Writing techneques

[moonlightgranger]

AAny have any good writing advice?


For your later drafts don't edit write away, you tend to not chtch as much, wait, then you go back to edit your story.


Plan out a plot, always have a plot, or you collapse.

Make sure your character isn't perfect and flawless, have some bad traits.


Don't rush your story, relax, enjoy it, go slowly.

[starbright9]

Make sure you know where the story the is going when you start, make sure you know what the ending is, you can then drop in hints and clues far easier.

[moonlightgranger]

I have grammar techneques and their whys. So here it is. It's a letter to a person I betaed, so it's sorta of personal, but read it you will get it.

Okay, yes, I am betaing for you, but that doesn’t mean this creation is not by you. You can choose not to use or to use it. These are infact just my opinions, and why. I think they can help you improve, but if you think otherwise I can not stop you.




Okay, for your longer sentences, you have to learn that in real life we can’t say such a long sentence in one breath. It doesn’t matter how deep the breath was, it just can’t be done. So please use the commas. And if there is an and that’s usually the best place to put it.


Expression of feelings is also important to your story, and a big part in it is the punctuating words right.

Okay…
Okay.

Those two words has completely different meanings. If you put … after a single word right, okay and sure, it means they pause after the word to think. Also when they say it, it’s slightly elongated. In this sense it means they think of the subject matter as weird. The single period means just a period is added, and it’s a regular reply. Okay, sure and right in this sense is an agreement.

There’s lots more ways that punctuation helps with the feeling of the story. Learning to use them is great.

Using quotes is also a good idea, even if it’s someone’s pthoughts. It’s a kind of talking, but just in the brain. If It’s not part of the narrations then it’s in quotations.

Using ands are great, because it helps join little sentences in to one big one. Usually though, you can’t use that many ands. The rule is only broken, because of special circumstances. It’s rare though, and you don’t do it often. Usually if you have a bunch of ands in a sentence it means it’s a run on sentence, and you should cut it down. Maybe it’s just even a issue of you not putting the ands in the right place. It’s not how huge your sentence can be, but it’s how much sense you can make out of your sentence that’s the important issue in writing. So if you see more then one and and it is long, maybe cut it off somewhere and have two to three sentences.


Also, I notice you like to jam a whole bunch of words in one sentence. You got to understand, sometimes you don’t need them. When that happens, you got to understand, it doesn’t necessarily make you look more nerdy, or smarter to have more wordy sentences. In contrast, it kind of makes people think you are bad in English, to want to jam all this in one sentence, especially, when you don’t need most of the words.


Oh, fanfiction.net can’t see indents in paragraphs, and so everytime you want a new paragraph, you got to make a double spaced line. It looks cramped and jammed packed otherwise.


I notice you aren’t editing good enough. So here is some advice. When you are done with your story, set it aside, and read it a day or two later. I understand the problem with memorizing the text. So, then read and edit it once, and set it aside again. Repeat the process a fair few times. Also when you are editing, read the text aloud, and you will find the most information. You may be able to find that, you need a comma somewhe re, a quotation sounds weird, dialogue doesn’t flow, and/or grammar mistakes. I also know the problem with being embarrassed to read out loud. My suggestion is to lock yourself in a room alone, and read the story through, aloud. If you are embarrassed of sounding like you talk to yourself, then realize it’s more embarrassing to put your story up with lots of mistakes.


If you need examples ask for them, I'll give them.