Yugioh Card Maker Forum

DO’s

Space between each paragraph and half-paragraph of story. If it is spaced, it’s easier for the readers to well…read.

Know your punctuation. Periods, commas, colons, semicolons. You know, those things.

Use a word processor to type your stories. You wouldn’t believe how many typos and etc I’ve seen that easily could have been avoided by a simple highlight from Micro Word (Don’t have Micro Word? Try Abiword. It’s free and simple to use. http://www.abisource.com/)

Do proofread. PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD. Remember, your Word Processor is a program, not an editor. If possible, try and get a beta reader for your stories.

Write short and sweet sentences. It’s not a crime to write short sentences, as long as they transvey what they are trying to transvey.

Avoid run-on’s. Run on’s are the worst. “I went to the store with Jack and Bob and we went to try and go for the last time today but we went out to the race track where Bob lost thirty dollars on the race horse with the blue sash and we…” No, don’t do this >.<

Remember to differentiate between your dialogue and your internal dialogues. It really gets hard to tell what’s what in some cases. So remember to tell your internal dialogue apart from your regular (italicizing your internal, or parenthesis, etc etc…)

DON’T DO’s

Don’t use chatspeak. For the love of god, PLEASE DON’T USE THIS. This and smileys, they tend to drive people to murder >.<

Don’t write your fic in a script format. Script format stories are not stories, they are scripts. At least TRY and use quotation marks, people.

Don’t load up on details. "Detail whoring" is commonplace in most fiction. It’s when you describe way too much and leave the reader confused and bored out of their wits. Tell people the important things with in-between for some minor, yet captivating details. Rest assured, I’m pretty sure that some people don’t want to read what color hair the character has if you have seen him for about 200+ episodes. I should know the best on this one; I was one at one time.

Don’t use archaic speak or speech that is just plain awkward: Use your thesaurus wisely. Things like “He nictitated at him dilatory.” Seriously, those big words just make your readers confused, not impressed.

Don’t try and make your chapters full-length episodes. Does someone REALLY want to read that much in one sitting? Make your chapters flow well without being drawn out and wordy. Make them relatively like book chapters. This doesn’t mean you can’t write long chapters, but make sure there is a lot in there that can’t be taken to say…2 chapters instead.

While I’m at it, let’s just go onto writing simple sentences.

This is an example of a sentence(s) that could have been something.


Short and sweet, but not very exciting. Let’s try…


Now see, by adding a specific type of dog type and adding a bit more details, I made the sentence much more interesting.

But this doesn’t mean you do this with every sentence. Not every one needs to be “amplified” as such. Learn how to do this effectively, and you will be able to write descriptive passages much more effectively.

Dialogue is also another problem that plagues fic writers I see. They don’t seem to know HOW to do it. So let’s just look at an example of such.

There are effectively 3 ways authors write dialogue:




First one is for single dialogue.

Second one isn’t used that much, but if you can find a way to use it, do it. Just don’t use it as much as you would one or maybe three.

Third one is used as much as one in writing. It is used to separate 2 lines of dialogue. You can also use this method to space between dialogue (just replace the period at the end of “he said” in that example and add a comma.)

Oh yes, and there is another “Don’t Do” right here.

“Said” is the bane of a fic writer’s existences (Well, one of them at least.). It is okay to use “say” maybe once in a while to tell who is talking (afterwards, it should not be used again since we established who is speaking already). But this doesn’t mean you have to find replacement words for it, that’s just as bad.

Here, take these examples.

Typical fiction writer:


No, don’t do that. It’s just plain annoying. Once you have established who is talking, you have no need for the word “said” again. In fact, you don’t even need said half the time. Most of the time you can tell who is talking just by actions beforehand.

Also, don’t try and beware of those archaic words. “*****” and “ejaculated” are much different now than what they meant back then >.>

Any more questions or any other things that you may need to contemplate can be found at this site, a much better guide than this if I do say so myself.

ADDITION 1: People in your fics and why you should ask permission.

Personally? I never found the fun in adding people to fan-fics. Actually, I think that's better when you draw it in comic form (well, Horoko himself makes comics to publish his fan fic ). Now I know that a lot of you DO like adding people in your fan fics, so let me give you a little advice, okay?

ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO ASK PERMISSION BEFORE INCLUDING A PERSON OR PERSONS IN YOUR FAN FICTION.

Unless you know the person, the person won't mind, or you are inclusive, DON'T add someone in there "just because you can."

ADDITION 2: "Different language" versions of fics.

Running your fic through an online translator does not make you cool. If people who actually understand the language take a gander at these, they won't understand them. C'mon, English if you read and write it, just use that.