rank our aus by trauma level and a few people said mine was fifth because of the two panic attacks I didn't notice 😭

[@annoyedghoul7243]

The pointless outfit descriptions are SO REAL. You could always tell which characters were important because I would dive into describing how they looked when the mc first encountered them lol

[@foxstarkiller]

My first published Fanfiction story - which has since been discontinued and deleted - was an AU story titled "Hunter M.D." that was a recreation of the TV sitcom "Becker" using the canon characters from "Robotech: The Macross Saga". The mistake was not properly using the right amount of creativity to make the concept work for the "Robotech The Macross Saga" characters being used and instead just copying the events of the "Becker" show bar for bar with only minor changes being made to accommodate.

[@tonkajoey08]

Thanks so much for your comment!! I'm very grateful. 💛 Your fanfic sounds like a really interesting way to create a crossover! :)

[@foxstarkiller]

@@tonkajoey08 You're quite welcome. I agree it does; I just didn't execute it the right way, is all.

[@midorinblue3639]

The first mistake I can remember is I wrote a Fan fic withs witching povs. I normally like a pov switching fic - provided it ticks some other boxes- however the characters I was writting about was a murder and a detective. It really took tension out of the fic when you read the murder killing someone and the detective being unable to figure it out for several chapters.

[@deen7530]

Idk, I think that could've worked if you built up the tension in other ways.

[@midorinblue3639]

@@deen7530 this is true its tecnically the plot of any given Colombo episode. 15 year old me however was not Colombo writer... Saldy

[@emiplayz91]

My first fanfic had each chapter be an episode of the tv show. I rushed wayyy too much plot into one episode and each episode was only around a thousand words. I also derailed the characters a lot and wrote almost entirely dialogue.

[@emiplayz91]

Also using emojis in the fic, like if someone raised their hand I would just plop 🤚randomly into the story

[@bananabro1010]

I’m planning to make a fanfic with a similar pace, one chapter per episode of the season, and now I know what to avoid so thanks lol

[@majesticstrwberii]

I was a very depressed 11-year-old who was in an environment of friends who are absolutely fucked up and my first fic consisted of all of the most unhinged shit and it was practically considered Dead Dove in the wattpad world. Unsurprisingly my friends loved it and SOMEHOW it gained supporters??? Well everything in that was completely bad-written and will never see the light of day again since I completely deleted it after rereading and realising just how utterly fucked up and dumb it was ngl also it's in first person.

[@deen7530]

I can excuse poorly-written Dead Dove, but a first-person fic is UNFORGIVABLE!

[@bogwife7942]

ah, that takes me back. reminds me of something I would read when I was 12

[@majesticstrwberii]

@@bogwife7942 yea ngl I couldn't read a fic without heavy angst sh all of that shit now I'm just reading tooth-rotting fluff with a bit of smut, heavy angst is fine but happy ending is a MUST

[@majesticstrwberii]

@@deen7530 Poorly-written dead dove on wattpad is normal tbh, but first person? damn that's a crime against humanity....

[@STARVAs132]

@@deen7530You can excuse poorly written Dead Dove? (this is a reference)

[@Moonnamaka]

My biggest mistake was letting my teachers make a book out of my fic and put it in the school library... I was young at the time, so there were certainly no naughty scenes, but oh GOD the little experience I had back then makes me cringe...

[@42seven]

what do you mean there were *certainly* no naughty scenes? i thought almost everyone tried to write about how they thought sex worked

[@Moonnamaka]

@@42seven Nope, my innocent self wrote self-insert Pokémon fanfiction. I only vaguely remember it being kinda edgy, but other than that it was safe for kids. Like, I wrote it long before I started swearing like a sailor lol

[@oceanmythjormundgandr3891]

I went so long without knowing that I should have made a new paragraph for each new dialogue. So many years of me just having 7-lined paragraphs with several characters talking. Sure I wrote after each dialogue which character was talking. However, I never realized how some of my readers struggled with differentiating the characters. Even worse some of them had dyslexia, and I did not make it easier for them... at least now I know, and it was a relatively easy fix.

[@VectorJW9260]

Honestly, I still don't start new paragraphs. My dialogues aren't usually long enough to warrant that IMO

[@darkstarr984]

Good thing you at least marked everyone. I always felt a little silly with how chopped up it got but did it anyways because otherwise I never could keep track of what was said. At 15 I finally properly learned that was supposed to be the thing done, after having read so many fics where it wasn’t done. I had spent 6 years only even thinking of paragraph breaks because I was a big Redwall fan.

