| Writing your fiction. Now I am aware that I am not exactly an authority on writing. There is MUCH that I can improve upon in my fictions, especially the ones you will find on this site. My reason for making this specific page was because I'm getting fed up with all the poorly written stuff that gets sent into my site, and it's very important to me that you guys TRY to be reader friendly. Here I have compiled a few rules that ALL writers should know, and abide by. There are some exceptions, however, to a couple of them, but you know what I mean. If you have anything to add, please contact me. I will post some more writing tip references at the bottom if you are interested. STRUCTURE: For beginners... - Paragraphs are important. If the whole fiction is one big paragraph, it will be annoying to readers to try to sort out what's happening, and when. For reference, Check out THIS page on paragraph structure. - Do not draw out sentences. (Too long.) Drawn out sentences tend to be boring, and will often lose a readers interest. I'm talking about sentences that are a few lines long. It's hard to follow when you have too much in one sentence. If you do have a very long sentence that you don't know what to do with, try splitting it into a number of sentences. Most of the time, it can be done! Although now don't be afraid to have reasonably long sentences. Sometimes, (especially in fiction writing.) they are necessary, just don't ramble, and don't make a really long sentence when it could easily be two safely long sentences. -Avoid too many short sentences. I know this seems to conflict with the last point, but hear me out. Lots of short sentences may be good for essays, or resumes but in fictions, you need to be somewhat descriptive. In painting a scene, if you want your reader to see that scene in their head as they're reading, you have to describe it in enough detail. Many may argue that too much detail can be bothersome, and annoying, but if you write it well enough, and make it interesting, and gripping, I'll bet those people won't even notice. -Tense Consistency I have gone through MANY fictions, and have written a few myself, with the occasional slip up here and there. Every now and again, I recieve a fiction that is completely off the scale with past tense, present tense, and even a bit of future tense thrown into one paragraph alone! If you are writing in the present tense, do not shift to the past tense, (Or vise versa) unless you have a good reason for doing so. See the link above for a more indepth explanation of tense consistency. -Use REAL words. I hate to break it to some of you but "ur, u, c, plz, pplz, lolz, luv, culd, 2, 4, etc," are NOT actual words, in fact, a couple of them aren't even letters! It's fine if you're talking to your friends in chatrooms, (Though even then it's annoying,) but PLEASE do not write your stories like that. - Proofread! Proofread! Proofread! Now this is a very important element. I know I have been guilty of not proofreading, but I've learned from my mistakes. Honestly, if you're not into your story enough to read it over at least once, can you honestly expect your readers to? And during proofreading, you can find all sorts of mistakes that you hadn't noticed at first, like a spelling error, or a tense inconsistency, or even a mistake in the plot! Guess what! I even proofread this page! And if you're using MS word, or something similar, you can always use the spellcheck. There are even spellchecks to be found online. Simply click on tools, and click on spellcheck in your word screen! DIALOGUE - NEVER assume your reader knows what you know. Most of us know those stories we've read where there's a long dialogue scene, and we haven't been able to figure out WHO is saying WHAT to WHO?! Although, another problem comes with that. Most of us have a fear of being repetitive, and therefore, we shy from those "She said/he said" tags. Well I'm going to let you beginners in on a little secret. There are ACTION tags! When someone talks to you, what do you notice while they're talking? THEIR ACTIONS! For Example: "It's beautiful." Christie dreamily spun around, allowing the long skirt to flow around her. She smiled fondly at Eddy, not able to think of the right words to thank him. "Really, Eddy. You shouldn't have." - Seperate Now this seems to be a BIG problem with begginners. Do not have two people talking in the same paragraph! For example: DO NOT: "Hi," Clair said, "How are you?" Pat smiled and shrugged, "I could be better." "Is that so?" "Yes. Exams are tomorrow, ya know?" "Oh yeah! Good luck on that!" INSTEAD: "Hi," Clair said, "How are you?" Pat smiled and shrugged. "I could be better." "Is that so?" "Yeah..." He replied, "Exams are tomorrow, ya know?" She cringed, knowing exactly what he meant. "Oh yeah! Good luck on that!" - Read OUTLOUD Sometimes, dialogue will sound different outloud than it does in our heads. For that reason, if you would like your dialogue to be realistic, first read it outloud, and ask yourself, "Is this something someone would say?" and then ask yourself, "Would this specific character ever say that?" Sometimes you'll have to adjust the structure, or the order of words to make it believable. Don't worry. All of us do it! But unrealistic, or even uncharacteristic, dialogue can be frustrating to your reader. The last thing you want is to make your reader give up and go read something else instead, right? Writing tips links: Writing tips, how-tos Essays, creative writing, fiction, non-fiction. Fiction Writing General tips, Writer's block, Character developement. Creative Writing: Fiction Writing tips. Monterey Bay Fiction Writers Writing tips. |
| BASIC WRITING RULES! |