Survivor's Guide to the Wattpad Jungle | ✔️

SPAG

Spelling. Punctuation. Grammar.

These are three key things that you must have in your book, and they must be good. There's nothing worse than reading a book by a writer who has the worst spelling or punctuation. If this isn't your strong point, you need to work on it.

Lots of readers have asked me why their books haven't been doing so well, and upon checking them out, it makes sense. It's not that their plot is bad, or that they don't describe enough. It's because it's very difficult to read a story with spelling errors everywhere. A writer's job is to communicate the story. Done. A reader's is to read it. But, if the writer doesn't do his or her job well, the reader can't either.

Spelling

1. Commonly mixed up words

These may be very small mistakes, but people like me absolutely hate it when people mix them up. You need to know the difference between spellings, even though the words sound the same. The most common are:

There, their, they're.

You're, your.

Where, we're, wear.

Weather, whether.

Too, to.

I won't go through each and every one of them, but I'll use the first as an example. "There" refers to a place. Like, over there. "Their" is a possessive word, such as "their house, their car, their things." "They're" is simply they are. They are going somewhere.

What I usually do when writing is that I say them out loud. For example, I want to say that someone is beautiful, I will say it in full. Am I trying to say YOUR BEAUTIFUL (cringe) or YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL? Upon asking myself that, it makes it easier. Just ask yourself if you mean to say "you are".

You left you are bag. Nope, that doesn't work. It's your. You left your bag.

He says you are annoying him. That sounds right!

2. Stupid mistakes

Everyone makes these, and I'm more than sure there are tons in this book. But, as a writer, you should ensure that you proof-read your work so that there are minimal and avoidable errors.

3. Autocorrect

I'm sure quite a few of us write our stories on our phones or iPads or whatever. That's not so bad, but you just need to check it through again so that your AC wasn't up to any funny business.

Punctuation

People go wrong with this all the time. I don't even know where to start. In fact, if you have trouble with punctuation, that's something I can't fix. You may need to work on it yourself.

Grammar

Anyone who has issues with grammar will most probably be someone who doesn't speak english as their first language, and thus mixing up pronouns and whatnot.

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I'd suggest that, if SPAG is a struggle for you, that you find an editor. Again, there are lots of editors on Wattpad who will offer their services to you.

Double check your chapter(s) before you publish them, get them through the computer's spell check, and so on.

However, as a writer, you need to know that how you present your work shows how much effort you put into it and how much you value it. If you really do, try and work to get your SPAG more or less on point!

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