[center]Word processors:[/center]
While I'm a bit anal about writing, I'm going to only go with the approved styles and not the proper styles in this tutorial.
First, don't even think about writing in notepad. That's for coding in and making notes. Never for actually writing a story in.
Likewise, just about any of the word processors your OS comes with are absolute shite for writing.
Take your ass over to
http://www.openoffice.org and download their program. The beta seems to be quite stable for 2.0(been writing in it for a month or three now) so download it or the stable version, then use that to write.
[center]Tenses:[/center]
If I ever see a sentence or paragraph like 'It is the end of the world and we knew it was the end' I'll stab you in the face. Keep the tenses clear. Don't mix them unless it's a speaking characteristic. An example from one of my own stories, "All you were, is a good fuck to me." As you can see, he's lapsed into two different tenses. It should have been either "All you were was a good fuck to me," or "All you are is a good fuck to me." Sometimes confusing the tenses can add a depth to a character
but never to actual writing.[center]Sentence structure:[/center]
Quick fast rules. Sentences that begin 'He picked up the bowl, wondering. He turned it over then shrugged. He threw it down.' Over and over, ad nauseum make the writing choppy and just plain annoying to read. Same with any word over and over beginning sentences. The only way that words is in poetry and even then, it's annoying in bad poetry. A better way to write that scene would be, 'He picked up the bowl, wondering. James turned it over, then shrugged, and threw it down.'
[center]***[/center]
"I am worried he isn't really acting like himself," Hermione said.
"You're right Hermione you're right,"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------- Ron stood in the dark forest afraid as ever. He hoped no one would see him here. Like every night he changed. His feet grew in size along with his arms. He grew a dog like nose and sharp claws. His clothes ripped off not able to fit anymore .He raced through the dark forest wildly. Running into a unicorn his werewolf instincts attacked the poor animal brutally. The unicorn kicked and shrieked as he ripped through his flesh. Afterwards Ron ran off leaving the poor animal dead.[center]***[/center]
Well, that scene right there is absolute shite. The girl who wrote it obviously never heard of something as useful as a word processor. That whole scene hurts my eyes even too much to correct it. Let's just take a few large swigs of vodka then continue on.
Now that we've seen what not to do(shudders), how sentences should be structured, let's look at the actual structure.
A sentence invariably starts with a capitol letter. Say an A. Let's use A. it begins a lot of my favorite compound words.
Absolute anarchy absolves attrocious authority.....
Now, let's see what's wrong with that sentences.
Hmm, alliteration, cute, but annoying.
Let's change that to-
Absolute anarchy discharges attrocious policy..... Still lots of A's but less annoying.
Now, let's see what we can do with the sentence. Well, let's fix that misspelled word. Atrocious. Better, yes?
Now, those full stops. Or periods. I prefer full stop.
In a sentence like this "You said you didn't know... or who he was?" The ellipsis in a sentence(three full stops denoting a break or absence or four indicating the end of a sentence) mean there's a word or words missing. Maybe he's afraid to admit he thinks someone's an alien or something. Who knows.
In this sentence, '"So, we're going to...," he trailed off.' As you can see, the ellipsis are followed by a comma. This means the sentence ended, but it's still part of a real sentence which ended after off.
Ellipsis can be used with every form of punctuation. Commas, full stops, exclamation marks, question marks, and so on.
So, a fully corrected sentence would be Absolute anarchy discharges the bounds of atrocious government policy...? since the sentence is actually a question, it needs an ellipsis followed by a question mark. Whoooo, everyone on the correct spelling train. All the cool kids are doing it.
Now, ellipsis can be used in three ways and still be used properly(though I absolutely despise the two latter ways)
He... did what?
He...did what?
He ... did what?
I don't know why those last two are okay. They look like absolute shite. You don't have a sentence start right after a full stop or have a space between the last word and a period, yes? So why is it proper to use an ellipsis that way?
[center]Full stops:[/center]
At the end of a sentence comes punctuation, except in poetry.
Usually, it's a full stop.
Like so.
But when writing, most people either use only one space, or common enough, none.That's gay.
Technically, the proper way is two spaces.
██Like so. I only use one, which is proper as well. I have a bad habit of hitting space twice if I stop between words writing a sentence and invariably hit space once more. Then I just use replace to replace all my "
██" with "
█".
█ and
█ are used to represent spaces.
I'm going to end this now but go ahead and post a question and I'll answer it.
(So... many... stickies! >_<)
(Updates Tu!)
