TIPS FOR: 5SOS FANFICS & GRAMMAR

[4] details

[4] details

Okay, so a lot of times in fanfictions there's this tendency of making the entire book mainly composed of dialogue and one or two line sentences in between to address movements and feelings.

NAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH TO THE NINTH DEGREE.

Stories are made with details. Details are what makes books so great. They help you visualize movements and scenery and feelings you've never felt and Augustus Waters (ahem thank u john green for that amiright ladies or amiright or maybe im wrong bc he is a pretty pretentious character even through his charm and okay im getting too into this). But basically, the whole point of a book is its details. The details are the reason why it's so hard for movies based on books to be better than the actual book they're based on. You can't reach the level of detail inside those books.

VISUAL DETAILS:

Tell me everything from smell to touch to hearing to taste to the most basic sense, sight. Really try to drop subtle description; like, when you say "I am wearing a jacket" throw in the fact that it's red and large and that it smells like tuna fish so that your sentence transforms into "I am wearing a large, red jacket that strangely smelled like tuna fish." You're instantly giving the character more of a feeling of being inside the book. They can imagine a big red jacket and smell the tuna fish that it supposedly reeks of.

MOVEMENT. Tell us much more about your characters' movements! And when I say movements, I don't leave that to just their body; tell me about the movement of their face. Tell me how their lips pull down into a frown or how their eyebrows raise or how they part their lips or how they scratch the side of their head as they speak; basic human movements. You don't realize it but you do all of these things. If you took the time to pay attention all of the movements you do, you'll realize that you have little quirks you do like always running your hand through your hair or rubbing the side of your arm or licking your lips.

EMOTIONAL DETAILS:

Emotional details are tricky and depend on what POV you're writing from.

FIRST PERSON: this is the best point of view for dishing out your character's feelings. This is the point of view where you should really make sure to go in depth with what they feel. They've just had a break-up? Don't just leave it to "I feel like shit" or "I just wish I was back in his arms." Really tell us how much you loved him, how you feel about the fight, how you wish you could stop crying, and how you feel about everything in that moment in general. For little things, always make sure to just throw in significant thoughts about the little things your character picks up or the conversations they have or their own thoughts about stuff in general.

THIRD PERSON: this is the best point of view for physical details. You can really describe everything that a regular human wouldn't take the time out of their day to observe. You can also do a lot with emotions as well, but the good side is that you can choose how in depth you want to go with emotions with your characters. Maybe you're going to do third person subjective (limited) and only describe one person's thought or feelings. Maybe you're going to do third person Objective, actually, if you're not into expressing characters' emotions and the reader is left with just dialogue and physical details. Or maybe you want to play God and do third person Omniscient and know every character's thoughts and feelings. It's up to you, dude. Just know that third person isn't so easy to write at first but the main point is just to not over think it.

ONE LAST CRUCIAL TIP ON DETAILS: DO NOT OVERDO IT. WE WANT DETAILS BUT IF YOU PUT TOO MANY YOUR READER BECOMES DETACHED FROM THE STORY BECAUSE IT'S CHAPTER TWO AND YOU'RE STILL TALKING ABOUT THAT TREE YOU SAW OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE AND THEY'RE BEGINNING TO WONDER IF HE MAYBE TRANSFORMED INTO THE TREE BECAUSE GODDAMN, SON, YOU ARE INFATUATED WITH IT.