The Anti-Guide

How do you try to improve your writing?

I try to avoid old, stupid things.	17.5%	[ 2292 ]
I add new things.	14.9%	[ 1951 ]
A combination of both (if one more than the other, pick it).	67.6%	[ 8852 ]
Total Votes:			[ 13095 ]

[RubyRay]

hero/ines almost always have a tragic or glorious past. you must also make sure that they have some kind of hidden, cursed weakness that not even they can comtrol or change. this causes the reader to see your hero/ine as an amazing idol, but also makes them realize that they are not perfect. this sets the reader up for when your hero/ine gets in a deadly situation. the readers become nervous because they know that due to that weakness, the hero/ine MAY die. it keeps them reading wink

[Charlie_The_Bad]

But your hero/ine must always win every fight they get into. Retreating is for evil people. In fact, it's better if the hero/ine never even gets a single scratch on their flawless body, because that would imply that they're imperfect. Just because the bad guy can kill thousands of battle-hardened veterans with a flick of his wrist doesn't mean that your teenage hero/ine can't beat him with angst.

[Tavreynya]

Clumsy heroes are the best. Especially when they suddenly and mysteriously lose their clumsiness either a) at some point in the middle of the story (award yourself 10 points), or b) right before facing their archnemesis (award yourself 10 gazillion points). Remember, characters with weaknesses are good, as long as these weaknesses don't actually inconvenience them.

You've probably heard it said that you should know everything about your character. So once you do know everything, that's a stockpile of knowledge that no one else has! Show off! Mention that the guy in the fedora who gets gunned down three pages later likes lime jell-o, that your main's best friend has a deep-seated abhorrence for striped socks, and every character's blood type. Blood types and shoe sizes are so relevant, and your readers will adore you for all the pains you took in creating all these characters. You needn't bother giving them unique personalities after all that.

[Morizawa]

Tavreynya

Clumsy heroes are the best. Especially when they suddenly and mysteriously lose their clumsiness either a) at some point in the middle of the story (award yourself 10 points), or b) right before facing their archnemesis (award yourself 10 gazillion points). Remember, characters with weaknesses are good, as long as these weaknesses don't actually inconvenience them.

You've probably heard it said that you should know everything about your character. So once you do know everything, that's a stockpile of knowledge that no one else has! Show off! Mention that the guy in the fedora who gets gunned down three pages later likes lime jell-o, that your main's best friend has a deep-seated abhorrence for striped socks, and every character's blood type. Blood types and shoe sizes are so relevant, and your readers will adore you for all the pains you took in creating all these characters. You needn't bother giving them unique personalities after all that.

(Actually on a side note, clumsy heroes who are clumsy until fights shows that they know when to get serious, there are many ways to interpret clumsy heroes, one of which is as you said, the other is that it makes them seem more realistic that they would know when to get serious, and the other is that it shows they aren't complete idiots which would make them more realistic...)

[x_haphazard_x]

Morizawa

Tavreynya

Clumsy heroes are the best. Especially when they suddenly and mysteriously lose their clumsiness either a) at some point in the middle of the story (award yourself 10 points), or b) right before facing their archnemesis (award yourself 10 gazillion points). Remember, characters with weaknesses are good, as long as these weaknesses don't actually inconvenience them.

You've probably heard it said that you should know everything about your character. So once you do know everything, that's a stockpile of knowledge that no one else has! Show off! Mention that the guy in the fedora who gets gunned down three pages later likes lime jell-o, that your main's best friend has a deep-seated abhorrence for striped socks, and every character's blood type. Blood types and shoe sizes are so relevant, and your readers will adore you for all the pains you took in creating all these characters. You needn't bother giving them unique personalities after all that.

(Actually on a side note, clumsy heroes who are clumsy until fights shows that they know when to get serious, there are many ways to interpret clumsy heroes, one of which is as you said, the other is that it makes them seem more realistic that they would know when to get serious, and the other is that it shows they aren't complete idiots which would make them more realistic...)

