Dustmitebunny's Ultimate Writing Guide [For ALL Novices, Amateurs & Self-Proclaimed Geniuses]

Disclaimer: I am by NO means the best writer in the world or even on this site, nor do I claim or pretend to be, but I do get a LOT of people asking me for writing advice. Don't message me accusing that I think I'm the shit because that will be you deluding the facts, not me.
Before you read, I must warn you that your feelings might be a bit hurt afterwards. It is NOT my intention to hurt anyone's feelings but I am an extremely blunt and candid person. I don't give bullshit around, it wastes everyone's time. I don't sugar coat things, ever, so if you're allergic to honesty, then please seek constructive criticism and writing tips elsewhere.
The guide is not written to specifically mock any existing story or aimed to personally insult/attack any specific author(s), everything's written in generalization of points. I have better things to do with my time than hurt people for fun. No one's that special to have any reason to play victim to me. Again, if you have a weak backbone or are overly emotional or sensitive, please do leave before you get all tearful over nothing.
Don't ask me to critique, review or analyze your story after reading the guide. I am not an Editor or Beta reader, I'm just another girl who likes to write trying to give advice. If you pester me to fine comb your work, I will either ignore you or become prissy. Hello, why else am I'm already sitting on my ass writing a guide for all of you here? It's not like I'm getting paid. I'm not going to baby walk you step-by-step through everything. I'm trying to be nice, not play Ultimate Charity Saint.
If I sound rude, I apologize, I'm trying to save myself truckloads of requests to scrutiny countless different stories afterwards because rejecting people isn't easy, I do feel bad sometimes. Regardless, there are ALWAYS some who disregard my wishes and message me for purposes I asked everyone not to. I just want to make it clear I'm not trying to dedicate everything nor do I want to.
Now, if you think you're up for direct, somewhat harsh, even brutal veracity, by all means, please do continue.
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1. If you can read this, thank a teacher.
2. Brainstorm. Do what your English teacher in middle school taught you all those years ago and get a piece of paper and a fancy pen. Doodle, scribble, and empty your mind from pen to paper. Circle the ideas you think you want to work best with. If you're not a plan ahead type of writer, then don't complain or sulk when your story doesn't get any readers. It's that simple.
3. Spontaneous writing is fantastic if it works for you. I never really plan out my stories even if I lecture other people to do it because I can write a story without direction and still manage it okay but if you're not one of those people who can just write whatever's on their mind and make it fit in with the rest of the story, then I suggest you get that pen and paper out already. Do you WANT to write? Sucessfully? Well prove it. Writing isn't a piece of cake no matter how brilliant you are or if you're born with a natural gift.
4. Abuse your imagination. Work it until it's going to collapse from the usage. Originality sells, if you want proof, well you're just going to have to take my word for it. I personally have hundreds of ideas I randomly shove down my friend's throats so don't give me that excuse about 'I can't think of anything', if you really have no creativity in you, then why the hell are you writing fiction and trying to prove to others your value as a writer? If your brain always runs out of ideas, then go get an upgrade! Read novels, read, read, read your ass off and then try again later when other's creativity rubs off on you. Writer's Block(age) indicates you've been too lazy and let your imagination lapse too far to force it to concentrate upon will or rarely, you've used up all your creativity and need to recharge your brain. Whatever the case, turn your computer off and go seek some outside inspiration. Sitting there whining only makes you look pathetically emo.
5. You don't have to panic and map out a whole storyline, just structure and build yourself the foundations of a story. List character profiles and think about their backgrounds, their family life, their social network, the structure of the setting your story initiates. Making things up on the spot and providing filler explanations for a story gets really tiring so procrastination may be the more pleasant way of life but if you want the success, if you want the glory, then you gotta work for it. Nothing in life is free except the slap of reality on your cheeks when you're wallowing in self-shame. Panicking gets you nowhere in life. Sit your ass down and think of what you're doing, where you want to go, what you have so far and how you're going to get to where you want to be. Write it all down for direct comparison and referencing. It's a lot of work but you'll thank me later.