[@vultureiraq1168]

I'm working on my draft for my novel and since I just want to get shit out im guilty of doing this shit - even though I already know

[@insertishereyeah]

My first public fic was a chatfic with characters I didn't fully understand enough to write correctly, probably not great humor and chapters so short that once I accidentally put the whole chapter as the summary instead and just never noticed because it could fit. That's four whole mistakes there (since I consider me starting a chatfic in the first place one mistake), and the fifth was that I didn't even want to write the fic that much. It was not for me at all, and I even let people suggest ships in the comments despite the fact that I didn't really like a ton of the ships in the fandom, especially not the popular ones. That fic is now dead and buried, and while I learned from it (kind of. At the very least, I became much more self-indulgent afterwards), I still dance on its grave.

[@freshcupofangst]

I'm sorry but the whole chapter as the summary is kinda funny 💀💀

[@f3l1xn0tacat]

in my first ever novel, i had zero ideas except for how the story would begin and how it would end. nothing else in between, so it was absolutely PACKED with filler. i once wrote and entire chapter dedicated to my Static and his best friend, Scam, making a sandwich…THE. WHOLE. THING.

[@Puellaphantasia]

First fanfic I ever published was a smutty one shot fic for a ship I didn't even like all that much. I think I set people up for disappointment when I proceeded to never post any of that ship again and made my mark on the fandom with a different one. I was in high school, not taking writing seriously enough. I'm now 30 with a full time job and after taking a break from fanfic for years, I decided to start writing again to cope with stress, particularly during the Pandemic and I think I take it a little too seriously now XD. I keep telling myself I'm going to write oneshots and then get 60 pages into it before deciding I really ought to split it into a multi chapter story, and then because it's now a multi chapter fic I add detail to things that were originally going to be summarized in a flash forward, creating entire chapters worth of events so now I have novel length fanfics averaging 20 pages each, tackling tough subjects like war, death, love, change and even struggles with addition and internalized prejudices... about characters from my niece's favorite cartoons because she wanted to share these characters she loves with her auntie. Sorry, baby, don't ever read my fanfics, they'll fuck you up.

[@Luminar_Yurei]

I'm very guilty of the outfit descriptions- I love my complex outfits, and believe me when I say I use a few words as possible for them!

[@Portahooty]

I wrote a book where the main character was a sociopathic death eater (from Harry Potter) at eleven, and each chapter was about one paragraph long Edit: she also tortured Snape for embarrassing her in front of her crush

[@sabinemajed8675]

Lol stan

[@kirby17]

Oh, now i understand what " Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder " really means

[@dreamingpichu2334]

My very first fic...? No plot. I had a *semblance* of what I wanted, I wanted a romance between two characters. But then when it got to the actual WRITING part, I had no idea where the story was going and just stuck them in whatever setting I wanted with no explanation.

[@thediscodevil0949]

I never start a new paragraph every time someone else speaks (I do use paragraphs, though). When I was in school, we were taught ‘new speaker, new line’, not ‘new speaker, new paragraph’…

[@sunbirth4795]

thats a good note to end on. The worst part of writing is that, unfortunately for all of us, its worth it.

[@pmdmakesmecri2]

I swear, this channel is the only one where I hear people misspelling definitely.

[@Error-gz3pp]

Not my first published fic, but my second. It was a POV Outsider for a ship and I ended up making the “outsiders” (OCs I made up on the spot, for the record) way more important to the plot than they should have been. I think the main ship showed up like twice throughout the whole story lmao

[@mjrino7225]

i didn't know how to end chapters, so all of them ended with someone passing out

[@nikothelittlelamb]

My first mistake was having too many ideas and putting in too little effort. I'd suddenly spark a shiny new plot concept, get really excited building it down to the tiniest details, then get bored after only 1 or 2 chapters, delete it and move on to the next shiny new plot. Of course, there's nothing wrong with writing just for fun, especially when I was still a child, but I still feel bad for all my readers who would get just as hyped up for my story as me, only to be disappointed because I never had any intention of putting in the necessary work to finish it.

