Crash Course For Aspiring Writers

A few things that make me go '*closes fanfiction*'

In this world, there exists amazing fanfictions that pull you in from the start with engaging character writing, descriptions, and all around godly stories. Others... Not so much.

Few things manage to make me close a story. I try my best to stay in it to give the writers a chance, but most of the time I find myself drifting away. Here are a few of them and how to avoid them, in no particular order.

The 'No break baby we goin full speed'

The title explains it all. There are no breaks in the text, not even when a character speaks. The entire thing is a wall of text.

To avoid this, split up your paragraphs. Personally, I split them off when characters start dialogue, or when I'm moving onto another thing in description. Honestly, split it off where you think it looks good.

You also have to be careful not to have paragraphs that are 2 lines. Set yourself a minimum of lines to minimize this.

The '. . . .' and 'No .'

Punctuation in stories is incredibly important. If you use too little, the phrases get long and you start sounding like me trying to explain a concept to my dad. If you use too much, you end up with text that is just frankly not appealing. So, to show you how to fix this, I'll be providing an example.

It was dark. A cold wind blew through the air. She ran through the street. Her high heel caught on a brick. She fell. The murderer caught up. They stabbed her. Blood stained the brick street. She screamed.

So, there are a few problems with this paragraph, but the one you have to focus on is the punctuations. To fix this, you can remove some periods, and replace them with commas or words that are used to tell you everything is going on at once ('as'), like this.

It was dark, a cold wind blowing through the air as she ran through the street. Her high heel caught on a brick, bringing her down. The murderer caught up quickly, and stabbed her. Blood stained the brick street as her scream filled the air.

As you can see, after you change out the periods, you have much more space for details. It makes for a much smoother flow, and overall makes me happy.

You can also use a much more rare form of punctuation: the semi-colon (;), the colon (:) and the dash (-). These are found a lot less often in fanfiction than other punctuation marks, but they really add some, pardon my french, je-ne-sais-quoi to your text.

The semi-colon is most often used to link two corresponding sentences together, so basically link two things that correspond together, or add details you'd normally struggle to fit in. It's quite simple, despite the complicated definition: She was hungry; the last time she'd eaten had been in the day before's evening.

The colon is easier: you use it when you give an example, a list, an explanation or quotation, or to simply emphasize a detail: It was dark: the light had been broken earlier that month.

The dash it used to do something similar: you use it when you add a point that isn't really important, or do a quick explanation: The clock - an antique - leaned up against the wall.

The 'I didn't pay attention when I was writing and I made a ton of mistakes'

This one is, unfortunately, incredibly common, specifically on Wattpad, and every time I see it I go 😃

It's a sadly repeteated story: the writer doesn't pay attention to their spelling and grammar, thinking they'll go back to check it, and when they're finished they don't go back to check. To counter this, there's several options:

- Go back to re-read after you're finished, so you can catch errors. To add efficiency to this, change the font: your mind has been staring at the same font for hours, and when something major changes (such as font)

- If you have a really good friend, send them your chapter to beta read. This is actually really common on Ao3, and is more efficient than re-reading it yourself as it offers you a reader's perspective. They can also give you their opinion, just make sure to make sure it's non-biased before you start boasting.

- Copy-paste your text into a Google Document, and look at the corrections they give you!

The vocabulary

Now, this one is notorious. Quite frankly, if you haven't read some of these, I'm shocked. This one is more things to avoid than trying to correct them, and contains my opinions on these.

- 'Let out a breath they didn't know they'd been holding' : I've seen a lot of people complaining about this one, but I honestly like it. It brings in a certain tension I really like, just as long as it's not overused.

- 'Pregnant pause' ok uhhhh who impregnated a pause 🤨

- 'Orbs', 'marbles', literally anything describing eyes as something orb-shaped : NO EYES ARE NOT ORB-SHAPED STOP USING THIS