6. Never, ever, and I mean EVER compare yourself to anyone else. Writing has NO set standard of instructions telling you HOW to use your imagination or a specific way to write FICTION. There are many guidelines to help you but there are no official rules and measuring yourself to other people will only make you depressed. I used to compare myself to my sister and through mistakes; I learnt that no two imaginations are the same. No two fingerprints are the same either so as clich as this sounds, be unique, do what you want to do and if other people raise their eyebrows or laugh at your ideas, rub it all in their face AFTER you achieve what you set out to accomplish. You decide who gets the last laugh but with that decision comes the hard work part we all love to hate.
7. Don't complicate your genres. Decide beforehand if you want a comedy romance or a horror adventure. If you're a natural comedian, then explore your strengths but also tap into your weaker areas of expertise and experiment. Quizilla is not a serious website or competition to see who's got the biggest balls, Quizilla is a site to express yourself and display your work. If you decide to write a medieval horror and everyone on the site is doing sci fi romance, go for it! Who cares what everyone else is doing? Your story, you play God, you decide every fate of every character, create or destroy each and every setting and most of all, you're the theme master, make your choice.
8. Format your story. Use paragraphs. No one wants to strain his or her eyes at the screen, trying to guess the general meaning behind a solid block of text. In fifth grade, I learnt the famous rule,
"One speaker, one line".
It doesn't matter which grade your English teacher taught you that concept, just follow it and your readers will love your for not making them go cross eyed. That is, if they haven't exited out of your story and ran off to find a more pleasing format story to read. If you can be bothered, go Google basic HTML tutorials, you can even transform your text into a respectably tidy Arial, Times New Roman or a slight fancier Comic Sans MS font face.
9. Don't over describe a situation/character or under describe it. Over describing confuses the reader (I know from personal experience with my readers) and sometimes, it's just completely bogus to relation of the actual story. Under describing (also known as Not Using Enough Descriptions) makes the story dull, boring and seem choppy. If you don't have vivid graphical details or use sensory descriptions, then the story will not sustain the reader's intrigue to want more. Keeping a story's atmosphere tense without overdoing the pressure to give someone a heart attack is probably something everyone experiments with. A lazy, relaxed, sappy attitude and your readers will run out the door, yawning.
10. Read out loud your work to yourself. Grammar errors will most likely be acknowledged this way. Be wary of using the correct tense, no skipping from past to future then bobbing at present tense every few seconds, your readers will laugh at you and walk away shaking their head. Learn your pronouns. Your is a possessive term, direct. You're is short for You Are. Mixing the two up makes you look like a dumb, ignorant elementary kid, if in doubt, open your mouth and ask. There's no such thing as stupid questions, just cowardly people making stupid mistakes that can easily be avoided. Everyone makes grammatical errors but if you have one every few lines, wow, no wonder no one reads your story. It makes no fuck sense to them!
11. There is a huge shortcut for all you writers who don't have a ridiculously large and complex vocabulary. It's called a thesaurus. I presume everyone knows how one works so if you want to make yourself sound smarter, or are sick of using the same old adjectives to describe something, go hunt down a thesaurus or better yet, use the online ones the internet provide, free. Don't go crazy trying to use big words; your readers will get pissed off. Again, I know from experience.
12. Font colours. People seem to like them so remember this: light text on dark background or vice versa. Fancy uber complicated bright backgrounds will chase your readers away like no tomorrow and bright colour fonts will gain you nothing but people yelling about your inconsiderate choice of text colour. People want to read your damn story; they couldn't care less about your HTML show off-ing skills. Remember, simple, clean looks are always in fashion. If this guide had a neon green flashing background and orange sparkly text, do you think you could've gotten past the first line without highlighting and opening Notepad?
13. Never ever put any type of (A/N: hehe, isn't he cute?) or (Note: that actually happened to me!) in the middle of your story. It looks tacky and it distracts the reader. The reader doesn't give a flying fuck about what you think/did/happened to you, they just want their damn story so DON'T DISTRACT THEM! If you go to a bookstore and buy a book, does the novel have (A/N)'s all over the context in the story? ... I rest my case!
