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I'm planning to make a story based of something that happened a while ago, it would be pretty short. I'm trying to decide if I want it to have a poetry like feel. 

If you were a reader, would you want to read about dealing with a family member who does not support you? I'm wondering if it is a good story base.

Personally,  if the story was about the main character whining and complaining that they are not supported, than no, I would absolutely hate that.

But if the main character decides to make their point by using harsh language and violence or something similar, it might be fun.

Most people know what it’s like to have a family member who doesn’t support them. By itself, this is probably going to be a very boring story. Most of the time, when people read a story, they’re doing so to be entertained. Reading an experience that’s almost universal probably isn’t the place to do that.

Basing stories on real life occurrences is fine in theory, but you definitely want to spice it up a bit. Put it in a different setting, make the characters more compelling, vary the storytelling method, etc. Very seldomly is someone’s actual life interesting enough to hold a reader’s attention who doesn’t already have a personal investment in their life.

It is, however, something that can work for characterization within a larger story or to motivate a character. Tragic backstories are usually backstories for a reason.

Would having a character in the past come out as like, bisexual or something, and it is not very supported, be interesting? I feel like the story is more of a thinking about other people and understanding. Could I have some ideas?

The best thing to do would be to write it and then find out.  People here are very honest with their criticisms though. 
 

i would still recommend that you allow the situation to be resolved with creative and entertaining methods.

Talking therapy animal?

A sure way to entertain around here is to have a grimdark path where say the main character isn't accepted for who they are and they do something like shoot up an elementary school.

A talking therapy animal with rabies and killer instinct would be awesome.

Ill add it to the first part of the dream! Thanks! (The therapy animal is a rabbit)

It’s probably in your best interest to read some of the higher rated stories on the site to get an idea of your audience.

It won’t really compromise your story much at all if you amped up the parents’ reaction. For example, the parents just not approving, and the main character sinking into depression will actually hurt their image rather than help it. If the parents were more aggressive antagonists, that would probably help. A little gaslighting never hurt a story.

A coming out story in general is probably going to require a lot better writing than other kinds on this sight because for some reason, there have been some laughably bad ones in the past. If this story means a lot to you, you might try something else first and get feedback on your writing before putting your heart on your sleeve

I was wondering if you could give feedback to this introduction page?

Ari is ready.

Ari can do this for sure!

Ari is worried.

Ari gets up from the desk.

Poems written in candlelight.

Stuffed in a desk for now. 

But first, who is Ari?

I wanted help making a backstory for Ari? Can you help?

That’s probably going to have be more of an individual effort on your part. I would be happy to read over what you have and give you my thoughts if you’re it’s on sneak peek mode

I like it more if there was more rhyme to it, but that's just me. Plus I don't know if you want this story to be for younger readers, but the constant repetition does feel a bit like it.

What do you think would be some good rhyming words or so? I would ask for a co-author, but I dont think I've spent a long enough time on here to understand how it works.

It's typically so that co-authoring is a bigger headache than writing alone and for yourself only. Lots of writers are working on their own stories right now, so it will be hard for them to get interested into working on a project by a person who just joined the site. Once you've written some good and well rated stories consistently, then surely someone will be willing to co author with you. Just not now.

I'm seconding Petros, just write some fantasy or sci fi thing for practice, those are hard to fail at. Then when you're feeling more confident with your skill and have a better idea of what you want to say, go for the serious personal story.

What Petros and Mizal said.  They are wise.

Alright.

Well, if you want some inspiration with the poetry stuff. I think that the best way to do it is to have it a bit in a bard like style. Not too cryptic, but with a nice rythm and rhyme. One example is this Story.

As for a bisexual person coming out and having difficulties with his parents. It could be very interesting. There's always a place for more introspective stories that are not that action heavy. Just make sure that there's more to the gay character than being about the struggles of being gay. 