Whh... what? I have a headache now...

[hecate-athena]

I get it xp .

[Morizawa]

x_haphazard_x

Morizawa

Tavreynya

Clumsy heroes are the best. Especially when they suddenly and mysteriously lose their clumsiness either a) at some point in the middle of the story (award yourself 10 points), or b) right before facing their archnemesis (award yourself 10 gazillion points). Remember, characters with weaknesses are good, as long as these weaknesses don't actually inconvenience them.

You've probably heard it said that you should know everything about your character. So once you do know everything, that's a stockpile of knowledge that no one else has! Show off! Mention that the guy in the fedora who gets gunned down three pages later likes lime jell-o, that your main's best friend has a deep-seated abhorrence for striped socks, and every character's blood type. Blood types and shoe sizes are so relevant, and your readers will adore you for all the pains you took in creating all these characters. You needn't bother giving them unique personalities after all that.

(Actually on a side note, clumsy heroes who are clumsy until fights shows that they know when to get serious, there are many ways to interpret clumsy heroes, one of which is as you said, the other is that it makes them seem more realistic that they would know when to get serious, and the other is that it shows they aren't complete idiots which would make them more realistic...)

Whh... what? I have a headache now...

Okay...let's take vash the stampede(not sure how to spell that XD) for example. He is a complete clutsy clumsy idiot when he is around the two girls and other people always giving off a calm and soothing presence. Now when he is in fights he knows to get serious and can do many things that require huge amounts of skill. Now lets take that out of the equation and we end up with Vash+clumsyness-skill=Vash dieing in the first episode. Meaning that if clumsyness is part of the equation, it's better if they aren't as clumsy when fighting. After all, if you screw around in a gunfight(or any fight for that matter where your life or someone else's life is on the line) you or them will end up dead.


A simulation of this put into vash's gunfights would be as below


Vash pulls out his gun, he begins charging towards his opponent. However, his opponent had thrown an explosive in vash's direction and caused large amount of rocks to fly at vash. Vash was fixing to get away from the rocks when he tripped and was squashed by the large boulders.

---The end---

[x_haphazard_x]

Uhh, thanks. I think I kinda understand now. The realism comes in because if he wasn't serious when fighting, he'd already be dead before the first episode began, right? So him not being clumsy makes the series possible, and also allows him to be not-dead, and not being clumsy adds to the realism to make him realistically not-dead.

[Morizawa]

x_haphazard_x

Uhh, thanks. I think I kinda understand now. The realism comes in because if he wasn't serious when fighting, he'd already be dead before the first episode began, right? So him not being clumsy makes the series possible, and also allows him to be not-dead, and not being clumsy adds to the realism to make him realistically not-dead.

Exactly. Clumsyness makes a person seem realistic and kind as a hero but in fights it would be retarded if he was clumsy. No person in real life that is that clumsy would be clumsy in a fight...I'm sorry but that just doesn't happen.

[x_haphazard_x]

Morizawa

x_haphazard_x

Uhh, thanks. I think I kinda understand now. The realism comes in because if he wasn't serious when fighting, he'd already be dead before the first episode began, right? So him not being clumsy makes the series possible, and also allows him to be not-dead, and not being clumsy adds to the realism to make him realistically not-dead.

Exactly. Clumsyness makes a person seem realistic and kind as a hero but in fights it would be retarded if he was clumsy. No person in real life that is that clumsy would be clumsy in a fight...I'm sorry but that just doesn't happen.

Woah, it's like a paradox, or... something. Excuse me while my head explodes.