14. If you don't use spell check (and it's amazing the amount of people who don't), then face it buddy, you will never get anywhere if your spelling is equal to a second grade reject's handwriting sample. I spell check my own stories every few minutes thanks to the F7 button in Microsoft Word and I still make mistakes or typos so no one's perfect or immune to errors. Use your spell check, it's free, it exists for a purpose so before you seek the imaginary sympathy out there and moan about why you have no readers, check again.
15. Make sure you have plenty of full stops and appropriate capital letters. Don't make your sentences run on forever with conjunctions and commas, just end the sentence and start up again. No one wants to read a paragraph with sixteen thousand 'and then' or 'after that' in it. Avoid too many short sentences. Like this. It gets annoying. The stopping and starting. It disturbs a story pace.
16. Chat speak is NOT your friend, it needs to burn in hell had if you support chat speak, why are you here reading my guide if you support Writing the Idiot's Way? If you even think about chat speak, then no one will respect you. If you already use chat speak, go back and rewrite your story, typing out every single word properly. Looking 'dumb' and playing down your IQ might be considered 'in style' in today's society but if you want to write, stopp typpin lyk dis 2 me or 2 any1 els or ill shoote u wif ma watagunn! Looking at that sentence, I want to laugh. Ok should be typed as Okay even if the spell check won't pick up your shorthand form mistake. It's more professional the Okay (not Ok) way.
17. If you really doubt your ability to spell even with a spell check, get a Beta reader, one who has a backbone and will tell you how suckful you are without offending you. My friend Ryu is one of the closest confidents I have on Earth but she will step up and laugh at how suckful a particular chapter has been if she needs to. If all your friends are too nice to spare your feelings, request for an Editor. There is a huge difference between constructive criticism and unnecessary bashful criticism. Whether you accept or reject any forms of criticism is up to you but if your Beta reader doesn't have a strong peace of mind and a strong will and point out all your flaws, you're much better off without even having one. Having a useless Editor means you're screwed so find one who can get their facts straight. Ask me on recommendation for an excellent Beta reader. Maddy is remarkable and picks up the smallest mistakes but if you don't put your heart and soul into your work; expect Maddy to reject being your Editor. She works with stories above the adequately satisfactory level, if your story is full of;
George: Hi.
Adam: Hello.
George: What are you up to?
Adam: I dunno.
Type of thing, don't bother asking me for Maddy's username, you'll only waste our time. Maddy has the right to reject being your proofreader even if your story is fairly good. It's all up to her. I do not make her decisions for her she's my friend, not my minion. If Maddy rejects you, it's not my problem, don't come crying to me or demanding someone to Beta you, I'll link you to Live Journal and suggest you cry/bitch your heart out to your online diary there.
18. Speak your mind. Convey your emotions. If you can put your feelings and thoughts into the writing, your readers will be able to relate to the story, and ultimately, you. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to have first hand experience of a situation, but put yourself into the shoes of your character and see how you would react in a situation to give touches that are more realistic to the personality of the character. Giving characters ridiculous info stats like 5'11 height and 100lbs is crazy. Do your research, a 5'11 girl at 100lbs will be nearly dead or severely anorexic so whatever you do, don't be stupid and think fiction means you can get away with whatever your brain deems 'cool', try 5'11 tall girl at 145lbs and you might not scare all your readers away with your lack of knowledge. Really... Can you IMAGINE a 5'11 skeleton hanging at 100lbs? Is this really who you want your main character to be? An emaciated bone and skin structure? Go back to the drawing board and re-do your character profiles.
19. Make your characters 3D enough for readers to believe and picture them almost real people. The more depth your develop a character to, they more likely to bind with a story on a interpersonal level. How do you make your character 3D? Click here and join the wonderful (free) forum for advice and help on all areas and aspects of story writing and poetry help. It belongs to my friend Brie so you'll be in good hands finding what you need. Do NOT make the mistake of making fully stereotypical characters like The Dumb Blonde Bimbo Cheerleader or The Cold Hearted Goth. Everyone has a weakness, everyone has a quirk. Build your character up from little simplistic everyday relevancies to the story. If you dislike labels or stereotypes, don't slap one on your poor character.
