I don't know what to write about

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I bought 4 plain writing books that look just like those old-fashioned novel books, and they look so good to write a story in (broken into 4 volumes).

I'm into fanfiction, which I'm not sure is legal but I try to make it as original as possible, stealing the idea of an existing series of stories but making up my own characters and altering the plots.

I'd love to write my own version of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, as these 4 books I bought remind me of those diaries from the series, and basing it on my own experiences I had as a teenager. But it's kind of hard to know how to start each story off without it being too similar to Wimpy Kid.

Do you think this is a good idea? I was going to make up fictional characters but I'm not sure what genders are the best to use for the main character's siblings or how many siblings to put, and what their hobbies and interests can be.

I was thinking along the lines of the oldest sibling being into the supernatural (although my story isn't supposed to be scary), but I don't know if that will work out or not. Help me out here.

Good luck.

I’m too old to have heard of “Wimpy Kid.”

You can write something similar to “Eastenders.” That’s because you can write about anything.

I'm excited for you to begin writing your story! I love the sound of the journals you got, I love finding unique journals.

As for the advice you're asking for, I apologize for not answering the more direct questions you have but it's mostly because my advice to you is this: whatever you write should come from your mind, your 'heart' if you will. If you yourself consider the details of the story and how they all fit together, it will truly be from you. I think the notion of writing a book in a journal format is very cool and not exclusive to 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' so you shouldn't feel like you're ripping off that particular series. I *think* it counts under 'epistolary' writing if you want to look that up to learn more about the format of story-telling.

I write some myself and I firmly believe that the best way to go about your story is writing something that's truly you; anything that strikes you as important/exciting/etc is what you should write, because it's your story! (even if it's fan-fiction, or inspired by something else, it can still be yours at the end of the day if you write about what you want to).

If you want one of the siblings to have a supernatural interest, go for it! There are ways to integrate the occult in a less scary way, although I apologize I can't provide you with more specific examples off-hand. I guess if you think of things like Scooby Doo or even magic-related works like Diana Wynne Jones's works or Harry Potter, they all have ghost/supernatural/magical elements that aren't necessarily frightening.

I hope you begin to feel more confident as you go along - the best thing you can do is just write! You will have time to rethink as you edit your work, so there shouldn't be any pressure to produce something perfect right at the start.

Thank you for responding.

I'm trying to write out a plan first, because I don't want to start writing in these lovely books only to find that the story isn't working out or to feel that I'm not happy with how I made the characters.

With the creepy interest of the oldest sibling (still haven't decided whether they should be a girl or a boy yet), I was thinking more along the lines of creepypasta, dark, gothic, death, that sort of thing. But making the oldest sibling a goth kind of defeats the object of the character, as gothic is usually stereotyped as depressed loners, while I wanted the oldest sibling to be very popular with lots of friends.
But the protagonist is going to be the middle child, preferably a girl with ADD who is rather tomboyish and struggles to fit in at school (but is not into the gothic stuff).

I would like to include twins somewhere in my stories, but I find that to have twins as siblings of the protagonist, they either have to be exactly the same which is basically just a character double and ends up being a waste of time, or completely different from each other. It is hard to write about twins.

I love making my stories mundane, with no fantasy or any of that stuff, which is why I like the Wimpy Kid stories and movies so much. Basically Wimpy Kid is just about a bunch of stuff that happens during a middleschooler's day to day life that isn't out of the ordinary for most families. I like that sort of stuff. I am so not into dragons, princesses and castles, or blue aliens from outer space. My stories have to have a sense of reality and emotion.

It's perfectly legal as long as you

A. don't try to publish or publicly claim an obvious rip-off of someone else's story

B. publish or publicly claim a non-obvious rip-off of someone else's story

The sex of the characters doesn't matter unless it has some specific relation to the story (like one of them gets pregnant). Just create whatever you want to create.

Most people edit their fiction many times before they are finished, so you might want to write or type the stories somewhere else before putting them in your new books if you don't want to mess them up or have to erase, cross-out, rip out pages, etc.

I can't say whether this is a good idea, but to be honest I get the sense that you are just in love with the books and not actually in love with a story that's in your mind (which would give you the motivation you need to write). I've felt that before, a sense of sudden inspiration caused by a new journal or a blank book, but then I realized that I didn't actually have much to write or wasn't motivated to write more than a few paragraphs.

I've decided what I want to write about now. It's a mixture of Wimpy Kid and the Inbetweeners, so basically it's an adult version of Wimpy Kid but not as crude as the Inbetweeners. Also it's British (like the Inbetweeners), so if you're not from the UK you might want to look up some of the things I'm writing in this post if you don't know what I'm on about.

The protagonist is going to be the 16-year-old boy that writes a diary of his sixth form days. He is called Jordan and is quite an outcast, and has a best friend who is more of an outcast than he is. But as they start in the sixth form Jordan wants to pretend to be into the things he's not*, such as drinking, drugs, skiving off, gigs, dancing, clubbing, pubs, and other stuff like that, so that he can get a girlfriend and be popular. But the more he tries the more he fails, and doesn't get noticed by girls, while his weird best friend seems to get more girls, which Jordan can't work out how.

*Jordan naturally likes writing and playing the piano.

I did think of making the protagonist a girl, but teenage boys are more interesting to write about than teenage girls, so I thought I'll just stick to writing about a teenage boy.

Will it have trains in it?

Did you get anywhere writing your book?