Faced with a slowly, but growing ammount of people interested in Fan Fic writting in this forum, and seeing certain issues popping up as the said increase goes on, I thought I should compile a number of guidelines that should always be in a writer's mind.
Start.
Commandment 1:Grammar
Good spelling, complete sentences and proper punctuation.
Much can be extracted from the above. I will now divide it into sections for better understanding.
:: Spelling ::
Firstly, I should underline my native language isn't english. I also make my own spelling mistakes due to lack of knowledge.
However, there are things I simply cannot see as right. One of which is internet speech, do please consider not using it. Good examples of this would be something among the lines of "My berds r very kewl its gr8 lolollolololl".
When writting your fan fiction, you want to make sure the reader's eyes run smoothly through the story, and internet language is very distractful and hard to understand. Not only it breaks the momentum/pace of the story, but it makes you look sort of dumb at some points.
So write correctly grammar-wise and double-check for uncounscious mistakes.
:: Syntax ::
In other words, sentence structure.
For many writers, this doesn't seem to be of big importance. Mostly because you don't need to absorb your ideas with a sense of organization in your story when reading it. It's logical, if it was you who wrote the content, you don't need to learn it.
For a reader, however, everything is unknown. So you want to make it as clear as possible, in the correct order. Do note, though, that I am not talking about time order, but instead about syntax order.
What I mean is that you should provide the reader with sentences organized in a gramatically correct structure, in a nutshell, the classic example of Subject-Verb. By keeping this same structure all over your piece you will avoid leaving the user confused about what's really going on, now, time-wise.
:: Punctuation ::
" So he went there and he found many celebrating birds and they were all having fun but then mr. eagle came and ruined the party they said oh no there goes strawberry muffin and they escaped to the sky which was really bright and blinded them so they die "
That is basically everything you should avoid, but I will give in depth explanation.
First thing first. As soon as you start writting, remember to capitalize! Capitalize when making a new sentence, capitalize when writting proper nouns. Honestly, it cannot get more basic than this, so if you're over 5 years old, you should understand this. For those who still are having trouble realizing why should they care to capitalize, it helps identifying new paragraphs and certain nouns, besides making the whole text structure look more organized.
Talking of paragraphs, people, please use them.
You should create a paragraph everytime you're introducing a new space/time environment, a new idea or a direct speech.
Is it so hard to click on the Enter key twice? It makes the whole page cleaner and less boring to read.
Finally, punctuation itself. Ok, we're in an internet environment and with all the net speak and stuff around it is hard to forget about punctuation. However, I should underline that punctuation is one of the most important aspects of writting, wether you care about it or not.
Punctuation marks the pace of the text. Not only it helpful syntax-wise, but it can be used (and abused) to bring rythm to the action and transmit emotions that otherwise couldn't flow.
If you don't believe, check the following lines out:
- john emmas brother was very angry with his bird nonetheless they loved each other and therefore they overcame that.
- John, Emma's brother, was very angry with his bird! Nonetheless, they loved each other and therefore, they overcame that.
Even a stupid sentence can be correct with proper punctuation. Do I really need to say more?
Commandment 2:Writer's Block
Leaving the technical terms, let's approach the story structure itself.
I will once again divide this category into individual aspects so you understand it better.
:: Preparations ::
Don't just go randomly posting a thread and call it a story when you haven't even got the basics of a text ready, like introduction, main event, the ending, main characters, environment, etc.
This is more of a tip for your own self than for readers; you will write more smoothly if you start by having in mind where you're headed and how it's gonna turn out. If you just input random content everytime you write you will need to go back and erase stuff that already doesn't make sense, which obviously consists a pain in the you know where.
:: Chapter Length ::
This is really important, specially in this forum, I'd risk adding.
Writting ten lines and calling it a work should be unacceptable.
Do you know how I feel about that? I am pretty sure 90% of the people who post short chapters are doing it just to raise their post counts, and in my humble opinion, you can't get more lame than that.