20. If you have more than two character Point Of Views expressed and altered frequently in a story, write in third person perspective. Changing Jan's P.O.V to Ian's P.O.V then Ted's P.O.V oh and let's not forget Emma, Adam and Rachel's P.O.V, maybe add in a little bit of Rick and his friend Erin's P.O.V, stop, stop, STOP! Who the fuck can keep up with your crazy changing of standpoint narrations all the time? It's enough to make anyone's head spin.
21. Rational rule: first perspective writing should always contain past tense. It's like writing in a diary, of things that's already happened. Get my drift?
22. Common sense speaks: I before E except after C. There are a few exceptions. But if you're spelling 'field' or 'deceit' and always get confused wondering which way things go, use your common sense and remember your grammar lessons from elementary.
23. Don't ask your readers for help or anyone else's idea for your story. It's yours, you can baby, nurture, crash and burn or dump it all you want, slinging it around corners or brushing carefully with verbs, whatever man, if you can't even write your own story without running for outside source help, why the fuck are you writing? Answer me that. Writing is about expressing opinions, thoughts, feelings, ideas and creativity, if you want credit for other people's ideas or work, I won't even finish this sentence...
24. Always give your story a title casing. Title Casing Is When All Your Words Begin With A Capital Letter. Words like, 'and', 'or', 'the' (unless at beginning of title) or 'to' isn't excessively important, therefore it wouldn't be capitalized. Otherwise, title casing looks sophisticated and if you go and pick up a book, I bet you a million virtual dollars that it doesn't have small case i's or lots of ..:: or xXx. Get RID of ~, !, *^*, >>>>> , (*) and that kinda thing. Fancy isn't the best when it comes to titles, keep it simple, make your statement and whatever you do, if you misspell your title, grief, please stop hurting the poor spell check's feelings and just let it do what it's supposed to do.
25. I will say this once and only once. If you don't want to take my advice, that's your choice. Don't make the mistake of shoving a huge cast of characters at the very beginning of a story. No one can keep up with sixteen characters all introduced at once, their names, backgrounds, personalities, looks etc, etc. Introduce the main character; establish him or her to your audience. When your readers feel as if they can know and understand the basic persona of your protagonist, add your antagonist or minor supporting casts. Shoving in every single one of your story cast all in one go at your reader's face is suicide, they'll run away dizzy and head spinning, mumbling about your weird ass story with too many people. Set your pace. Systematically start slowly and bring in each new character one or two at a time.
26. Make all the damn cliffhangers you want. Sure, your readers will bombard you will annoyed messages for a few days but cliffhangers are one of the most evil and sure-fire ways to hook your readers. They WILL come back when you update to find out what happens next. They WILL wait patiently (because they really don't have a choice) for you to update. It's important to update at your own pace, don't let anyone pressure you to write any half-assed attempt of a chapter just to satisfy guilt or demand. The thing with a cliffhanger is though, you have to find the right moment to end it. Cutting it short and declaring a cliffhanger before you reach the climax is not very smart, cliffhangers should be suspended a few seconds entering the main pinnacle escalating drama. Then, you can cackle to yourself and listen to your readers yell curses in your direction. A cliffhanger at the end of EVERY single chapter is just rude. Give your readers some de-stressing time from every now and then.
27. Don't threaten your readers with things like,' I won't update if I don't get this # of picks/rates/messages' it tends to piss them off and the LAST thing you want is readers getting prissy with you. Ask NICELY if they can message you after reading. Getting messages from your readers is one of the most motivational things ever, it peps your ego a bit and assures you that someone IS reading your story. Selfishness won't get you anywhere, write because you WANT to, because you LIKE to, forget the Quizilla's elite lists, if a story is good, it WILL be seen and your voice will be heard but if you're too preoccupied thinking of things like,' OMG I'm going to do this and this and ask for a MILLION banners when I make it on blah list,' forget it, you're going down the wrong track here. Yes, I know how annoying it is when it seems like no one in the world knows your stories exist, believe it or not, I was an invisible little ant on this site and Aly was the only person who talked to me until I begged my best friend, my old best friend and sister to come and keep me company. I know what it's like to feel like you're a failure and get upset no one reads your story. You have to be patient. You have to be willingly to keep going and not give up even if you feel like quitting because it feels like no one is bothering to read your stuff. Always remember that what goes around comes around so be very nice to your readers because without them, you're royally screwed. And Shivaun? This includes you! Bwuaha. Sorry, you know I love you.
