beginner/intermediate writing tips pt 2
so since my last one got so much love here’s pt 2! god im gonna kill myself this got deleted like three times
first of all, make sure your writing (this one mostly applies to fiction) is an even balance of dialogue and action. now there are exceptions to this rule. for example, if your character is alone with no one to talk to, you want more action than dialogue. i suggest as a replacement for dialogue you share the characters inner thoughts. not in the italic way like “Wow this sucks, she thought.” but more in a. “She thought that this sucked.” (bad example but-). but if there are two characters in the setting then i would suggest a nice even balance of dialogue and action like; “He walked over to the table, ‘And what do you mean by that?’”
don’t use dividers in your works please. it’s just. not ethical? i don’t know what i dislike about them they just seem... unprofessional? of course, use them if your going for stylistic writing.
VOCABULARY IS KEY. i know i said this in my last post (briefly) but even if you’re not a natural vocabulist (is that a word? edit: it is, indeed, a word) you can pick up vocabulary super easily! reading a book is a good way to do this, or even listening to documentaries.
don’t overuse pronouns. you know when people are just like “she went to [place]. she did [thing]. she...” that’s overusing pronouns. try to get a proper noun in there here and there. and ALWAYS start your work with a proper noun. if you go into introducing the character with “She is...” that’s just confusing. unless, again, you want to be stylistic.
make sure you have at least a hazy idea of the plot you want to follow when you go into writing your story. of course, some things may change along the way, that’s bound to happen. but you want to make sure you keep your readers captivated rather than confused. this is especially for if you update your work every day/week/month.
numbers! try not to have them as 10 and more as ten. it just makes the story look less choppy. i promise you that 10:30 your about to write looks much better as ten-thirty.
this is like basics 101 but please use periods quite often. here’s a little lesson that’s kind of a complex (ha) one; complex sentence- “independent clause (a sentence that can stand on its own), conjuncture (a connecting word such as and, but, because, which, etc.) dependent clause (a sentence that depends on the independent clause.) simple sentence- independent clause compound sentence- ‘independent clause’, conjucture ‘independent clause’ now be careful with compound sentences; sometimes they can be deceiving. they have to be two independent clauses that relate to eachother. if they don’t relate to eachother, there should be a period in between. you should also use a period after you use a complex, simple, or compound sentence (i almost forgot to add this in lmao that writing really took it out of me)
i guess that’s it for now. reblog and drop a like if you’d like more little lessons from moi. uh by the way im just a second year highschool student so some of these things may be wrong but just uh give me a bit of leeway. also i plan to do another thing on stylistic writing since i bring it up so often so stay tuned for that