The first piece that got rejected

This event happened when I was eleven and had started a new school. In the UK, everyone changes school after year six to go from primary school to secondary school. Throughout primary school I was one of the best academically, particularly in literacy. However, I had borrowed from other authors or even downright plagiarized on a few occasions. More can be found here-

https://vocal.media/writers/the-first-piece-that-i-remember

Now that I was in secondary school, we had to write an adventure story as one of the first homework given in English.

We were told about the structure of different stories, and particularity of quest stories like The Lord of the Rings. We were then told to go away and do it for homework.

I wrote a story called "Finding Dumpster". It was about an anthropomorphic dustbin who was a billionaire but was so cheap that he lived in a dumpster near his house. His best friend was a donkey called Donkey. One day the dumpster gets taken away and he must go an adventure to get it back. On the way he goes on an adventure through the wilds and part of the adventure included being on a mountain called Mt.Bronstein. There was a kid in my class with that surname. Oh, and the dusbtin's name was called Kohilathas, the surname of one of my friends. As you can see this was inspired by Finding Nemo and Shrek 2 which I had recently seen. I had also named characters after people I knew. On top of that I had put swear words. Finally, the ending of the story was as follows- The dustbin learns that him being cheap was actually why the dumpster got taken a way in the first place (I can't remember the rest of the story in detail) A group of the dustbin's friends came to the rescue.

They included Winnie-the-Pooh and Ratman (two copyrighted characters) one called dog sh** the dog sh** collector, who used dog poop as a weapon. Finally, they save the dumpster and the dustbin and the donkey.

I waited eagerly for my homework to be returned. I found out that everyone in the class had gotten feedback on their work. Except for me. The teacher called me outside and told me that my work was inappropriate as it contained swearing, toilet humor, copy right infringement and names of people in the class. She also pointed out that I had changed the spelling of "Kohilathas" every few lines. I was told to do it again, but she never followed up. I think she forgot or something. But that piece of work is still outstanding!

Anyway this work was groundbreaking for me. It taught me a few important lessons

-Don't plagarise.

-Don't use copyright characters

-Be orginal

-Swear words and toilet humour don't always get the readers' attention.

-Don't base it on people you know.

I realised at this moment to make up my own plots, plot structures, literary features, characters and so much more. Ever since then I stopped relying on things like toilet humour or swear words to get the readers' attention.

I learnt that there are many other ways to impress your readers, such as vivid imagery or puns or new words that i invented myself. I did occasionally parody .That however was the most closest I got to how I originally wrote as a child , before the teacher rejected this piece.

I also learnt that as a writer I could create works that deviated from the norm. I could create works where the story keeps on going after the big boss battle as seen in most of popular media and even gaming. I could create a world where everyone was vegan, or stories that lacked a strong romance subplot and instead focused on other inter personal relationships like servant-master, father figure-child figure, a patriotic person and his country, patrons, guardian angels and hand reared animals and their human helpers.

I have rarely ever borrowed from another author since that age and I plan on being original forever.