28. Being patient doesn't mean you can stop writing just because you don't get any messages or the amount of messages you desired. Set yourself reasonable goals. Updating once or twice a week, depending on how busy your schedule is, is fairly reasonable. Updating every five or ten months is selfish. If you have a million stories all out in one go, make one of them your priority to finish and then select the others slowly one by one and update for them when you find the muse to write for them. If you KNOW you have ADD attention span, don't publish a million stories all at once, one story at a time never hurts anyone. Even if you don't plan to publish everything you write, keep writing. Writing on a daily basis will settle into routine and spark creativity upon command. Regulate and train yourself to be able to function at all, times whenever you need and want, it might take years but if you love writing, sitting around daydreaming won't get you anywhere. Get those ideas from brain to paper.
29. Maintain a consistent tone throughout the story. Whoever the narrator is and whichever perspective it is from, it's not very professional if the narrator sounds like a croaky old grandmother in one chapter and a giddy little kid in another. The style of the entire story should be dependable, remember what I said about choosing a main theme? If your story is horror, you can't just make it into a cute little romance all of a sudden, your tenses used in particular situations and the mood for each settling should flow smoothly from one scene to another. An evil carnival trapping two young girls and scaring the crap out of them wouldn't fit with a sudden change of the two young girls finding an empty cotton candy stall and eating all the sticky mush. They're supposed to be busy running for their lives! Being distracted is common when writing a story so either you sit on a finished chapter and come back a few hours/days later and re-read and edit or you can shove it at your Beta reader's nose and demand coffee.
30. Use an active voice instead of a passive voice. A passive voice is extremely difficult to avoid, the only difference between an active and passive voice is how direct they are in relevance to the present situation in your story. For example, 'the girl was completely terrified because she was claustrophobic' is a passive approach. An active approach would be 'the terrified girl had claustrophobia'. Passive and active voices are very difficult to master, even I still struggle with it but basically, in most sentences written in a passive voice, the focus character receives the action expressed in the verb; the subject is acted upon. Sentences in active voice are more concise than those in passive voice because fewer words are required to express action in active voice than in passive. You can recognize passive voice expressions because the verb phrase will always include a form of 'be', such as 'am', 'is', 'was', 'were', 'are', or 'been'. The passive active voice isn't the most important thing in writing and you don't have to master it to write a good story but if you really want to improve your writing and dream of becoming an author or successful writer for a magazine/newspaper whatever, then I'm pointing this out to you now so you can practise improving your writing already and prepare yourself for what's ahead of you.
31. Speech Marks should NEVER be replaced by fancier prettier things like ~, *, /, ^ or -. Speech Marks exist for a reason. Why are Speech Marks called Speech Marks? They represent people talking! *Hi Kelly, how are you?* is NOT appropriate, use your Speech Marks. -Hold on a minute okay?- isn't cool either. Don't use ~blah blah blah~ to indicate thoughts, thoughts should be placed between single apostrophes and dialogue between two. Sometimes, it's even okay to put dialogue between one apostrophe set but if you want to avoid confusion, and make yourself look respectable, don't do ^He said he was coming!^ kind of thing, use your Speech Marks and use them good. Real fucking good.
32. Check that you're not repeating yourself. Sometimes, you might find you're describing something you've already illustrated a few paragraphs before. It happens to everyone. Nothing to be ashamed about but it does pay to check once or twice and save yourself from making an ass of yourself as well as a bunch of messages pointing your mistake from readers. Remember how I said the thesaurus is your friend? Well, it's true. If you describe the big house as 'big' six times in just one chapter, people will get bored of you very quick. Large, lofty, grand, elevated = all words that are basically synonyms to big. In mathematics, a graphic calculator is your lifeline. In creative writing, a dictionary/thesaurus combination will help you go a LO-O-O-O-ONG way. And, yes a LO-O-O-O-ONG way is where you should be aiming. Show your dictionary some lovin'.