[@Sleepy_Moss09]

When I wrote my first fic, I made the character's relationship very...toxic? Like one moment they are all happy and cute and lovey dovey, and the next they argue over the most random things and one of them literally ran away. (Oh, and they shouldn't even have been all cutesy in the first place since one of them was literally a murderous monster who canonically has ZERO emotions or regards for other life forms)

[@tsifirakiehl4250]

You know what they say: if you cringe looking back at your past, it means you’ve grown as a person since then.

[@Firestarfan-pf6ot]

My first 'book' was a clumsy piece of warrior cats fanfic, i couldn't even decide what color i wanted the main to be so i jumped back and forth. I still have a copy of the e-book on my kindle. i honestly love the plot! it was simple but... i loved writing it so i love reading it. It was simple: mc leaves her house with the cat who raised her and joins the nearest clan, tigerclan, who were treeclimbers (I still love the idea of cats hunting and living in trees, so im glad that facet stayed the same). Before she is able to complete the challenge needed to officially join the clan, the leader, Goldstar, dies in battle, losing his last life. The mc is blamed for his death with some logic i can still understand. (Goldstar gave the mc his dinner last night because she was hungry and there wasnt enough food, being winter, so he was weaker then normal.) I can remember writing it and how wonderful it felt to get my ideas onto my moms computer.

[@luiswaverly5632]

. . My first fanfic, unfinished, was an attempt to flip the "All these characters show up at your house" trope. Never planned it out, but people said I wrote the characters really well? -- Oh, also it was Undertale AUs x reader.

[@barondust1981]

That one with the octopus got me screaming

[@neonbat666]

(7:27) Sometimes I feel like the only one who actually doesn't mind when someone "writes the accent". So long as it's not meant to be insulting or impossible to read, I kind of like it.

[@shinxlover4231]

I was in the fifth grade so honestly I’m just happy I discovered my love for writing and honestly, the fic itself was pretty wholesome. No swearing, no romance (I was an undiscovered Lesbian and all the characters where men), no intense angst. Though my biggest mistake was deleting it out of shame the next year. I’d love to look back on that relic of history and maybe even rework it one day (though I doubt it’s salvageable) but I can’t because I was to scared of other people’s opinions on the writing I had spent so much time loving.

[@terr_a_spec]

My first fic (fandom was either BNHA or Voltron) was an OC fic, with the main character being this super-talented, powerful girl who had all the boys fighting over her affections. Yes, BOTH fics had this feature, even when I wrote them at different times. But I chose the most common love interests for both fics. I chose *Keith and Bakugou,* and made them both jealous, angsty, and super protective towards the main character. I think I was 11 or 12 when I wrote both fics, and if I could go back in time and punch my younger self in the face, I would, because I will never understand what she was thinking.

[@appletart7262]

I don't think that warrants punching, writing those sorts of fics is harmless even if it’s a little corny to look back on. As long as kid you had fun imagining the idea and creating it, that’s all that matters.

[@makotheqt5939]

my worst mistake was trying to write a 18+ scene. chickened out halfway through so now the plot is totally different

[@micahfoley9572]

There are 2 kinds of responses: "I was so dumb and still am lol don't laugh at me haha" "I was a genius even back then no?"

[@theownerofthisaccount2521]

Repeatedly changing massive plot points halfway through the book

[@whitebread3872]

Im actually in the middle of writing my first fanfic right now and I think my mistake is posting the first chapter without having any plan for what’s next

[@kieranismyfav]

Using any word other than ‘said’ because my English teachers in like 7th grade or below drilled in my head that I could NOT use something as plain as that 😭 Ex: “Why can’t cheese puffs be in burritos,” she muttered. “Eating doors isn’t a great idea Dan,” he commented.

[@TheDanishGuyReviews]

"Holmes, that can't be right." I ejaculated. ~ Dr. Watson

[@Theawesomeninja_XD]

Teachers stay doing that 😭

[@Emily-vp9xe]

Not the first story I wrote, but I had to write a pirate story for school, which was hard to do because no violent scenes were allowed and I wanted to write shark attack scenes. I spent too much time figuring out the plot and forgot to give the characters names until I was halfway through the story, I was 11 at the time. The first story I wrote was too vague and short because I was on a time limit (it was a test and I was 8 years old). Edit: I forgot to add that for the pirate story, we never turned it in, like, it was in my folder with my other grammar and writing assignments and she never asked for them. So that ended up being a waste of time and paper, it wasn't as if it was just something we did on our own time, we had a date to give it to her and she stressed how important this assignment was.

[@nintendoboy3605]

Why even bother making your students write a pirate story if violent scenes werent allowed?