KAPOWW!!!!!!!111

... doei... xp

[Morizawa]

It's not a paradox...it is very logical. When a person actually gets to the point of comeing to blows, they are pissed and focused on kicking the crap out of their rival/enemy, they aren't going to be doing crap like "Oops i tripped on my shoe laces and i don't even have shoe laces, ahyuck! *bang* *brainmatter splatters onto the walls*"

[Lord_of_the_Funk]

if one of your characters is mising a character flaw....make him/her a werewolf!1!1!1!1!11111


because nolthiing is koooooolllller then a werewolf
werewolfs are a perfect solution to any perfect character because they automaticly give them deapth a a weekness and something extra to wine about, of cores when they are in their human form they must be sweat and nice and quiet becuase it contrastes with their wolf self!!!!! also they must agast more then anyother character in your story about how they hurt/killed/mamed/marked their teretory on there lover/best firend/room mate/ sibling.
yet since werewolfs are so origonal and so koooooollllll they must fall in love....if no other character does they must....and they must fall in love with the werewolf hunter who were's a steel and black lether battle bra/thong combo. just sinply ignore the fact that if you were a werewolf the last person you would fall in love with was some one who hunted you for a living...honestly

[Morizawa]

Lord_of_the_Funk

if one of your characters is mising a character flaw....make him/her a werewolf!1!1!1!1!11111


because nolthiing is koooooolllller then a werewolf
werewolfs are a perfect solution to any perfect character because they automaticly give them deapth a a weekness and something extra to wine about, of cores when they are in their human form they must be sweat and nice and quiet becuase it contrastes with their wolf self!!!!! also they must agast more then anyother character in your story about how they hurt/killed/mamed/marked their teretory on there lover/best firend/room mate/ sibling.
yet since werewolfs are so origonal and so koooooollllll they must fall in love....if no other character does they must....and they must fall in love with the werewolf hunter who were's a steel and black lether battle bra/thong combo. just sinply ignore the fact that if you were a werewolf the last person you would fall in love with was some one who hunted you for a living...honestly

(just an off topic note incase anyone is interested. Werewolves originally came into play in europe and mainly in the area around france i believe...Basically wolves came to be viewed as evil because of the roman catholic church, how or why I am unsure of but it was the church that gave them the bad reputation. After that people started accusing other people of being werewolves. One case was a hermit who was accused of having sexual relations with wolves(blegh!), he was put to trial i think and burned at the stake(those two things i am unsure of though, it has been a while since i read about it). Basically they came into being because of people who were mentally unstable and thought they were werewolves, what they did was they would wear wolf fur and (i think it was)drink some strange substance that caused them to go mad,(there was typically some man in decked out in black involved in that somewhere, i think he was called the lord of the forest) from then on they were werewolves and typically they were cannibals. There was one case of a 'werewolf' who was a tailor and had lured kids into his clothes shop, wherein he would eat them and hide their bones(among other...things) in barrels in his cellar. That was just some information on the actual werewolves if anyone was interested)

You must always always make sure to take some element from an anime and incorporate it into your story and claim it as your own original idea, ie, alchemy from full metal alchemist. Even though it's your word against copyrights, everyone knows that those bastards in japan travelled into the future to steal your idea and then went back to their time to make it the entire basis of their series/franchise.

[Unhinge]

If you have a wizard school in your book. Please, I beg of you! Make it a centimetre away from being identical to Hogwarts. You'll be awarded literary awards till your thirty.

[radioactive alchemist]

It's official!

Okay, I finally started compiling my "Guide to the Anti-Guide."

The first page is done, and I already have the following categories (in alphabetical order):

Animals
Character Appearances
Character Names
Characters in General
Conflicts
Elements of Fantasy
Familiars and Sidekicks
General Plot Elements
General Tips
Good vs. Evil
Grammar and Style
Japanese Influence
Main Character
Outside of writing
Races
Relationships and Sex
Setting


Note again, this is just with the first page. And some suggestions fall into more than one category. Hooray for RoughDraft and its tabbed documents. Without it I wouldn't think twice about tackling this monster.

I'll keep you guys posted on my progress, but it's not going on the web anywhere until I catch up to the end. After that, I'll attempt to update it once a week.