33. Sequencing of events. Why am I going on about stuff you learnt in fifth grade again? Because amazingly enough, most of the stories on Quizilla I've seen LACK a beginning, plot and end in disaster. A story has to have a basic structure. In the beginning, bring in a main character, a situation with a problem. The middle part should consist of our lead character trying to solve the problem, failing a few times to create tension and more drama/excitement before hitting a climax. The ending should be decided whether it's a sudden drift off, a slow tragic ending, a happy quick ending or a horrific unforeseen exit dash. That, my dear, is basically how a story works. We have a character, a few supporting casts, a main situation that needs to be addressed and some adventure along the way, with whichever theme you chose, be it love, horror, sci-fi or historic depression. If your story is just second rate fluffy romance with no real plot, please, don't publish your work, save yourself from the agony of 'WHY WON'T ANYONE READ MY FUCKING STORY? GRRR!' Well, here's some advice. Find your pen and piece of paper, work on that plot of yours again and calm down because no matter how many swear words you know, it's not impressing anyone.
34. If you write vampire fiction, making your character walk into a dark alley at night will NOT get you many readers. It's overdone. It's too old. It doesn't sell anymore. Vampire fiction is great, Aria is one of the masters of vampire fiction and I love her work (and not just because she's a great friend because I don't do favouritism, ever), but if you think that having a mortal human girl kidnapped by a 'hot' powerful vampire, trapping her in a castle, blah blah, fall in love eventually, get into some fight with another vampire or girl runs away, blah blah blah You see where this is going? You won't get any readers this way. Be spontaneous. Sit down and think of something no one has done before. In situations where a vampire saves someone's life or meets them under full moon, again, it's too overdone. I've read one story about a vampire getting braces and I have to say it was brilliant, original and very refreshing. That was one of the rare vampire stories that are truly unique. How many people can boast that they've thought about that idea? Writing vampire fiction is not much different than writing any genre with normal humans, you have to use your noodle, think of something no one has done before and the whole betrothed to a vampire thing was intriguing the first five or ten times but now, it's just ridiculous how many people seem to jump the bandwagon. Only dead fish go with the flow, if you want to prove yourself, or want the chance to call yourself 'original', don't follow mainstream, sit down and start brainstorming. Yes, again. Don't look at me like that; you're the one who wanted to write a good story. If you want to read Aria's vampire fiction, ask for her username.
35. Too much sarcasm can kill a story. I know we all like to think we are all masters of sarcasm and such, but if you're writing horror, unless you're truly a one-of-a-kind wonder wall, the sarcasm has got to go. If you're a narrator for a romantic comedy, limit the amount of sarcasm before the reader becomes put off from the story and think you're just venting through your story. Not EVERY female protagonist has to be the sarcastic, stubborn, strong willed, drop dead gorgeous and snappy lead. Not EVERY female has to have a iron backbone and concrete arsenal of poison tipped invectives at her disposal. Not EVERY female protagonist is quick on her feet, the perfect slender model thin size and always witty with the automatic best comebacks. While sarcasm is very adorable and all, give other elements for your story and characters. Everyone has a different sense of sarcasm and how they interpret things, sometimes, no one will laugh at what YOU think is ironic because face it, sarcasm gets old these days.
36. Sometimes, your readers will dislike/hate one of your characters. That's not necessarily a bad thing and you shouldn't cry over it. Whether your readers like the character or not is irrelevant, as long as they can RELATE to his/her emotions, thoughts on a situation and such and as long as your readers like the story itself in general, stop trying to please everyone else and just write to please your own soul. In life, we all have people we don't get along with or don't particularly like for absolutely any reason except our gut feeling telling us something isn't quite right about that person. If your characters are believable enough for people to feel ANY emotion negative or positive towards them, then pat yourself on the back, you officially created yourself a 3D character. Be proud.
37. Those character profiles where it basically goes something along the lines of -
Name:
Age:
Hair Colour:
Etc etc? AVOID AVOID AVOID! Firstly, they are BORING. No one wants to read a huge contract thing on each and every single character, especially not at the very beginning before any introduction on the story itself is done. How about you introduce your character and insert their profile data all in at the same time? Start off with, something like 'Amelia Lincoln was a very bubbly little fourteen year old girl with strawberry ringlets and pale green eyes. She was a very quiet girl and incredibly shy, many mistake her shyness for snobbiness. Amelia loved to play soccer, it was her secret passion,' etc. You see? It's better than doing the whole
Name: Amelia Lincoln.
