Creative Writing
I noticed very recently the quality of stories in this section have been slipping a little and perhaps its been this way for a while. In any case, to help improve your stories I have come up with a small list of some things you may need to keep in mind to produce better work. In addition, I have a neat little guide which explores commas, semi-colons and more with brief descriptions and examples.
1. Enjoy the moment. You aren't writing this piece because you want to make your friends jelly, you're writing it for your own personal benefit, to receive constructive criticism and praise from others. By posting it on this website, you are quite plainly showing off your writing abilities.
2. Take your time, you don't have to write it in one go. Take a break every once in a while if you find it difficult to write, its a hobby, not homework.
3. Describe things clearly and focus on little details, don't describe everything. – An example being a boy sitting in a class, his mind drifting from the board and to the window sill where a fly knocks against the glass and relate back to the boy, how he feels trapped, compared to: the sun was hot. The boy's tie was tight. The teacher had a solemn expression on her face. The ant was carrying some food on its back. Flies were flying around some food.
4. Paragraph your work. It needs to be easy to read and properly formatted. I get lost in text when I see a wall of text. Another thing to keep in mind is proper punctuation, every new speaker needs a new line. I'll go into detail in the grammar section.
5. Sure, you should paragraph your work. But also keep it in proportion, there's no point writing a page on the introduction or whatever and then having a tiny 5 line paragraph following it. Similarly, some writers have a tendency to drift off when writing long sentences so I would keep it to a maximum of two lines for a sentence, unless you feel confident in writing above that but also sticking with the main plot.
6. Try to be original.
7. Avoid using *was ****ing* Its basically a matter of he was running implying there wasn't an end whereas he ran says he ran and stopped. A lot easier to read and is more effective.
8. Please, do not accept character requests under any circumstances. You're going to get a lot of kiddies both spamming the thread with overpowered "japaneis" characters that will ruin your story should they be implemented.
10. Set yourself a nice and interesting title. Nobody is going to look at a piece of writing where the title is THE FEROSHUCE BEY BATTEL. Also, remember to choose the title at the end where you can base it off what you've written.
11. Avoid writing it on the WBO or whatever forum you'll be posting it on. Open a notepad, word or open-office and get writing. Jot down some points and come back to it even.. Edit it a few times by hand for practice then run a spell check, all very important things to do when posting a story.
12. Try not to make it seem as if you're talking to your readers. "He even studies at a very prestigious school for the smartest children…sorry, teenagers in the world."
13. What I think is one of the most important things to do is set a goal for yourself and plan your work carefully. It doesn't have to be on a physical sheet of paper, brainstorm in your mind maybe, but at the very least have something to aim for. What do you hope to achieve by writing this?
14. Does your writing make sense. Hm, I just said the tide is low and the moon is full and strong. Hm.
15. Check your spelling. Sheild. Its a basic rule, I before e except after c. Surely there are exceptions but thats something you should pay attention to.
16. This will not make any sense if you try to read into it: Cliched ideas are only cliche if they are cliches indeed. A non-cliche cliche idea is simply a plot. Take this at face value. It means exactly what the words say. In other words, if you have a cliche idea, but it is executed in an unorthodox way, then it is not cliche. -Temporal
17. Try not to be repetitive. Avoid continuous use of and, then and other conjunctions and try to, if appropriate use words like however instead of but. Don't try to use two phrases or words in the same paragraphs or so, reading the harsh sun a couple of times, or the harsh sun and sentences beneath it the harsh trek isn't very appealing.
18. At the same time, repetition can actually be quite useful. Say for example, it's a forest story and you hear once the cry of a baby. After a while, you hear it again. This is a very powerful tool in writing, but don't go saying the baby cried every minute.
That concludes our pointers section. Now lets move on to grammar. Firstly, I'll be addressing issues in current writing and providing the correct use.
1. “It’s still 10 o’ clock!†he thought. “Great!†If it's a thought, it doesn't need punctuation.
Grammar List:
1. Comma – A comma in English is used to create slight pauses. Commas are also needed in things like lists: The boy likes red, green, blue, black, and purple. We put a comma before the and because by English rules an exception is made when it is a list of things, compared to he packed his bag, walked up to the bus and made his way to the back seat. Other uses of the comma is to seperate speech, which I will go into more detail in the punctuation part.
