How to Write Good Fanfics

2: Grammar and Stuff, Part 1

One of the most common issues I see in fanfiction nowadays is poor grammar. Grammar can make or break a story's overall quality. I say can because there are wonderful stories I've read where the grammar wasn't that great.

Let me say this before I start. I do understand that perfect grammar is really hard to fully grasp. And I also understand that not everyone had English as a first language. I'm hoping that those who read this will benefit in some way, regardless of how well they understand grammar and sentence structure.

I'm going to give you examples of things you should avoid doing when you write.

•Avoid using "U" in place of "you" or "2" in place of "to/too" something similar. (Text speak)
•Avoid not punctuating your sentences. (Periods, commas, question marks.)
•Avoid using incomplete sentences. (Lazily leaving out words to be able to type a sentence faster)
•Avoid not capitalizing the beginning of sentences or proper nouns. (Names and specific places like restaurants, cities, or states.)
•Avoid using the wrong form of certain words. (Your and you're; their, there, and they're; we're, were, and where; to, two, and too; etc.)

It's really hard to avoid doing these things though. Mainly because we do this on a daily basis. This is how a lot of people text. It's just a lot easier and faster to type and send messages this way. But it can also be really hard to understand.

I'll go over these in further detail now.

Avoid using abbreviations in writing as much as possible.
It's an amateur and lazy style of writing. Look in a professionally written and published book sometime. Now imagine that every "you" was replaced with "u" and every "to" was replaced with 2.
Something like this:
Do u want 2 go 2 the beach with me?
It is a personal pet peeve of mine when I read sentences like this. It takes me out of what I'm reading and it feels more like I'm reading a person's text history than a story.
Also, don't use things like "OMG" or "l8r" for the same reasons I just said.
If your story includes people texting, then that's okay, but in all honesty, I still wouldn't do it.

Always punctuate your sentences.

I went to the woods with Jessica hey whats wrong nothing she said and we walked back home when we got home we sat down and said lets eat Grandma

Did that make any sense to you? It probably didn't. You could probably figure it out if you tried really hard. But you shouldn't have to do that.
What's wrong with it?
There's absolutely no punctuation!
Punctuation makes it to where we read in a controlled and ordered manner. We can't take in information easily if sentences have no punctuation.
I'll correct it. Here it is.

I went to the woods with Jessica.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said. And we walked back home. When we got home, we sat down and said, "Let's eat, Grandma."

Much better! I can tell what the message is saying very clearly. Punctuation makes the story easy to understand.

If there is not a question being asked, or there is not strong emotion being portrayed, then sentences will always end with a period.
If we don't end it with a period, the sentence with run on into the next.

Here is a text I received from my grandma when I told her my aunt was going to buy me something.

"Think that is fair."

Okay? What is she telling me?
That can mean one of two things. She's either saying, "That's fair. Go ahead." Or she's asking me if I really think it's fair that she was getting me stuff.
She was asking me a question. But here's the thing.
Not only was it an incomplete sentence, but there was a  punctuation error. Periods don't properly convey whether or not it was a question. Here's what it should have been.
"Do you think that's fair?"
Do you see what I did? I added a few words and changed the period to a question mark.
Here's a classic example of why commas are really important.
Take this sentence here.
"Let's eat Grandma."
ACK! THIS PERSON'S A CANNIBAL!
Just kidding! The sentence is supposed to mean that the character is telling Grandma they want to eat with her. But without a comma, the meaning of the sentence is that they want to eat Grandma.
So, the sentence should read:
"Let's eat, Grandma."
Always put a comma before you mention a character's name in a sentence.
"Will do, Chief."
See? The character is telling Chief that they are going to do it. Notice that it was an incomplete sentence though. If a character is speaking it, then sometimes it's okay. We speak in incomplete sentences passively.
Let's remove the comma.
"Will do Chief."
Yeah... Now the sentence is incorrect, and pretty gross.
Commas are their own beast. It would take forever to explain it in detail, so I'm giving the most common uses and sentences for them.

•Lists
"She saw lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my!"
•Addressing someone by name
"Eva, you'd better get in here now."
"Do you know where he is, Dennis?"
•Grammatically unnecessary information.
"Mary, a dancer in the Metropolitan Opera, came in and ordered a small beverage."
•Pauses in the sentence (transition words and other stuff falls into this too.)
"If we don't do this, the world will die."
"However, she fell off the cliff and suffered severe injuries."
"Sometimes I wish we could go to school, but like, without work and stuff."

Apostrophes are pretty easy to use. We use apostrophes to show ownership or contract words.
For ownership, you take the owner's name and add an apostrophe and an s, like this:
"It was Jonathan's ball."
Who's ball is it? It's Jonathan's ball.
Here's an exception to that rule. The word, "it." It has a contraction, "it's." If something belongs to the subject, "it," then we just add an s, not an apostrophe. Because if we did, it would become, "it is."
It's - It is.
Its - Something belongs to it.

Contractions also use an apostrophe.
It would be weird if we all started talking like this.
"Do not touch that apple. It is poisoned, and you are going to die if you eat it. You would be smart not to."
We usually contract most of the words when we speak.
"Don't touch that apple. It's poisoned, and you're going to die if you eat it. You'd be smart not to."
Notice: I didn't contract "going to." When we talk, we usually say "gonna." But, gonna is not a word. Neither is wanna (instead if want to.) Some people do talk like that, so it would be okay if a character said gonna. But you don't write gonna otherwise. It's "going to."
Here are some most common contractions:
Don't - do not.
Didn't - did not.
Wasn't - was not
Weren't - were not
We're - we are
They're - they are
You're - you are
You'll - you will
They'll - they will
And many others.

One more thing I'll cover: quotation marks.

Always put quotation marks around things characters say!

Do you want to eat? Marcy said.

Without quote marks, "Marcy said" becomes an incomplete sentence.

"Do you want to eat?" Marcy said.

If a character is quoting something within a piece of dialogue, use apostrophes.

"She told me, 'If you take a left at West Street, you'll hit a dead end,' so we're going to take a detour."

Just like that.

I'm putting this chapter in two parts because this is taking a long time. I want to make this as understandable as possible, so I'm going to go ahead and post the rest later.

Before I go, I want you to punctuate this sentence. Put anything you want on it. Comment what you have, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Punctuate this sentence and tell me what you get!

Mark called Mary Lou is here

You can punctuate this in several different ways. I'd like to see what y'all come up with.

See y'all later!