[@Emily-vp9xe]

@@nintendoboy3605 I remember thinking that it was stupid not to include violent scenes. I didn’t like that teacher, she was too strict when it came to how we write.

[@xsweetiebloomx605]

​@@Emily-vp9xe Honestly, I think creative writing assignments make no sense when you deliberately take away the creative aspect of it. What was that teacher on?...

[@kiera6326]

Why give a creative writing assignment under exam conditions? Nothing we ever wrote in school was good literally because of that

[@Emily-vp9xe]

@@xsweetiebloomx605 To give some context to what she was like, I almost had panic attacks every time I was in that classroom with her.

[@stellarustarcet9803]

When I first started writing my story I would structure my extremely short chapters like an exercise routine, a quick warm-up (aka a chapter of light action introduction), the real exercise (actual plot progression) and the cool down (random sweet intimate moments between characters, aka the book version of filler).While this seems great over all, if not planned well you end up with way too much filler and if your posting chapter by chapter it's super hard to find what you've written before in the sea of filler and the soon the gradual natural flow of the plot would get lost. I would spend more time then I could count just tracking back the plot and making sure there are no contradictions. So don't be like me the exercise writing formula is really great for the reader just really hard when not done by an experienced writer.

[@crow2616]

Oh boy, where do I start... 1. No plot 2. Mostly dialogue, too little narrative 3. Worst pacing ever, everything escalated so fast 4. Very short chapters and very few chapters But of course, I was still learning as we all were. If we didn't start bad, we couldn't get good. ❤

[@vultureiraq1168]

Bruh that's literally everything that's wrong with my manuscript for my first novel 👁️ 👄 👁️

[@ThatCatByTheStreet-ln2yc5we7d]

10:37 literal Hellava boss (but I enjoy that humor some how so...)

[@PrincessOfTheEnd]

My first fanfic had a myriad of problems, and so I could say that the worst part was the ooc characters, the poorly written OC, the bad stuff that I added for no reason to make it more dramatic... But I think the thing that bothers me most about it to this day is just the fact I had no plan, so once I reached a certain plot point I just could not write any further even though it was obviously not the end of the story. I've been planning a better version of that fic for a long time, BC I'm really attached to that OC and the bones of the plot, but this time I'm starting with an outline 😅

[@GalvyTheTom]

Plot was aggressively “And this happened” to set up the climax and big reveal.

[@DizzyIM]

as a certified fanfiction writer i think i spelled a word wrong once

[@SpeedyCheetahCub]

My first big story I was writing was about a main character who has superpowers and knows nothing, so the story was really cool since there were scenes were nobody knew what was going on but the audience finds out later, scenes where the audience understands what is happening but the main character doesn't, and scenes where the main character understands but the audience doesn't find out until later. The major mistake I made was not making the superpowers of the main character fully fleshed out in my head/outline, so there were several times where I couldn't write scenes accurately because I didn't know how the powers worked. Especially because the entire first part of the story is the main character learning how their powers work while also learning how to understand English. Eventually, I put the whole thing on hold until I get around to writing down a complete power set for them.

[@ilke3192]

2:32 This! I wonder if any solution was provided

[@FruitSalad253]

This isn't from the post, but from my own experience I'd recommend a beta reader/editor (as outside observers, they can help re-contextualize a work and find the parts that need clarification,) or analyzing scenes from actual books that stood out to you. Happy writing!

[@thisurldoesnotexist]

One of my first now deleted fics was about a character i did not remember from canon. I think I might have written 100 words total before abandoning it

[@agentwinter6474]

The main mistake I made (besides not planning ~*at all * while writing "Jaggedshadow's Vengeance",) was that I wanted to avoid making the protag seem like a Gary Stew so much that it made it boring. I also had a few unnecessary subplots that I included largely because I didn't have a place to put them, (such as Operation Manifest, my story and story ideas archive document) and I feared I would lose them if I didn't use them.

[@hydrofalls8154]

1:31 made ne laught outloude because I exactly know where that comes from. And its pretty in keeping to what the fandom would do.

[@lastchanc3stars]

I NEVER MADE DRAFTS 💀 I used to upload the unfinished first-pass of a fic and gradually edit/rewrite/develop the plot all haphazardly. Also, I never used paragraph breaks. Also, 8:11 is very relatable. I mostly instert my oc into the canon; but I try to do as much research and find as much trivia, no matter how inconsequential, as I can so my oc flows into the story right. Thank god I've started writing drafts.