People come to this section to look for a good read or leave their thoughts as a contribution for YOU to improve. By posting just to raise your post count, you are disrespecting the effort of others who work hard to improve YOUR skill, when you couldn't care less.
If this is the case, please, do have some common sense and just don't post. Post count is a number for god's sake, I mean... Whatever, it's up to you.
My personal advice, and the standards I used to follow when I was an active writer, was only considering a piece of text a chapter when a certain number of interactions were displayed. It's impossible to provide you with a concrete number of ideas/whatever dynamic values that show story progression, just let your common sense speak for you.
Not too small, not too big. Try to keep an healthy, fun balance in it.
As a last note on this topic, proofreading should always be done.
I believe you are posting a story because you want others to read it. So don't be a masoquist and be good to yourself, correct your mistakes and make others think more highly of you.
Commandment 3:Last Notes
Ok this is not really much of a commandment but there are some details I must add that don't fit anywhere.
:: Enjoy ::
This is undoubtly the most important topic in this post.
Just write if you enjoy it (or if you are a masoquist, I guess, from which you can also extract pleasure). You will uncounsciously put more effort and dedication into your work if you like what you're doing, like mother logic blatantly screams, so post count raisers are again in a disadvantage here.
:: Constructive Criticism ::
Also known as CnC/CC.
I'd also like to take advantage of the situation and throw my personal critic on this topic, and this forum.
Whatever story thread you visit here is apparently doomed to suffer from creamy goodness tsunami, many times deceivingly.
Come on people, even if you only post here for post count raising, at least make an effort to be honest. It's unfair that certain stories by certain users which are clearly better than other certain stories by certain users get both the same "Great I love that you're awesome!" type of comments.
If you don't like it, say it! No need to lie.
Fan Fiction, as part of the literature branch, is art, as much as GFX is. If you are honest and point out the mistakes in GFX, why not do it here too? And aswell as GFX, people will only improve if you are honest, so help people improve here too by pointing out the mistakes.
The writer should not feel discouraged and/or curse the day they were born or how miserable (or not) they are. You, writer, should always keep in mind that by receiving critic, you are surely to get better, and so, it's all roses in the end.
And here goes my kind of rant and guidelines for those who care.
There is a meaning for wings that cannot fly!
It's a precious memory of when you once flew in the sky.
Code Geass * AIR * Shakugan no Shana * H2O * Clannad
i follow all these yet my story has failed :( most of these are pretty basic stuff
Hence the Commandments title, it's something that must be there, even though I've seen some stories around here that skip some of these guidelines which I find essential.
Should serve as a beggining guide for people willing to begin writting too.
There is a meaning for wings that cannot fly!
It's a precious memory of when you once flew in the sky.
Code Geass * AIR * Shakugan no Shana * H2O * Clannad
I hope you don't mean me and GTLAC when you say short chapters. I don't have a huge story for it and it's so much easier to do three paragraphs.
^Thanks to Weapon X for this awesome sig!
90% of teens today would die if MySpace and Facebook had system failures and were completely destroyed. If you are one of the 10% that would be laughing, copy this and paste it into your signature.
I hope you don't mean me and GTLAC when you say short chapters. I don't have a huge story for it and it's so much easier to do three paragraphs.
Well no, my personally-oriented speech wasn't actually directed at concrete people, it's just tiny bits of issues I see at individual places.
It IS alright if you do short chapters, as long as they transmit the same concept as a bunch of adjectives and conjuctions attached to all fancy words do, the objective really is to make the reader follow a logical line of events.
There is a meaning for wings that cannot fly!
It's a precious memory of when you once flew in the sky.
Code Geass * AIR * Shakugan no Shana * H2O * Clannad
and they were all having fun but then mr. eagle came and ruined the party 
they said oh no there goes strawberry muffin and they escaped to the sky 
which was really bright and blinded them so they die 
Linear Mode
