Death's Writing Tips

[DeathSkull]

Death's Writing Tips
by
Houston Rogers
© 2010

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Introduction-

The world of writing is a thing of beauty, but the careless author can destroy the universe he has created with the help of even the simplest of errors. Bad writing is commonplace these days, mainly because nearly everyone wants to take a shot at something that, at first glance, seems very simple and easy, yet in reality is a very complicated task. As I've said before, anyone can put words on a page, but to make those words flow and grow and show the reader a beautiful, unique world... that's something else entirely.

I've taken the task of writing this short article upon my shoulders at the request of a couple fellow authors, all of whom are looking for tips and examples on how to improve their work. I'd considered the idea before when I looked at the horrible state of the Written Lore section, but I wasn't sure if anyone would even look at what I wrote. As any writer knows, knowing that people will look at your work helps to fuel your desire to write more, so here I am.

I'm going to assume that most (if not all) of our writers have a solid grasp of the English language so I won't go into all the specifics of writing, as there are books and digital guides for that. I'll provide a link to such a guide at the end of this article.

Without further ado, let's get started!

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The Basics of Writing-

Misplacement of Words and Punctuation:

Probably the biggest problem in the world of writing (outside of spelling errors) is making the things you write flow properly. The most likely culprit for causing this problem is the misplacement of the words themselves, followed by the misplacement of punctuation, such as periods and (I see a lot of these) commas, as well as parentheses.

Consider the following:

   I was a new recruit of this war at the time. I was a frontline man. I didn't give support. I just attacked. We were being transferred to the place of the attack. When we got there we moved forward to a bunker of some sort. The frontline men moved out front. So there I was.

If you couldn't tell, there are far too many periods in the aforementioned paragraph, and the wording is atrocious. This results in a horrible, sloppy looking mess that has the reader's eyes nearly bleeding.

I'm going to re-write this myself so that it'll look better. Take a look:

   I was a green recruit when the war started. They assigned me to the front lines right as I stepped out of training instead of giving me a support role, and placed me on a bus to our location of attack. Upon arrival, my fellow soldiers rushed to their positions, leaving me standing there and unsure of what to do next.

Not only have I made this look neat and not like the newest 1,000 piece puzzle to hit the market, but I've also done my best to use the proper punctuation in the right place.

Common Spelling Errors and Mistaken Identity:

Everyone makes spelling errors or mistakes one word for a similar but different word. A lot of it, in my case anyways, has to do with the writer possibly typing too fast. For others, however, it's because they simply don't care how good their spelling is, or they don't know how to spell that particular word. I could cover a lot of things under this subject alone, but I'm going to go with the ones I see the most often.

Its/It's
A fairly simple yet common error to confuse the two. 'It's' is a shortened version of 'it is' or 'it has'. See the following.
   It is a nice day today.
   It's a nice day today.

'Its' is possessive, meaning that the word is usually used to denote something that belongs to something else.
   Here is my cellphone... now where did I put its power cord?
   Its nails were as black as coal.

There/Their/They're
I see this one a lot. People just love to confuse these three words since they all sound the same.

'There' is used to mention a place that is anywhere but 'here'. This place can be in distance, time, or anything else.
   I'll stay here while you go over there to check the armory.
   There is going to be hellfire raining down on this base tonight.

'Their', much like 'its', signifies ownership.
   I think this box of ammo is theirs.
   We're meeting Team Beta at their base later.

'They're' is a shortened version of 'they are'. Pretty simple.
   They're gonna be pissed when they find out we lost the granger.
   Well, if they're not home when we arrive, I guess we'll just go on without them.

Ain't/Could Care Less
The word 'ain't' is considered to not be a word at all, but it's used by almost everyone, including writers. Generally, ain't is used as a contraction for words like: aren't, isn't, etc.
   Ain't no such thing as aliens!
   Sure ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

'Could care less' is extremely common. People usually use this to state that they don't care about a particular subject or thing at all. The fact of the matter is this: if you can care less, then you must care some. The proper way to say you don't care is that you 'couldn't care less'.
   I couldn't care less if it rains tonight.
   So what if I lost a couple quarters? I couldn't care less!

Alot/ A lot
Another common error. The former is simply an alternate way of saying 'a lot', but it's considered to be improper and poor writing. Use 'a lot' whenever you can.

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The Proper Usage of Speech and Details-

A lot of people have the tendency to make the dialogue of their characters sound very poor and robotic. Mastering the art of speech isn't really all that hard if you keep a few things in mind:

-When writing, always start a new line when someone new is speaking. Look here:
   
   "Dylan, throw me a soda.", said Peter. "Sure thing, buddy" I said, as I tossed it to him, hitting his head. "Ow" he said, "What the hell was that for?"

That's not the way to do things. If you've got details in between your dialogue and it's the same person speaking, you'll write it like this:

   "Dylan, throw me a soda, would ya?” asked Peter, raising his hand to catch the can. I did as he asked and he caught it with the grace of one who's had plenty of practice. A baseball player when he was younger, perhaps? “Thanks pal,” he said, popping the top of the can and drinking nearly half the can in one go.