2. Period – A period or full stop is used to end a sentence. They can also be used in abbreviations, Mr. etc. A period represents a full pause, longer than a comma. When a period finishes a sentence, the next sentence will start with a capital letter.
3. Apostrophe – These are used to abbreviate two words like do not into don't, and also to show possession. It's is one of the only exceptions to not having an apostrophe when referring to possession, as it's means it is and its is its bag. If the owner is plural then the apostrophe is added after the S, an example being the groups' trophy, as it belongs to the entire group. In words where they end with S, the apostrophe is sometimes combined and simply put after the s, Bars' hairdryer. (Bars because I have name-thinking-of-block.)
4. Quotation Marks – The " and " which we use to separate dialogue from text. Each new speaker must have a new line and it must be separated using commas. For example:
“Amazing,†he exclaimed, “it must've taken a while to make that!â€
“Yes, but it's still very glitchy,†she replied.
Verb: Verbs are action words. They are words like sit, run, think. You must have a verb in your sentence to make it whole.
Adjective: Describing words that describe the word following it. A green car. A spotted leopard. These add sparkle to your story. Include a wide range of good adjectives, but don't go overboard with the big, white, blue, amazing, sparkling boat.
Writing Techniques
A lot of us find it difficult at times to get started writing your story. This section hopes to address that with a list of great writing techniques below:
Don't worry about the quality of your first sentence. Get started with your ideas and come back to it later. Don't spend too long pondering on any one sentence or paragraph, especially if there is a time limit. Focus on one point and branch off that one.
Now that you have your sentence, take the main idea from the last one and focus on that if you aren't able to continue the next.
Although fairly obvious, read some decent books to get an idea of the writing styles of some well known authors. Don't copy their paragraphs word for word, but take some of their sentence structure, some vocabulary etc. and get down to writing!
I will be updating this thread with complete pieces of writing as examples. Leave comments, suggestions and feedback in the comments below. Hopefully this has helped you improve your work. I will be fixing this up by adding more colour and hopefully making it easier and more pleasant to read. Stay tuned!
I noticed very recently the quality of stories in this section have been slipping a little and perhaps its been this way for a while. In any case, to help improve your stories I have come up with a small list of some things you may need to keep in mind to produce better work. In addition, I have a neat little guide which explores commas, semi-colons and more with brief descriptions and examples.
1. Enjoy the moment. You aren't writing this piece because you want to make your friends jelly, you're writing it for your own personal benefit, to receive constructive criticism and praise from others. By posting it on this website, you are quite plainly showing off your writing abilities.
2. Take your time, you don't have to write it in one go. Take a break every once in a while if you find it difficult to write, its a hobby, not homework.
3. Describe things clearly and focus on little details, don't describe everything. – An example being a boy sitting in a class, his mind drifting from the board and to the window sill where a fly knocks against the glass and relate back to the boy, how he feels trapped, compared to: the sun was hot. The boy's tie was tight. The teacher had a solemn expression on her face. The ant was carrying some food on its back. Flies were flying around some food.
4. Paragraph your work. It needs to be easy to read and properly formatted. I get lost in text when I see a wall of text. Another thing to keep in mind is proper punctuation, every new speaker needs a new line. I'll go into detail in the grammar section.
5. Sure, you should paragraph your work. But also keep it in proportion, there's no point writing a page on the introduction or whatever and then having a tiny 5 line paragraph following it. Similarly, some writers have a tendency to drift off when writing long sentences so I would keep it to a maximum of two lines for a sentence, unless you feel confident in writing above that but also sticking with the main plot.
6. Try to be original.
Lecture: (Click to View)
7. Avoid using *was ****ing* Its basically a matter of he was running implying there wasn't an end whereas he ran says he ran and stopped. A lot easier to read and is more effective.
8. Please, do not accept character requests under any circumstances. You're going to get a lot of kiddies both spamming the thread with overpowered "japaneis" characters that will ruin your story should they be implemented.
10. Set yourself a nice and interesting title. Nobody is going to look at a piece of writing where the title is THE FEROSHUCE BEY BATTEL. Also, remember to choose the title at the end where you can base it off what you've written.
