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Wattpad brings you a guest post by our newest Featured Story writer Catherine M Wilson, author of the When Women Were Warriors trilogy:

Amazing Stories

Back in the 1980s, there was a TV show called Amazing Stories. The show’s open featured a group of cavepeople sitting around a fire in a dark cave while an old man told a story. That open gave me chills, because it captured the feeling I got when I was a child and someone settled down to tell a story. Whether it was my mother telling me a bedtime story or storytime at the library or a teacher reading a story to the class, there was always something magical about storytelling.

I saw that Amazing Stories open recently on YouTube, and I got the same feeling again, and suddenly I was struck with the idea that we’re going back there. We’re starting to tell each other stories again. And I think it’s about time.

But first, a few words about the bad old days.

In the bad old days, if you wanted to tell the world your story, you had to get published. And if you wanted to get published, you had to find an agent. Then the agent would sell your book to a publisher. The publisher would pay you an advance, and you would sign a contract giving the publisher the right to publish the book. The contract also gave the publisher almost total control of how the book was presented. The publisher could change the title, create cover art designed more to sell the book than represent its contents accurately, and choose how it was marketed. The publisher could even ask you to make changes to the book’s content. In the old days, writers often complained that their publisher demanded changes that made the story a completely different one from the one the writer had meant to tell.

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