You can make it the background of it or the character arc, but just remind yourself that being gay is only one aspect of the story. So what are his goals and dreams and how does he want to achieve that? Start from here and you'll go pretty far.

And make sure, even though it's a short project that you outline the story before writing it!

Good luck!

I was thinking about Ari loving poetry. I think they would be trying to choose a place to go to fit in for high school/collage. I think Ari would use poetry as a coping mechanism. Ari would learn about why their dad refuses to listen, and learn to understand themselves more.

There, you have the basics of a backstory. Then what kind of person is Ari like? If some stranger were to meet them, how would their first impression of them be? Asks these kind of questions to yourself so you can get a better feel of them

Alright thanks. I looked at the story, it might be cool to have choices for the words later on to finish the game. It would show how Ari felt at the end.

I was wondering if it would be ok to have a more fantasy path, like thinking of a haluccination, or a dream world, then waking up.

Generally any kind of story is fine if it’s well written and interesting

How is this?

Under the silver moon,

A swan glides over in tune,

With the birds and the crickets,

She lies in a thicket.

 

Poems written in candlelight.

Stuffed in a desk for now. 

But first, who is Ari?

Under the silver moon,

A swan glides over in tune,

With the birds and the crickets,

She lies in a thicket-

"Under the silver moon."

Ari murmurs under a breath.

 

Wait- wait if Ari was trying to make a poem to send in for something important? And near the end, they know what to write?

So, an introduction is supposed to get someone interested in the story, but the poem doesn’t really tell us anything about the story. I would encourage you to do your best to make the poem itself relevant to the story. I know the temptation to stick poetry in Willy nilly, but it’s much better when it relates or symbolizes something. The rhythm in the second couplet is also awkward compared to the first.

If you’re new to poetry, I would encourage you to look up some basic poetry forms and stick to those. Rhyming schemes are fine, but it’s hard to master rhythm in Freeform.

Under the silver moon,

A swan glides over in tune,

With the birds and the crickets,

She lies in a thicket-

"Under the silver moon."

Ari murmurs under a breath. "This isn't working. The poem needs to be better then better if I want to get into the club. But. I. Can't. THINK!"

Ari knocks the written poem of the desk. It falls to the ground in a crumpled mess.

You keep repeating the name "Ari", and it feels unnatural to me. Try, "Ari murmurs under a breath. "This isn't working. The poem needs to be better then better if I want to get into the club. But. I. Can't. THINK!"

She knocks the written poem of the desk. It falls to the ground in a crumpled mess.

I'm not new to poetry, and this does have some meaning, I'm trying to have the character trying to project themselves into the poem, which is a main point of the story. It's not supposed to be an amazing poem, but thanks for the feedback.

I have an idea where you go to bed after an argument and wake up in a dream world and death leads to you waking up. I also feel like your stress level would be higher the sooner you die in the dream world, and it affects how you react the next day when taking to your mom. At the end words would flow for the poem and one ending you would lose the competition, the other not. There would also be smaller endings. Sorry if you don't understand, I just had this idea!

Great, just remember that this stuff like delayed choices will be a pain in the ass to do, because it necessitate pretty intense usage of variables and probably some in page scripting. And please for the love of god, make a proper detailed outline to iron out every single plot inconsistency/out of character moment, then come back here.

Now I see you writing a character introduction without even knowing how the story's going to end and what not. Quite a shame to be honest, because I bet ya that doing it on the cuff like that will cause you having to go through each and every single line looking for plot holes and stuff plus there's a high chance of writing yourself in a corner.

Outlining is recommended in normal stories and a necessity in story games. Without it and your story will either be incomprehensible or bloated beyond belief. Having a nice backbone ready also makes writing for it a lot easier.

It's fun to brainstorm and stuff, but you have to cut the knot someday and just make a choice what you feel like it's right. I feel like you still have no firm idea what you want your story to be about, flip flopping between several ideas and such. Just mull over it for a few days. If the idea is good enough to stick with you over the course of several days, then you simply know it's right.

