Some writing tips.

Here are tips to have a better story.


When you want your character to have a thought in his/her head, use italics.
example:
I am not doing that. thought Bob.



When you want to have a new character speak use a paragraph.
Example:
" All of you worked hard today." said the team coach.

" Not to mention you won the world series!" said Bill's dad.

That's all i got for now.

Nice try, but it's still wrong.

You don't put a space after the quote when someone starts talking, and you use a comma after the thought is over, with "thought somelamenamehere" following afterwards.

Oh okay. It was late at night. Couldn't really think.

Not to mention whenever you have a quote leading into a dialogue tag (he said, she said, et cetera), you're supposed to punctuate with a comma, not a period.

So...

"All of you worked hard today," said the team coach.

It's not the first time I've seen people do that, so you really don't have to worry. Otherwise, you're right about paragraphs. (Thoughts tend to depend on the writer's style when it comes to fanfiction. Some people like using single quotes around them. Some people italicize. Some people do something else altogether. In professional writing, however, yeah, most people italicize.)

No, all of you are wrong. When you write, there is only one rule that must be obeyed without question: ACC is always right. XD

Okay, nevermind. But seriously, I do have a few tips to share, more for the creative process then anything else.

1. If you have an idea, write it down as quickly as you can before you lose it. I miss out on more ideas like that.

2. Don't give up! Rewrite your story ninety-nine times if necessary but don't dump it!

Conscience: But you've dumped, like, eighty stories-

Me: Shuttup.

3. When you're in a creative slump in the middle of a story, don't feel afraid to leave it for a while. Just remember to come back afterwards.

4. Listening to music while you write will sometimes help you come up with ideas.

5. Never tell a critic to his face that you aren't going to take his or her advice, no matter how wrong they are. Just prove him or her wrong by writing something so awesome that they are totally blown away, or ignore them. One of the two.

These are my rules for writing:

Write like hell. Finish the fic. Just write. Don't worry about the fact that Charlie now as brown instead of black instead of blonde. Just write.

Revise, edit like hell. Finish the fic. Things like a MLA Styles Handbook (not sure if that's the right name) will help if you want to be very sure you are right, as will a friend to read it and point out stuff that you have missed, being so close to the draft. In the revisions, the plot should be sensible, and the characters should be 3dimensionalised, if they were'nt so already.

1) Above all, write for yourself. If you are not writing something you would enjoy reading chances are readers will not enjoy it ether.

2) Sometimes stopping writing when you have writers block is the worst thing you can do for your story. The longer you put it off the harder it is to pick up again :P. It is better at times to just force yourself to write, it does not have to be your fanfic, but whatever you do don't stop writing everyday :3. Sooner or later (I put not put it off longer than a few days) you should go back and just write on your fic, even if you don't keep that part that 'does'nt sound right' you will be over the block ;).

3) Writers block is often just a fancy name for when we feel that our writing is not 'perfect' when we want it to be. The best thing for this is to give up on the idea that our writing has to be 'perfect', sometimes it is best to just write :3

4) Don't rewrite too much, often your writing will suffer and the story never get done if you are always redoing a story before it is done :3.

Another tip:

-the thesaurus is overrated

Nothing wrong with simple, simple words... you know exactly when to use it, and how to use it. Using a new word that "supposedly has the same meaning" may not work, because every word is different in its own way... the denotation maybe the same, but the connotation is beyond what the thesaurus is capable of...