Now if our main character were to speak next, I'd make a new line and it would look like this:

   "Dylan, throw me a soda, would ya?” asked Peter, raising his hand to catch the can. I did as he asked and he caught it with the grace of one who's had plenty of practice. A baseball player when he was younger, perhaps? “Thanks pal,” he said, popping the top of the can and drinking nearly half the can in one go.

   “No problem,” I replied, smiling.

Instead of like this:

   "Dylan, throw me a soda, would ya?” asked Peter, raising his hand to catch the can. I did as he asked and he caught it with the grace of one who's had plenty of practice. A baseball player when he was younger, perhaps? “Thanks pal,” he said, popping the top of the can and drinking nearly half the can in one go. “No problem,” I replied, smiling.

-Give your characters... well, some character! When writing dialogue, a lot of writers (myself included) have a tendency to make everyone sound alike. A young black man from the ghetto is not going to talk like an upper-class businessman, nor would an uneducated street girl act like a woman in the military. Know your roles and know what that person would say.

When it comes to detailing your work, you don't want to overburden your readers with fancy words. It's okay to pull out those vague, confusing tongue twisters once in a while, but keep the number low and never ever put a fancy word in the middle of a bunch of average ones. Here's a bad example of that:

   There were three things he disliked about his new job. He couldn't contact his wife. The constant fear of an enemy attack, and the food. All the food had to be shipped all the way from Omal, approximately 1 and a half light years away, so it was either in a can or flash frozen. Derek had gotten up that morning on the sunless, barren planet of Thentuuk, looked around his small, plain room, and got dressed. His only clothing was orange, and chemiluminescent in case the power failed. If the power failed it was his job to fix it, so he also carried a flashlight at all times. He left his room and went up the dimly lit, steel halls to the commons area. As he walked into the commons area, a group room with a more homely look, bright lights, entertainment, and even a greenhouse, someone shouted “Derek!” excitedly.

I'm sorry, but that word looks so awkward sitting there in the middle of that jumbled mess (that wasn't how it was originally written, of course. I made it look worse to use it as an example).

One last note before we end this: know when to make new paragraphs, and never hit your readers with a wall of text. Remember the example I used way back in the beginning of this article, when we were talking about punctuation? Well, I re-wrote it to use here:

   The war started just as I joined the military, leaving me (a fresh recruit) with the task of having to fight on the front lines with hardly any combat experience. It wasn't a task I handled alone, of course. There were a lot of men like me... a lot of good soldiers who gave their lives to save us all from the menacing, alien horde. There were so many enemy forces that there wasn't time to properly train everyone, including myself. It was a rush-rush operation, through and through.

   I remember my first day on the battlefield: we were being transferred to a rendezvous point set by our commander. From there we would launch humanity's first attack on the primitive yet deadly invaders. After our transport screeched to a halt, we all jumped out of the back of the truck and ran for the only protective structure in the vicinity: a large bunker constructed of concrete and metal. Once inside, those of us who were tasked with facing the monsters head on were sent on our way, but I was too afraid to step through the door while the other men moved out. I briefly wondered about the reasons for why I was here. I wondered about my family back home, and how they were doing. I wondered about my fellow soldiers and how we would fare in the battles to come.

   I wondered what it would be like to die.

It's very descriptive, it uses proper punctuation, and it doesn't scare the reader away. Now here's what it'd look like if I hadn't made it look nice:

   The war started just as I joined the military, leaving me (a fresh recruit) with the task of having to fight on the front lines with hardly any combat experience. It wasn't a task I handled alone, of course. There were a lot of men like me... a lot of good soldiers who gave their lives to save us all from the menacing, alien horde. There were so many enemy forces that there wasn't time to properly train everyone, including myself. It was a rush-rush operation, through and through. I remember my first day on the battlefield: we were being transferred to a rendezvous point set by our commander. From there we would launch humanity's first attack on the primitive yet deadly invaders. After our transport screeched to a halt, we all jumped out of the back of the truck and ran for the only protective structure in the vicinity: a large bunker constructed of concrete and metal. Once inside, those of us who were tasked with facing the monsters head on were sent on our way, but I was too afraid to step through the door while the other men moved out. I briefly wondered about the reasons for why I was here. I wondered about my family back home, and how they were doing. I wondered about my fellow soldiers and how we would fare in the battles to come. I wondered what it would be like to die.

Yeah, don't do that.

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Helpful Links and Programs-

Here's a great site to visit for any writer out there. You can sign up for daily emails from them:

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/

Also, see these:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe

As for programs, I highly recommend OpenOffice, which you can get here:

http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

If you don't want to use that, I'd say Microsoft Word would work just fine. Stay away from NotePad and WordPad.

Thanks go to:

Windpoison, Blazecon0, and BlackX32 for writing their stories so I could steal borrow examples for this article. Just kidding, guys. You're all great!

I hope you enjoy these tips and I hope most of you will find them pretty useful. I may edit this article later to include more content, but for now this is it.

The best of luck to all of you aspiring authors, and keep on writing!

-Death

[BlackX32]

blah good job

[A Spork]

I don't think any of his things in the "don't do this" list are things that could/should be used as a stylistic device...