There was once a great piece of advice someone once had said: "write what only you can write." 

poetry tips

Oh and extra tips how to get the rhythm right. Most of my poetry background comes from snippets of Latin I learnt in high school ehh, so take my words with a grain of salt. It takes a bit more care and time, but I find the iambic pentameter the easiest to use when doing English poetry stuff. here's the real good stuff.

If you read it out loud, it sounds very nice ehhyy?

V - V - V -

i KNEW a SIMple SOLdier BOY

who GRINNED in LIFE in EMPty JOY

Iambic pentameter

Then there's the dactylic hexameter. 

Dactylic hexameter

You also have the opposite of a iambe, the trochee, where the emphasis is mainly on the first syllable. Think it's a bit easier to achieve with Dutch, but I've also seen some English poems using this.

- v - v

DOUble TROUble GOES to HOLlow HALlow

Trochee

More fun tricks with poetry

most of this stuff is easier in other languages, but I find that using these little tricks in word placement can emphasize things even more.

Chiasme

Its use is mainly to emphasize a certain contrast. The scheme goes like this. ABBA

He is a sheep, a wolf is his brother

A = he B =sheep B=wolf A= brother

You can also find this word arrangement in Shakespeare:

Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strong loves

A.                  B.                 B.               A

parallelism

Same concept as a chiasm, but this time with a ABAB structure. It's often used in proverbs.

The truth has legs and ran away; the lie has no legs and must stay

A.                                B.                     A.                                 B

Alright thanks.

Can I use this poem you made?

:)

No

Ok! 

Rhythm is not that hard, it just takes up lots of time and thinking to get it right.

So if I were to make it flow better, here is a mere example how I would tackle it. Of course you can make it that the length of each of the lines are similar, but that would be a bit too much of a hassle. I'm not that good at poetry myself, but you can automatically see that it flows better, even though the sentences vary a bit in length. It's all due to addition of a iambic meter.

Btw. I didn't change any of the core meanings, tried to stay close to the original poem, but had to change some of the rhymes and words for the sake of the flow.

Oh added a parallelism in there too, whoops.

 

Below the silver moon,

A swan ascends in tune,

The birds and Crickets come along,

A bush she lies, few meters strong.

 

In candlelight were poems made

Inside a desk did poems fade 

Their maker's, Ari's life unknown

Their journey will be shown

 

Based on your story's description, I think it's extremely unlikely to be popular on this site. People tend to prefer adventure stories with speculative elements, and there is not much of an audience for poetry, or for the subject matter you are interested in.

That said, I think forcing yourself to abandon or alter your ideas to cater to an audience you're unfamiliar with isn't a good idea. The usual advice is to write something YOU care about, and then hopefully it finds an audience that can appreciate it. If you force yourself to write a story you're not actually interested in, it will turn out dull and lifeless.

You can choose to either stick to your original idea and accept that it probably won't be a good fit for this site's culture. Or you can give up and pick an entirely different idea molded to suit the nature of your audience. Or you can do some combination of the two. There's no wrong answer here, just whatever works best for you.

I think they key question you should be asking yourself is "Is it more important to me that I enjoy the writing process, or that I receive praise when my work is completed?" Once you've got your priorities straight there, the path forward should be obvious. Again, no wrong answer.

If you want a better idea of what site culture and popular stories are like, I recommend reading top-rated stories, and backreading several of the forum threads. This post includes a list of common CYS storytelling trends.

No matter what you decide, I would caution you that this site can be very blunt with its feedback, and if you choose to publish, you need to be prepared to receive a lot of honest criticism. Read some of the reviews on the site to get a sense for the general tone of feedback.

Overachiever 

Ooooh you should read my story for a great example of coming out stories on the site!

It's a true masterpiece

Yes, plus in turtles other thread I recommended some other good examples to read.