User blog:MiXiPixel/How I write my stories

A lot of people wonder how I came up with such a smooth, original, and straight plot for my stories.

Let me explain.

1 - Avoiding Cliches
Let's think of creating the series of events in a story as an obstacle course.

On the obstacle course is cliches.

A lot of stories crash into the cliches and keep on going, which creates a cliched story with an unoriginal plot.

Other people might crash into the cliche, but then back away and go around it.

What I do is sort of like paving my own clear obstacle course. To avoid as many cliches as possible, I do something that I feel is very original. In the case of "An innovative way to go out..", I noted the fact that there weren't many stories in the first person view of the Antagonist. So, I went with a plot that works well with an Antagonist narrator. I also noted that a lot of stories dive into creepy people or even hackers. I wanted to avoid as many already used things as possible, so I went with an AI, and it used Roblox to train itself.

It's actually pretty simple - Read some stories and think about things that would fit in a creepypasta but you haven't seen. If you string together the correct ones, you can build a smooth and original plot.

2 - Coming up with Ideas
One of the beautiful things Part 1 brings is a easy plotline, which you can easily add ideas to. It honestly writes itself. One thing I like to do is keep the plot consistent. Minimal diversions from the actual plot, to create a very smooth, stable, and straight plot. Think of the plot like a sidewalk - very delicate, and if you put the wrong ideas into it, it will break apart and crack. It can also become distorted and wavy, usually by writers struggling to avoid cliches.

Make sure your idea fits well into the story. Establish a foundation deep within the plot to build the rest of the story on.

Don't be afraid to use real, local ideas too. Don't use major ideas, and try not to use the past and modify it. Instead, do something like I did with "An innovative way to go out..." and make it similar to the event, sort of like an alternate future.

An Innovative Way To Go Out... (I'll just refer to it as AIWTGO) actually partially happened in the game it was inspired by. A few days after creating it, I had made advanced AI bots. I didn't add a neural network in them and they can't interface the game directly though, so don't worry, they won't destroy Roblox... yet.

AIWTGO was actually inspired by my own game, believe it or not!

3 - Practice
Is "An Innovative way to go out..." my first creepypasta? Yes.

Is it my first scary story? Definitely no.

I've told hundreds, if not thousands of scary stories to my friends before. Another thing you can do to practice is analyze nightmares. If you have nightmares, analyze them. Do they actually scare you? Are they realistic? Think of ways you could have improved it.

My first scary story was absolutely awful. A big mistake people make is establishing their first creepypasta as their first scary story, or atleast close to it. An example of someone doing this mistake is in Funky Friday Deleted Beach Brother (might be deleted)

And as for telling scary stories, I don't mean once every like 2 weeks. I mean, really make scary stories, atleast twice per week.

4 - Feedback
It's fine if you practice a lot and are good at making creepypastas, but otherwise please don't blindly make a creepypasta all in one go and publish it without feedback. It could have cliches or Plotholes. Plotholes are another issue - to avoid them, you have to keep the rest of the story in mind while writing.

5 - Avoiding Plotholes
Plotholes are awful and can affect even the best of us.

A basic but effective way to avoid them is to re-read and intepret the story after you're done writing it.

But it's easier to avoid them directly, by keeping the events in mind and the plot structure in mind whilst writing. Plotholes are most commonly made after resuming a paused pasta after a while. Before you start working on an unfinished pasta, try re-reading it first, getting a grip of the current events and what needs to happen.

6 - Ditches
Ever wondered why there are few creepypastas on this site more than 12KB long?

It's because of an issue that I call "Ditching".

A good example of this is when I wrote Be GLaD you're not me.

Ditches are when you are a good way through creating a story, however there's not much you can do to keep on track whilst continuing the story. I opened the story and dug the road for the plot in the wrong area - to put it simply, I chose a plot with very little foundation, or i "ditched" the story.

Now if this was a Portal Creepypasta Wiki, maybe that ditch wouldn't have been there. But I noticed the lack of Crossover pastas, so I decided to make a crossover, not knowing Portal was possibly the worst game to do it with.

Of course I found a way to still continue the story, but you can tell that it's not as intense as my other pastas.

If your pasta is stuck in a ditch, you either need to think hard like I did, start over with a new plot, or face your fears and use a Cliche to fix the plot, or simply break the plot.

A good way to avoid ditches is to write a pasta like Deep in the Null where it's a global part of Roblox, or spans multiple games.

To put it simply, it's like driving into a ditch.

7 - Walls
Ultimately, Walls are the biggest reason you don't see almost any creepypastas here over 20KB.

Some plots come with unforeseen walls, or nearly unavoidable obstacles. An example is Be GLaD you're not me. which is a pasta I wrote. It ended because I hit a wall.

To put it simply, walls are nearly unavoidable. Unlike ditches, you can't very carefully adjust the plot to ease your way out. With walls, there's almost nothing you can do.

Journal pastas are the least susceptible to walls and hacker pastas are the most susceptible to walls (and cliches!)

Be GLaD You're Not Me was a single-game pasta, meaning the creepy stuff came from one game and one game only, and the worst part is that the said game didn't have many means to open up creepy tunnels.

Single-game pastas are not as susceptible to walls as Hackerpastas, however they are incredibly susceptible to ditches.

If you encounter a wall, your best bet is to slowly decelerate the plot, for example making a plan to sneakily get a moderator to ban the game. You could try doing something else though. One thing you could do is break the plot, effectively creating 2 creepypastas. An example is if I made Be GLaD you're not me end with me playing Disaster Survival and then some completely different creepy thing happens as a catalyst to the remnants of the pre-wall part.

If your goal is purely length, then you could create "Packpastas" which are pages which contain multiple separated creepypastas. They're not a very good idea though, and they have a lot of issues.

And while Cliches damage stories, if you are desperate to pass a wall, worst case scenario you could use cliches.

8 - Criticism
One of the biggest mistakes of new writers is criticism - one person gives their small, low-quality pasta a 0/10 or like a 3/10.

The issue isn't the criticism itself, it's how they respond.

The biggest mistake people make is, well, making excuses such as "the pasta's unfinished" when it really is finished, or "you're just toxic".

The goal of criticism here is NOT to cause drama or toxicity, it's to introduce a concept of how good a pasta is and how it can be improved. That's another big misconception - a lot of authors think criticism is an insult, and then they cause drama because that's the natural thing to do when you are being insulted.

The right way to treat criticism
Most reviews (including my own) will have a bit at the end where the ratings are explained, and there are tips to improve your next story. Take your criticism, and see what the mean score is (for example let's say 2/10) and read all the tips. Then practice on your weak spots until they are no longer so bad, then try writing another story.

Another thing authors do wrong is to try to continue their story. The issue is, most of the time a review is bad, it's because the plot itself has issues. Instead of continuing a story, create a new one. The staff here are really friendly and likely won't delete your story, instead they're more likely to make it a "Bad Example".

So, let's say you made a story, and it did really badly. You got bad reviews and you followed the advice of the criticism. Now you're able to make a new story with much deeper and richer plot.