Age: Fourteen.
Eye Colour: Pale Green.
Etc etc. You can do your character profiles if you really want to but my advice is, don't do them. They're boring, no one can really be stuffed reading and remembering the profiles of a bunch of characters shoved under their face in one go and those character profiles might be good building blocks for your character persona but your readers don't care, they want a story, not bits and pieces of your blue print.
38. I don't recommend putting a video or music player in your story chapters, it freezes some people's computers and not everyone can focus on reading while music is playing. Get a little player that can be paused without freezing someone's computer for a few annoying minutes. You can put a music player in the results and have a song setting the mood or relating to the chapter itself but I personally can't focus while there's someone singing while I'm trying to read and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. Again, people come to you for your stories, not to listen to a song or see which fancy video you're playing. I'm pretty sure my sister and a few friends of mine might kill me for this bulletin point but like I said, people want your story, if they want a song to listen to, they'll go and stalk Limewire.
39. Touch. Taste. Sight. Sound. Smell. Your five senses. These are your sensory descriptions. USE THEM. USE THEM. USE THEM!!! These are the nearest thing to a lifeline in writing; they'll almost like my secret formula for writing any story. I've said to use sensory descriptions before but let me elaborate more extensively. Describe your story setting, tell your readers all about the 'dark, murky, slimy, blackened waters of the dead eel pond.' Tell them very specifically all about the 'rotting putrid smell of decayed flesh wriggling almost lifelessly, slumped in a huge pile near a muddy bank littered with snails'. You can begin to picture that image in your head, can't you? Describing the smell, feel, sounds, sight and sometimes, taste in a story makes it very vivid, very realistic and that's your goal, to get your reader's imagination going so they can picture the story settings and characters in their mind. When you read a book, your imagination flies. That's what you want people to do when they read your story, you want them to be sucked into the story and have their minds flashing with images. Simply stating the basics isn't enough, go into depth, draw details and weave your masterpiece. Give it all you've got.
40. NeVeR eVeR uSe ToGgLe CaSe wRiTiNg. iT's DaMN aNNoYinG tO rEaD. nO toggle cAsE FoR StOrY TitLeS oR CoNtExT. aM i GeTTinG mY pOinT aCroSS? aRe yOu AnNoyED yEt? Unbelievably, there are people who use toggle for their titles. And when I see any title with toggle case, I don't bother reading it. They say not to judge a book by its cover, but come on; everyone judges a book by its title. Have you ever seen a published book at the bookstore with toggle casing? No? Well, don't use toggle case unless you like having an imaginary 'idiot' stamp across your forehead. If you already do use toggle case for your story titles, go back and eliminate them. Now.
41. MAKING YOUR ENTIRE TITLE CAPITALIZED IS NOT VERY ATTRACTIVE EITHER. CAPS EQUAL SHOUTING. HOW RUDE. WHO WANTS TO BE SHOUTED AT LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME? IT MIGHT GAIN YOU SOME ATTENTION FOR A FEW SECONDS BUT IF YOUR STORY IS CRAP ALREADY, TRYING TO GET PEOPLE'S ATTENTION BY USING A CAPITALIZED TITLE WILL STILL CAUSE THEM TO LEAVE AFTER THEY READ THE FIRST LINE OF YOUR STORY. No caps. You can emphasize one or two words in a title if they're THAT important but like I said, DO YOU LIKE BEING TALKED TO LIKE THIS?
42. Each chapter of your story should be at least one and a half pages long. If it's half a page, why bother publishing it? No one's attention will be captured in half a page of writing, unless you're some heaven sent prodigy, be patient and sit on it. If you can only write half a page of work a day, then wait for four or five days to put together a decent sized chapter. Short chapters piss readers off, they really do and chances are, no one will be waiting for you to update with yet another tiny miniscule little slump of writing. My personal aim is getting each chapter of my stories to two full pages. My co-writer forces me to do four entire pages so that takes me days to put together a decent chapter. It doesn't matter how long you take to type out a new chapter, the point is, if your chapter is too short, your reader's attention won't bother to return to you. The opening line, the very first paragraph and essentially, the first few pages of the introduction to a story is vital for someone to decide whether they are interested enough to carry on reading or ditch the little block or writing.
