I was bored and had this empty page opened up on Microsoft Word, so I splurged writing tips all over it. I then organised them into sections. Enjoy.
Prose Craft:
-> Adverbs (words that describe an action, eg. quickly, happily, suddenly, loudly, etc.) are bad. If you find yourself using lots of these, go back and delete every single one until you can recognise when is and isn’t a good time to use them.
As a rule of thumb, try to avoid using more than two adverbs per every 1000 words you write.
-> All else being equal, if you have to decide between a common word and an unusual word, always use the common word. Only use more complicated, longer, or esoteric words in situations where it conveys vital additional information.
-> Description is boring. Don’t write too much of it.
Action (ie. things happening; it doesn’t have to be fighting) is more interesting. Write more of that.
-> Show don’t tell.
What this means is: don’t describe important things in narration, show it by things happening.
Eg. Don’t describe your character as ‘she was a badass,’ write a scene in which she kills five men whilst armed with nothing but a lukewarm mug of tea and a chocolate bar.
-> Be assertive in your writing. Get rid of phrases like ‘sort of,’ ‘kind of,’ and ‘rather.’
The sword your character discovers in a hidden panel in his new bedroom is not ‘sort of’ big. It is a big sword. And the lady demonspawn that teleports into said bedroom in order to steal the sword is not ‘rather’ beautiful, she is beautiful. And your character is not ‘kind of’ attracted to her, he is attracted to her.
-> Your first line has to be fascinating and attention grabbing. The reader should be thinking, ‘How odd! I wonder what that means/what is going to happen next.’
As description is boring, it’s usually best not to open with description.
Dialogue:
-> ‘Said’ is your new favourite word. Use it. Whilst it’s acceptable to occasionally use an alternative (eg. shouted, whispered, giggled, etc.), for the most part you should be using ‘said.’
-> People don’t always say exactly what they mean, so don’t have your characters always saying exactly what they mean.
-> Different characters use different words. Because not everyone favours the exact same language: some people say ‘awesome’, others ‘wicked,’ some ‘excellent’, and so on. This should apply to your characters as well. Make sure you know which words your characters favour.
Characterisation:
-> The events of the story should change your character.
Have an internal and external conflict for your character to resolve, and have them be related, so that the solving of the external conflict helps resolve the internal one also, completing the character arc.
Eg. Bob has a crippling fear of water that has haunted him his entire life. We see in the first chapter how he struggles to function in everyday life: panicking whenever he hears a tap running, not being able to bath, and gagging at the thought of drinking water. (‘Why would I want to drink it? Fish poop in it!’) In the next chapter, evil tuna invade the world. As part of his epic three-book adventure in saving the world, Bob has to go scuba diving into the tuna’s watery empire, and this allows him to conquer his fear of water. Bob ends the story as a changed man.
-> No one cares what colour eyes your character has. Stop telling us.
-> Your main character needs to have flaws. Flaws make characters interesting.
Give them anger issues, make them secretly jealous, make them a bigot, make them a compulsive liar, give them severe trust issues — whatever, just don’t make them flawless, because that won’t ring true to your readers. No one is perfect. (Except me.)
-> Your character should do things, rather than just react to things. Characters that do things are interesting; characters that only react to things tend to be boring.
This is why Joker is more interesting than Batman.
Plot:
-> Every single scene must have conflict in it. Conflict is where your character wants something, and something is stopping him or her from having it.
This can be your character wanting to save the world, and being stopped by an evil wizard who wants to destroy it for some reason; or it could be your character lusting after a cute guy in her class, but he only has eyes for your character’s best-friend; or it could be your character wanting to win the football championship, but the other team are just, like, so good.
-> Your story needs a beginning/middle/end.
On a basic level, this can be as simple as: Your character is living her life normally (this is the beginning), then something happens to throw her life out of whack, and many entertaining hijinks occur due to this (middle), until the initial bad thing has been resolved in some way, resulting in life being even better than before for your character (end).
Of course, it doesn’t need to follow that exact pattern. What’s important is having some sort of conflict changing your character’s life — marking the start of the middle — and the eventual resolution of this conflict — this is the climax and marks the end of the middle, and the beginning of the end, which will involve tying up loose ends.
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