[@elfi643]

1:58 no but that's fucking hilarious

[@koineko.]

i wrote my first fic when i was 17, and it took every bone in my body to actually post the thing out of fear i'd be considered "cringe". I was scared that no one would read my original ideas so I wrote a self-insert bc they were popular. six months later, I figured out that self inserts were really stagnant for me, and I picked up an og idea that i'd been developing for a while. i still hate my writing tho 😭💀💀

[@Cobalt_Spartan]

My prologue and first chapter didn't have punctuation. My excuse was I was writing them in the dead of night and started getting sleepy.

[@soraya742]

My big mistake on my first ever fic was letting my anxiety build up to the point I stopped working on it entirely. When I have so many obligations I still need to see to, dedicating brain power and time to creative projects feels unacceptable. It stops up the flow of ideas. I hope to go back to it someday, but for now my heart lies in another story. (And I desperately try to avoid making the same mistake.)

[@gaspshichat]

my first ever fanfiction was fully angst with nothing else, not even a plot. that account ended up getting deleted bc i was like 11 so i tried to rewrite it on a new account when i was 12/13. later deleted it when i was 15 bc i wasn't in the fandom anymore. then wrote a fanfiction where the main character was technically me then deleted that bc it was cringe. now i write oneshots mainly but i'm working on a 25 chapter sequel to an autistic trio foster au i made last october that is my most popular fic. i'm trying not to make the same mistakes i did then. i've only been writing fanfiction for around five years now so i'm still learning i think

[@lunaria973]

First person. Edit: I meant that at first one of my first fics was in first person before I realized how awkward it made the story.

[@brightboi4291]

Why are you everywhere

[@markipliertrash1562]

🎉🎉🎉

[@carpenterthehivewing]

@@markipliertrash1562 why are you celebrating im confused

[@markipliertrash1562]

@@carpenterthehivewing I do that for people who are first

[@carpenterthehivewing]

@@markipliertrash1562 wat

[@-CloClo-]

I don't think this was my first "fanfic" but after I saw the trailer for SSB World of Light, I made a 15 page comic about Inkling being the only one who somehow survived Galeem's light beams, and then Master Hand and Crazy Hand trapped her in this orb/staff thingy that was handled by this random robot henchman. Kirby is finally revealed somewhere halfway through the comic and he's encountered by the robot guy with the staff. They get into a fight and Kirby literally decapitates the robot with the other end of the staff while Inkling is still in it. After that I just gave up on the comic because I didn't know the actual plot of the game. Also, Inkling could speak fluid English for some reason? I don't think I need to explain all of the flaws in this lmao.

[@diet_static]

i feel like if the characters were written better (they were ocs made by my friend and i since it was among us), we could’ve at least had some good plot to do with their backstories, even if the killing was still rushed

[@jemjokester3660]

first big one was probably writing out the plot in unclear bullet points that left me unclear about what I meant when it came to actually writing it, leading to some things being dragged out and others being rushed and some plot points being forgotten completely, also writing directly into ao3

[@adraabouji1937]

OMG I used to write directly into ao3..then I made a post complaining about ao3's way of showing word count..Let's just say some of the commnets weern't too respectful

[@jemjokester3660]

@@adraabouji1937 oof that sucks. I never got any comments but boy did it screw up the formatting, so much easier to copy paste from a doc lol

[@internetlurker1850]

Trying to rely solely on improvisation and what came to mind at the time

[@sansgirlfriend]

1:45 sounds like undertale sans aus

[@the_artist_sylveon]

My first fic I remember what I wrote was a Pokémon fic, but it was about a group of Pokémon and no trainers. All dialogue, weird plot, no paragraph break. Although it was written in a notebook and I was 9-10 at the time. It’s the first fic that I can remember the plot and stuff I wrote, so I’m not counting my first fic I made when I was 7-8. But grabbing that extra notebook in the 4th grade is what started my writing hobby, so it may be terrible but if I haven’t done it, I likely wouldn’t be where I am today

[@0bject_cuppy554]

So, it's Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fic?

[@the_artist_sylveon]

@@0bject_cuppy554sorta? Now that I think about it was very similar to PMD.