43. Don't tell the reader what's going on. Show them. Never do things like (Five minutes later) or (Later that day). Those things belong in comic books. No published story has ever done things like (In Kayla's room back at the house). When I say show the reader what's going on in the story, I mean, use your sensory descriptions. I get sick and tired of people complaining they don't have any readers and asking to be advertised. If you have (In the kitchen) or (The next day) everywhere in your story, I don't blame your readers for not really wanting to read a sixth grader's attempt to write the manga way. Sensory descriptions are my magic formula, yes, I'm giving it away, whether you can make my secret ingredient work for your story and to your advantage is your problem, not mine. Use your head. Use your imagination. Use spell check. Use your common sense. Things always work out if you consider the very basics of everything and work from there.
44. Don't parrot fan fiction. The whole Draco Malfoy hates and loves me thing? We've seen it. The whole I'm engaged to Draco Malfoy but I didn't agree thing? We've seen it. The whole I'm a mudblood and he's pureblood so it can't work, right?!! kind of thing? We've definitely seen it. Unless you're positive you can write another cliche (for any story, not just fan fiction) and not come off as a desperate wannabe who will do anything for fame, then stop parroting other people and come up with your own thing. I have nothing against Harry Potter or Draco fan fiction but I think it's pretty much safe to say, a lot of people are getting sick of the same old crap over and over as well as me.
45. Unless you have one hell of a good, never been done before, kind of plotline, stick to reading some novels, or books, go to the library and read your heart out. When you finally have an original idea of your own, then come back and start writing.
46. You will never get any banners (unless you make them yourself) if your story sucks. Quit whining and lusting after banners and just focus on your story. I got my first banner five months after I published something so if you think that you're going to get bombarded with a truckload of pretty graphic images to encourage and support your story within your first few days on the site, dream on. People only make you banners if they like your story. Work on your story. Forget about the banners. Show them off when your story itself is polished like a gemstone.
47. Good writers occasionally split infinitives to create emphasis, achieve a better wording order or to and avoid confusion. If splitting an infinitive makes it better for you to achieve a clearer meaning, then split away. If you have split infinitives lingering everywhere and they're plain nonsense, listen to your grammar check's sensibility and let it suggest ways for you to fix the mistakes. Emphasizing everything will make the effect useless. If you run spell check, sometimes natural already made split infinitives will show up. If that's the case, re-read your sentence, see if you can format it another way. If not, keep the structure but if you can alternative spilt infinitives, that's a good thing to do for more smoother writing.
48. Okay, maybe some of you didn't get the thing on split infinitives so let me explain. A split infinitive occurs when an adverb or adverbial phrase is placed between to and the verb. The infinitive is the part of the verb expressed by "to," as in "to move" or "to think." A split infinitive is such an expression with a word or phrase interposed between the "to" and the verb, as in "to reluctantly move" or "to quickly think." To put it into the simplest definition possible, let's state it as the obvious and say that a split infinitive is an infinitive that can be split.
49. Click here to read some really good additional tips on writing. Unlike some people, I refuse to copy and paste someone else's work and stick it in this guide, claiming it's mine. Out of the hundreds of sites I've browsed for tips, this one is one of the only ones that doesn't spew overrated nonsense. Seven hours of Googling help tips for all you people, do you feel loved yet?
50. After you finish writing, pretend you are someone who has never heard of your story before and read it with an open, non-judgmental, oblivious stance. Without any personal attachment to the story, do you think its good enough or does it need to be rewritten? All good stories are bad stories rewritten. Every writer will tell you that they go back and change some of their words around, add a few sentences here and there and delete whole pages of work in one go if the occasion arises. You are your own worst critic. Use your judgement to constructively critique your own work, don't be stupid and hard on yourself, and use your observations beneficially to rewrite your story/chapter/standalone. A good story is a bad story rewritten countless times. An adequate story or even a good story written the first time round is a result of lots of practice. No one was born perfect. Including me.