NEW: Doom Society Chapter 3 is still being worked on, and on account of schoolwork and other writing, will not be up until some time during December or 2009. The other writings are very exciting to me, and as such, are getting my full attention in the months to come. I'm finally rewriting Brendan's Story, the way it should be, for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month (an event that takes place in the month of November in which participants are to write a novel consisting of 50,000 words or more); I will post up the new version as chapters are finished. I'm also working diligently to find a way for Into the Fray make sense (it's just too good of a story to give up). Also, a very short story I wrote on Halloween is up, named for the holiday on which it takes place. As always, I thank all of you for reading my stories, and if you review them, I'll return the favor. If I don't update again before the holidays, have a happy whatever-you-celebrate!
It is his first day of first grade; the boy is six years old. His teacher hands him a notebook and tells him to write whatever he feels, whether it be a poem or a reflection or a story. That last option entices him. He immediately begins writing and drawing the cover for a story about a boy who is a werebat (although his vocabulary isn't sophisticated enough to even think of the word "werebat"). He completely ignores his teacher for the rest of the day as he plays out his idea in his mind as if it were a live-action, big-budget Hollywood movie.
Second grade; the boy learns that his stories aren't long enough to be actual books, like he wants them to be, until he comes up with a new idea about a wolf whose DNA was altered by a genetic experiment and becomes a superhero. He makes it a comic series, after a failed attempt at the book form, which is halted after four issues. His notebook, however, is running out of room. He asks his mother for a new one, and she obliges the wish of her youngest son. He enters the third grade with a profound love of the Harry Potter series. For the entire year, he tries to write a spin-off of the series, in which a new arrival at Hogwarts (and a Slytherin at that) is embroiled in a bitter rivalry with Harry. It never got past page one.
Fifth grade was a turning point in the boy's writing career. As an assignment for his reading class, he was told to create an authentic adventure story. He wrote a six-page epic about a boy and his best friend, who become the saviors of the universe when demons threaten to destroy everything they know and love. It had little detail, and was highly plot-driven, but it received an A nonetheless.
After that experience, the boy realized he needed to give his stories more substance, and a lot more detail. After his reading of the book Redwall, he was immensely inspired. However, his focus at the time was on music, specifically the saxophone, and not writing, so nothing ever got written. That is, until seventh grade, when he was told to write a one-paragraph story using ten vocabulary words from their class book, The Primrose Way. His story was about demons yet again, but this time, it was immensely detailed. It greatly surpassed the length limit (at an entire typed page) and the demon this time around had once been a human, simply corrupted by evil and then brutally murdered. A little violent for a twelve-year old, yes, and the teacher thought so, too, but all the boy's friends, parents, and his siblings (who usually made fun of him for the things he wrote) all thought that the story was incredibly well-written and they were kept in suspense until the very end. The story received a perfect mark.
He tried as hard as he could to turn that story into a full-fledged novel, for almost a year, but failed. In the summer before his freshman year in high school, the boy wrote a 21-page adventure called Brendan's Story, and then decided to begin rewriting it, because the character development was pitiful. During his freshman year, six stories were created, and Brendan's Story was rewritten, and at 65 pages, the boy thought it was good enough. However, at camp that summer, he was informed that the main character was overanalytical of his situations and that the villains seemed like they were only there to be villains. The dialogue was weak and the reactions weren't human. In other words, character development was still a problem.
Then, the boy discovered a wonderful site, turned on to him by the same friend who reviewed his story at camp, called FictionPress. He uploaded many of his stories to it, and at first, only a few people were reading them, but as his writing continues to improve, so too will his fanbase, and his dream of becoming an accomplished writer may actually become reality.
Anyway, onto real business. I'm Dan Saunders, I'm 16, and I love writing more than a teenage boy should. As for other hobbies, I play guitar and piano, sing, and read comic books. I have too many influences to count, in many different fields of media, and spanning countless genres. That's about all you need to know. Go off, read my stories instead of this crap. Read them, review them, recount them to your friends, print them out and use them as paperweights; do whatever you want with them as long as you're getting good use out of them. But most of all, remember to review, because if you for some reason hate my writing, I won't improve unless I get help from my readers. Thanks for reading!
FictionPress.com - let the words flow
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