OMG! READ MY STORY:
The freak cluthed a towle arond here nakked boddy and shivvered in the bathrom. The hedmistres had proised to be back son, but the freak herd a lod cras in the othr room, folowed by a lou strng of curssing by the hedmistres. She gused teh hedmistres wudn’t com back as soon she hopped. She ganced at the door, tremmbling slightly, and then, grippping the towel closer, the freak creppt to the mirrorr.
Oh, wasn't that fun! Don't you want to read more?
That is my story, my pride and joy, named FREAK. I love to write it and have spent hours perfecting it. Yet... did it seem like I cared about my story?
Of course not! The spelling sucked.
The ideas behind a story are always the most important part of the story. It's sort of like you. You, no matter what you look like, no matter who you seem to be, are still important because you are you.
But imagine you're going to an interview to get a job that you really really want. Something that gives you a $100 per hour. Would you dress up in rags and see your potential employer for your first interview? You may be the best person for the job, but that doesn't matter. First impressions count. You would be tossed away before you can say, "Cheesecake."
In the same way, spelling (and grammar, but that's for another tutorial) is a way to dress up your story. Bad spelling creates an instant bad impression. If I see a work on YWS that is littered with spelling errors, my first thought is not, "Oh, this is okay, so I'm going to compliment the author about the complicated themes, then have an indepth discussion about his story." No.
The first thing that pops into my mind is, sadly enough, is, "This writer doesn't care about his story, so therefore I'm not going to waste my time with his ideas and instead focus solely on his errors." Mind you, if I've seen that the author has edited his work and corrected all the spelling errors after I look at it, then I'll be more than happy to go over with the story with him. But this never seems to happen.
It's a shame really, if you think about it. I can understand bad spelling if you are writing the work by hand, but when you write on a computer, you can always hit F7 and get a spelling check! And even if, for some reason, you can't, then you can always use YWS's spellchecker.
Bad spelling ends up being a bad thing for the both of us. We, being writers, are more interested in getting our story out than little things like editing spelling errors. On the other side, the side of us editors, we are interested in reading good stories and comment on them, but are frequently unable to read, just because of the spelling errors.
I don't care if you're a bad speller, but at least check your work! After all, if you won't even look over your work for simple spelling errors when you have all these tools available to you, then why should I bother reading your story?
Good luck...
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