11. Avoid writing it on the WBO or whatever forum you'll be posting it on. Open a notepad, word or open-office and get writing. Jot down some points and come back to it even.. Edit it a few times by hand for practice then run a spell check, all very important things to do when posting a story.
12. Try not to make it seem as if you're talking to your readers. "He even studies at a very prestigious school for the smartest children…sorry, teenagers in the world."
13. What I think is one of the most important things to do is set a goal for yourself and plan your work carefully. It doesn't have to be on a physical sheet of paper, brainstorm in your mind maybe, but at the very least have something to aim for. What do you hope to achieve by writing this?
14. Does your writing make sense. Hm, I just said the tide is low and the moon is full and strong. Hm.
15. Check your spelling. Sheild. Its a basic rule, I before e except after c. Surely there are exceptions but thats something you should pay attention to.
16. This will not make any sense if you try to read into it: Cliched ideas are only cliche if they are cliches indeed. A non-cliche cliche idea is simply a plot. Take this at face value. It means exactly what the words say. In other words, if you have a cliche idea, but it is executed in an unorthodox way, then it is not cliche. -Temporal
17. Try not to be repetitive. Avoid continuous use of and, then and other conjunctions and try to, if appropriate use words like however instead of but. Don't try to use two phrases or words in the same paragraphs or so, reading the harsh sun a couple of times, or the harsh sun and sentences beneath it the harsh trek isn't very appealing.
18. At the same time, repetition can actually be quite useful. Say for example, it's a forest story and you hear once the cry of a baby. After a while, you hear it again. This is a very powerful tool in writing, but don't go saying the baby cried every minute.
That concludes our pointers section. Now lets move on to grammar. Firstly, I'll be addressing issues in current writing and providing the correct use.
1. “It’s still 10 o’ clock!†he thought. “Great!†If it's a thought, it doesn't need punctuation.
Grammar List:
1. Comma – A comma in English is used to create slight pauses. Commas are also needed in things like lists: The boy likes red, green, blue, black, and purple. We put a comma before the and because by English rules an exception is made when it is a list of things, compared to he packed his bag, walked up to the bus and made his way to the back seat. Other uses of the comma is to seperate speech, which I will go into more detail in the punctuation part.
2. Period – A period or full stop is used to end a sentence. They can also be used in abbreviations, Mr. etc. A period represents a full pause, longer than a comma. When a period finishes a sentence, the next sentence will start with a capital letter.
3. Apostrophe – These are used to abbreviate two words like do not into don't, and also to show possession. It's is one of the only exceptions to not having an apostrophe when referring to possession, as it's means it is and its is its bag. If the owner is plural then the apostrophe is added after the S, an example being the groups' trophy, as it belongs to the entire group. In words where they end with S, the apostrophe is sometimes combined and simply put after the s, Bars' hairdryer. (Bars because I have name-thinking-of-block.)
4. Quotation Marks – The " and " which we use to separate dialogue from text. Each new speaker must have a new line and it must be separated using commas. For example:
“Amazing,†he exclaimed, “it must've taken a while to make that!â€
“Yes, but it's still very glitchy,†she replied.
Verb: Verbs are action words. They are words like sit, run, think. You must have a verb in your sentence to make it whole.
Adjective: Describing words that describe the word following it. A green car. A spotted leopard. These add sparkle to your story. Include a wide range of good adjectives, but don't go overboard with the big, white, blue, amazing, sparkling boat.
Writing Techniques
A lot of us find it difficult at times to get started writing your story. This section hopes to address that with a list of great writing techniques below:
Don't worry about the quality of your first sentence. Get started with your ideas and come back to it later. Don't spend too long pondering on any one sentence or paragraph, especially if there is a time limit. Focus on one point and branch off that one.
Now that you have your sentence, take the main idea from the last one and focus on that if you aren't able to continue the next.
Although fairly obvious, read some decent books to get an idea of the writing styles of some well known authors. Don't copy their paragraphs word for word, but take some of their sentence structure, some vocabulary etc. and get down to writing!
I will be updating this thread with complete pieces of writing as examples. Leave comments, suggestions and feedback in the comments below. Hopefully this has helped you improve your work. I will be fixing this up by adding more colour and hopefully making it easier and more pleasant to read. Stay tuned!
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