How I Got Into Writing

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 How I Got into Writing

(meant for audiences 18+ due to a mention of porn)



Writing was something I was always interested in. However, reading was not. When I was a child, all the way through middle school, I hated reading. But then high school came around. I started reading romance novels and developed a love for reading and crafting stories. I read so many novels that I lost track of the count. Then tragedy struck.
 
The COVID lockdown hit in 2020. I stopped reading. I was devastated that I couldn't find any books to read, but all of a sudden, I started getting an idea to write a story. Originally, it was meant to be short. That wasn't the case because I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. My story was about a teenage girl who falls in love with a boy at her school who happens to be a gang leader. I know. That was a bad story to write, and it romanticized something it wasn't supposed to. I was fourteen. I've learned how to write healthy relationships since then.
 
Point is, I started writing during that time, and I haven't been able to stop. I loved the art of storytelling. I loved putting my thoughts into words on a page. I enjoyed making up characters.
 
Sometime after that story, which I never finished, I started writing a werewolf romance. It was fanfiction based on a YouTuber. I know. I was fourteen, okay? I hate myself every day for the things I chose to write. At the time, I didn't know what werewolf romance or werewolf porn was. I read some werewolf romances on Wattpad in middle school. So, I assumed that type of fiction was normal. Definitely not.
 
After COVID, I continued trying to perfect my craft. Of creating stories and my prose. Around the beginning of the 2021–2022 school year, I believe, I started writing a mafia romance novel. I know, I know. You must be thinking, Why on Earth would you write that? That's not a good thing to romanticize! Real people get involved in the mafia and lose their lives! And yes! You are correct. My fifteen-year-old brain didn't comprehend that and wrote it anyway. Every time I reminisce about my old stories, I cringe and face palm. I'm ashamed to have written those. I tell myself nowadays to only write tropes and stories that are healthy.
 
A big issue I had with my first few story attempts was never knowing how to finish them. I had zero idea how to finish a book. I thought authors were just meant to write as much as they could and hopefully make it to the end. I didn't know what most authors did: outline or plan their novels. One day, I was perusing through YouTube, and I stumbled across a woman named Abbie Emmons. She had a playlist about using the 3-act story structure to write books. The link is below.
 
I was blown away by the concept of outlining. Instantly, I knew I had to try it. I created a page in Notion to put the different plot points for the 3-act structure there, then created a simplified version to list what I wanted to happen. I created different plot points for a story idea that I had. After I was finished, I watched another one of her videos on how to create a chapter-by-chapter outline. I created that as well for my book.
 
After I finished outlining everything, I started to write. Creating the entire outline was admittedly challenging, but once completed, it transformed the writing process into an absolute dream. I finished my very first book. Within a few months. I never hit writer's block because I always knew what came next. What the next chapter was, what the next scene was. I always knew. There were times I added a few chapters/scenes that weren't in the original outline, but I believe those scenes strengthened the story.
 
So, yeah! That's how my writing journey started. I'm eighteen now, and I am still perfecting my craft of storytelling and my prose. I hope you stick around to read my future books, short stories, book reviews, and life stories. <3

Thank you for reading! I hope you have a marvelous day!


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