Welcome to Writing Tips, where I place my subjective opinion with sometimes objective facts. Whether you're writing a fan fiction with ocs or your story with copyrighted characters, tips and tricks are always helpful.
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When writing a story, you have to remember the audience. Now, I won't be talking about the specific genres or types of people who read work, I'm going to be talking about the general public and the minimum effort expected in writing.
One quote from Ponder Sprocket that I like is about dreams, you're the character when you're dreaming, but when you're awake, you're the audience. You slowly bring logic into the story you're remembering and weaving other ideas into it. She said that the reader will treat your work the same way, they'll take the information they already have and apply it to the scene.
Introducing the basics:
When you start a story, you can't have it in your head that the audience knows the basics unless it's fan fiction. We're talking about original stories today, not fan fiction. I've already covered that subject.
You can't introduce character names through chapter names or barely mention things and expect the reader to know exactly what's going on. They should not need to come to you or make a google search because you can't be bothered to make a small sentence that says what something is or who someone is.
"Being a sky wing, I can run fast," what's a sky wing? The name of the track team?
"She's a night wing, so she can see the future," what's a night wing? A name for a clairvoyant?
"Oh, but you can google search these two and find out they're dragons from the Wings of Fire series". I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO RESEARCH ON SOMEONE ELSE'S STORY TO UNDERSTAND YOUR "ORIGINAL" WORK. Also, sky wings can be floating boards you attach to boats to feel like you're surfing. Wow, that implies the character is a floating board, good job, you moron.
"Under the sparkleberry tree," you're... you're not even trying at this point. Good job buddy, you won the gold star for not giving a shit about your audience.
Before you use a term or character name, you have to tell the reader a bit about them. When it's a secret, like who someone is, don't talk about it casually without someone questioning it.
"Good night Luna, I'll see you tomorrow." Who the hell is Luna?
"Luna said to get groceries from the market," no seriously, who is she? Your mom? Your sister? Your friend?
"It's a secret to who Luna is," then stop using her name so casually like we know who she is.
It's like a game, if you give the player no instructions, they're going to do whatever they want. If you tell them they need to complete a task and give them no hints on how then they're going to either ignore it or do it their way. And if the game crashes because they did it wrong, that's your fault.
"I just slammed myself against everything waiting for the button prompt to show up, which is... how people don't play games."
