I dont have any problem to start a story. I dont know what the person should do next, lol

As a non-native speaker, I have a question for other non-native speakers: when you write Stories, do you do it directly in English or do you write in your language and then translate it into English?

I was the same all through school. Great on all of the research papers, but terrible on any that needed creativity. About a year ago I posted a story here, which got about six chapters in before I ran out of ideas and sort of just stopped it. It was a decent experience, and I would recommend giving it a try, but I know as well as anyone that it isn’t for everyone.

May I ask, how your story is called?

I was the same all through school. Great on all of the research papers, but terrible on any that needed creativity. About a year ago I posted a story here, which got about six chapters in before I ran out of ideas and sort of just stopped it. It was a decent experience, and I would recommend giving it a try, but I know as well as anyone that it isn’t for everyone.

I hated English at school (that was a LONG time ago!!), and was never any good at creative writing, I was a "techie". Over the years, I've needed to write things to explaining technical things to not so technical people (I think that's called 'product documentation'! It was never really as part of my job, but in my volunteering work).

So I decided to try writing a braces story on here.

And yes, as you say, as an inexperienced writer, I would run out of ideas after a bit, plus have problems actually ending a story. Whilst a few of my stories do have a sort of ending, many have ended abruptly for one of many reasons.

If I were professionally writing a book I'd worry, but here it doesn't matter. You may have a story that only fits one or two posts, and that's fine, so do be encouraged and give it a go. The second time, you might be able to make it a little longer.

If you're worried about making the story look ok on the page (ie the formatting), then don't worry, Braceface2015 (Aka "the Archivist") seems to enjoy doing that: just write, and let him make it look pretty!

I can think of maybe 3 stories I can honestly say I have finished and they are part of the "Braces Murder Mystery' series Sparky and I were working on. There are still a few more stories that are a part of the series I never did finish and they are still sitting in a file waiting for me to return to them. Many of my stories have been taken to a point where I can say "To be Continued" rather than "The End."

Some of my stories are simply sitting in storage, waiting to be worked on again.


As Sparky said, don't worry about creating a perfect story. Put your thoughts into a readable form and show us what you have to offer. I have been accused of being a grammar Nazi and I am fine with it. I suggest using an app or online writing program to work on your story before posting it. I use Google Docs, Grammarly and Open Office and rely heavily on the spellchecker to catch spelling mistakes.

Some of the writers here are non-native English speakers or have a less-than-perfect understanding of the English language. There is nothing wrong with being that way. If you need help making your story look good or just want someone to proofread your story, ask us for assistance.

Before I add any story to TheArchive, I run it through an editing process involving reading and correcting what I feel are errors. Very seldom do I point out errors I find unless it is something that is affecting a story or is something that the writer should be correcting. Every writer has small things that occur when they are writing and just get missed before they post the story. I reread my stories at least twice before I post them and still miss things.

Kelly-Marie, you just keep writing, I'll take care of editing the stories for you. The stories you write are interesting and it would be a shame to miss them if you stopped writing them.

You can add Grammarly to your tablet as an app and it will help you to write your stories by suggesting what needs to be changed.

I have finally written a story from Sparky's suggestion.  He never mentioned the often 2500 word limit so I went longer.  I put it in the stories section and some will probably find that strange or annoying.  It's story 78 in a thread I put a lot of my stories in.  I have a personal goal of making that thread reach 100 stories.  I also prefer posting there because google never reaches into it when finding search results.

The story is here:  https://www.bracesforum.net/braces-stories-braces-special-(english)/scenes-in-an-exhibition-of-the-decoration-of-the-mouth/msg147281/#msg147281

If you have not looked into that thread, you might want to look at the first post, where there is a table of contents.