Rewriting Your Old Shame

Not sure if this is the right forum, if not, please move it.

So. Old shame's. Most of us have a piece of writing from our past that we've grown to be ashamed of whether it's because we've just improved that much since we wrote it, or becasue it was really just that awful. Let's say you were going to take an Old Shame and rewrite it.

How would you do it? What would you do different or keep the same?

Stretch them out. A lot of my old stuff, I tended to rush through a lot of the setup to get to the "good bits" as fast as I could.

I'm actually doing something like this at the moment with an old Naruto fanfic I had been working on. It was getting too Mary Sue-ish, so I decided to rewrite it so was more plot-based than character-based - which kinda means I'm a bastard to my own characters, but in the name of a good plot it's okay to kill people off.

For me, limiting the crossovers to the two fandoms advertised in the summary would be good. I really didn't need Dora the Explorer to tell Danny Phantom that he had big cajones.

The story idea itself was okay, but I would seriously refine my backstory. Because it was all kinds of rocky.

I'd ditch the ship-specific tropes and character bashing.

I would focus more on developing the plot and doing stuff with the smaller details of canon, and cut out the overdose of silly shipping and Crowning Moments of Awesome that simply turned out to be Crowning Moments of Silly Writing.

Chaltab wrote:

For me, limiting the crossovers to the two fandoms advertised in the summary would be good. I really didn't need Dora the Explorer to tell Danny Phantom that he had big cajones.

That is the best random mental image I've had all week, though, so it evens out.

It's pretty fucking lame, but when I work on figuring out what actually happened in something versus what I wrote, I picture myself going around and asking my characters specific questions. It's an effective way to get involved again and sort out issues that didn't sync or no longer sync with my worldbuilding.

I'd have to rework the very awkward urple. I'd also want to kill my OCs, figure out an actual plot, and possibly stop 'torturing' the characters with fun things like meningitis. I did that a lot, and I have no idea why anymore. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I would have to take out a lot of OMG RANDOM!!!1 humor. I used to like to do that a lot. I would also have to be careful not to turn any of my favorite characters into Possession Sues.

I could go back and redo my "Samus 'dies' fighting Ing and Heartless hybrids" because to me the concept sounds awesome. But I know for a fact I would fail to do it justice yet again.

I would burn it.

They were all wonderfully suetastic, so most likely... I'd burn it to the ground. And then I use a wind tunnel fan and blow the ashes out to sea. Then 'd nuke 'em.

I've been re-writing one of my first ones, but I kept the old copy just in case I wanted to use a scene or two out of it. I truly wish I hadn't; when I did a cache cleanup the other week I accidentally deleted the first chapter of the new one. The most annoying thing about this is that I have nobody to blame but my stupid, stupid self.

One ticket for the Failboat, please [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I'd take out a lot of the random stuff I'd thought was SO OMG COOOOOOL, and then do something with the characters so they weren't so one dimensional. I think some of them had promise. Perhaps they'd do better given a real plot instead of the random stuff mentioned above.

I'd stop[ with the ZOMG RANDOM SUGAR HI!!!1!1!ONE bullshit, which made up pretty much every "humor" fic I ever penned when I was in the Trek fandom.

For the serious stuff, I'd used more common sense about things.

Oh, I don't think there's a way to save something like this:

Quote :

Goten stared at him for a moment. He wondered if the cup belonged to anybody, so he checked to see if anyone wanted it back. Vegeta was pressed against the window, asleep. Trunks was playing his Game Boy, which he wouldn't let Goten play. Gohan was studying for something, and Bulma was chatting with Chichi. "Oh well. Here goes."

The urge to urinate overcame his deep thoughts, so he unzipped his zipper and peed in the cup. He then passed it to Goku and he put it back in Vegeta's cup holder.

"Are we there yet?" asked Trunks.

"No," chimed Bulma and Chichi.

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"Are we?"

"No."

"Well?"

"STOP BEING A BRAT!"

I think that I've moved past that; sure I'm not by any means a good writer, but at least I don't write my fanfic as if it's a National Lampoon/Daddy Day Care ripoff. I wouldn't even touch the goddamn premise with a ten-foot pole nowadays- but it's good to look back and read this for a laugh even though it hurts a little.

I'd talk about my recent fall down the rabbit-hole, but it hits too close and is more "writing to make myself feel better" than something I'd like to show here. Maybe I'll do it someday- but until then I prefer it to stay in the depths of my hard drive. Maybe someday I'll show you all- when I have time and the inclination.

^
If you ever change your mind on that, there's a little known comm at LJ called iritebadficlol that exists for the purpose of looking back at our old stuff and laughing at it. I'm not the moderator, but I'd love if the place had more entires than the ones I made.

I'd remove the rape part and just make it a normal Knuckles/Amy pairing. There aren't enough of those.

I did write a porn story at age 18 (not a fanfic) That I looked back at two years later and found it was full of urple. I pretty much gutted it, then not knowing how to write it better, abandoned the entire thing. I might try it again but not before I actually have some experience to refer to.