[@fabianzimmermann5495]

Not planning it out was probably the first mistake of many. Ended up digging myself into a hole that I couldn't get out of by the time I was writing the sequel. I wanted to change the story, but it was too late to turn it around and go somewhere else with it. Not planning it out was also one of the reasons why I drastically changed one of the main characters halfway through the first fic since I didn't know how to write him with his original character traits. I stopped writing the story and started planning an entire rewrite with the new direction I wanted to go, but abandonded it because I stopped writing fan fics, at least at the moment.

[@Theawesomeninja_XD]

Oof, I made the same mistake. My first au was supposed to be completely different. I'm almost done with it and it's honestly not bad (in fact I like it), but I definitely learned to plan my stories 😅

[@CallMeCrazyCallMePoor]

I wrote a screenplay for an episode of a show because I couldn't translate the scenes in my head into a reading medium. This meant I included long stage directions where I tried to direct the imaginary show from the page. The weird thing is, I went out of my way to make it fit into the show's timeline even though I tweaked backstories to fit my headcanon.

[@felixettos]

When i was 12 i found a pokemon fic i really liked (looking back the original fic itself was pretty cringy with a self insert protagonist that waw shipped with a canon character and everything) so i decided to write something inspired by it. I reread my fic a while ago and while i didn't find the original so i can't comment on how much of it was just blatant stealing but actually the tone of the fic was reminiscent of the pokemon anime in a way that made me kind of proud of my 12 year old self. The only big issue with it is that i wrote it in english. As a non native speaker 12 year old. My english was SO broken it hurts to read. I didn't knkw irregular past tenses so i wrote things like "standed" and "speaked" and got gendered pronouns wrong multiple times. 😅

[@EvilMeganium]

I kept writing Maybe as Maybey and used almost no paragraph breaks

[@Observer_Decay]

When I was in elementary school and wrote a story about me and a classmate going on an adventure and he was constantly screaming. 😅

[@AriLolzz]

I started writing at around 12 and my first ever fanfic was a dsmp crackfic about a dream i had about everybody being replaced by killer robots It was written like a screenplay except the robots names were done differently For example the real ranboo would be typed in all lowercase and the fake one would have an uppercase R Which sounds sort of cool in thought but REALLY confusing in execution

[@tbana2396]

A mistake in my own first public fanfic: The MC quite literally says they didn't ask for exposition, and the character they're talking to exposits anyway because it's "important", and it's mostly lore that isn't used until the second chapter. Name-dropping a trope requires skill. It was back in 2022 (a year and several months before this comment). There were other fics before, but they were never posted online.

[@Venbetta]

A few mistakes for when I started at age 12: -Did not plan. I mean i still don't sometimes, but ive gotten in the habit of jotting ideas down. I think i enjoyed the spontaneous story beats/tropes. - Writing realistic dialogue. I blame the disney originals. - For adult stuff, mislabeling certain body parts - Not understanding how *some* stuff worked. I knew how babies were made. I've gotten better, though, and I'm still learning.

[@EssyTico]

Love your videos! Your voice is so nice and relaxing to listen to!

[@Crowstrove]

I think my biggest mistake with my first published fic was probably trying to make it a ship fic when i had no idea how romance worked. I realized that in the middle of writing it and ended up abandoning that part. I think it was okay overall, but i could probably make it better with a rewrite. Im not in the fandom anymore tho so probably not

[@leafyztar]

It was 4th grade. I was 9. It was a fanfiction of Minecraft Story Mode. All the main characters turned into horses and the story was basically them trying to get back. I think, aside from writing it in the first place, my biggest mistake was the grammar. There were no paragraph breaks at all, capitalization was non-existent, punctuation was a nightmare and, worst of all, all the characters spoke exactly like me. No in-character dialogue at all. It was horrifying. I showed my guidance counselor and she thought it was good. For some reason, I believed her.

[@kaysrandomchannel4618]

Nice to know people still care about Minecraft Story Mode.

[@leafyztar]

@@kaysrandomchannel4618 lol this was like 6 years ago but i agree, it's a shame how much of a fandom secret it's become recently

[@someoneshiny]

1:53 undertaler spotted......... and when i tell you i did the same exact thing........................... my old wattpad account is still up which makes it worse😭😭

[@nnll0045]

For one of my first public ffs I accidentally uploaded the entire outline (in cliffnotes) of the 20-something chapter story in one go instead of the first chapter. Luckily only two people read it before I noticed. Sadly one of them was my at the time favorite author who left a very confused comment. This marked the first and only time they interacted with any of my work.