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 ]

[Happy Rogue]

Also all guns, grenade launchers and other projectile weapons have built in homing beacons. That way they will never miss their intended target and will never be able to harm innocent civilians. Even if said innocent civilian had been standing right next to the person that the hero just blew up, they still wouldn't sustain even a single scratch from the shrapnel and other byproducts of an explosion.

[Jasper Riddle]

stixie

Also all guns, grenade launchers and other projectile weapons have built in homing beacons. That way they will never miss their intended target and will never be able to harm innocent civilians. Even if said innocent civilian had been standing right next to the person that the hero just blew up, they still wouldn't sustain even a single scratch from the shrapnel and other byproducts of an explosion.

And when a person gets blown up, all that remains is a scorch mark. No blood, no body parts. Just a scorch mark. Less to clean up.

[JessieWings]

Jessie the Awesome says:
All stories need sequels. It doesn't matter if at the end of your story there's the end of the universe--somehow, the universe is saved (by your hero, naturally), and you can write a sequel! biggrin Then, of course, your sequel needs a sequel, and this will invariably lead to a neverending series, which is GOOD. Especially when every story (or better yet--every chapter!) contradicts the last. Everyone'll love you for it, man! If your hero dies in the course of the series, you can either make him immortal, resurrect him, make the series suddenly about his son/children/twin/cousin/seventeenth cousin once removed/"successor" or make it suddenly that it was just the bad guy impersonating him! OMG PLOT TWIST!!! surprised

[Clare_N]

stixie

Also all guns, grenade launchers and other projectile weapons have built in homing beacons. That way they will never miss their intended target and will never be able to harm innocent civilians. Even if said innocent civilian had been standing right next to the person that the hero just blew up, they still wouldn't sustain even a single scratch from the shrapnel and other byproducts of an explosion.

Talking of blowing things up, if you want to go the whole hog and destroy a whole city, have the villian steal a nuclear weapon and do it. Nuclear weapons are great if you want to kill lots of people as quickly as possible. And who cares about little details such as how your villian is going to get hold of one? It's your story and you can put whatever you want in it.

[Rid V]

A quick word on zombies: zombies are always reanimated corpses doing the bidding of some evil necromancer or walking around randomly killing people. They are always evil, of course, even though they're bodies were resurrected and their brains weren't, making them stupider than your average one-day-old. They must also attack people en masse, because for some reason, they were animated to be very fragile, and even normal, secondary characters can rip one apart with relative ease.

[Lebki]

JessieWings

Jessie the Awesome says:
All stories need sequels. It doesn't matter if at the end of your story there's the end of the universe--somehow, the universe is saved (by your hero, naturally), and you can write a sequel! biggrin Then, of course, your sequel needs a sequel, and this will invariably lead to a neverending series, which is GOOD. Especially when every story (or better yet--every chapter!) contradicts the last. Everyone'll love you for it, man! If your hero dies in the course of the series, you can either make him immortal, resurrect him, make the series suddenly about his son/children/twin/cousin/seventeenth cousin once removed/"successor" or make it suddenly that it was just the bad guy impersonating him! OMG PLOT TWIST!!! surprised

Jessie! I totally agree. ALWAYS have a neverending series. Your readers won't care if your characters have done everything already; have them do it again.

[Jasper Riddle]

Lebki

JessieWings

Jessie the Awesome says:
All stories need sequels. It doesn't matter if at the end of your story there's the end of the universe--somehow, the universe is saved (by your hero, naturally), and you can write a sequel! biggrin Then, of course, your sequel needs a sequel, and this will invariably lead to a neverending series, which is GOOD. Especially when every story (or better yet--every chapter!) contradicts the last. Everyone'll love you for it, man! If your hero dies in the course of the series, you can either make him immortal, resurrect him, make the series suddenly about his son/children/twin/cousin/seventeenth cousin once removed/"successor" or make it suddenly that it was just the bad guy impersonating him! OMG PLOT TWIST!!! surprised

Jessie! I totally agree. ALWAYS have a neverending series. Your readers won't care if your characters have done everything already; have them do it again.

Only this time, there's a new baddie. Yeah, go ahead. Take an old manuscript and just go changing the first baddies name to the second, new one. No one will notice. Oh, but this new guy has---lightning powers! Yeah. Rewrite the ending to include this fact.

[iLumiere]

See if you can do a little research on what yime period, or what you're doing the story on. Add backgrounds to all of your characters, even the less important ones.

[Jasper Riddle]

Rantress Granny Duck

See if you can do a little research on what yime period, or what you're doing the story on. Add backgrounds to all of your characters, even the less important ones.

No, no, no. You're new here, aren't you? Thought so. Go back and read the first page-thank you.

[Morizawa]

Whenever you are having a sword fight, the enemies must never die of blood loss, and they must never lose a fight with just cuts or bruises, there must always be a hand lost, head lost or he must have lost all of the fingers on his hand. Speaking of bloodloss, your character can bleed endlessly and never die of blood loss. In real life the human body only has a few pints of blood but in story life the human body can paint a foot ball field in blood and never die, like in mortal kombat deception!

[Jasper Riddle]

Morizawa

Whenever you are having a sword fight, the enemies must never die of blood loss, and they must never lose a fight with just cuts or bruises, there must always be a hand lost, head lost or he must have lost all of the fingers on his hand. Speaking of bloodloss, your character can bleed endlessly and never die of blood loss. In real life the human body only has a few pints of blood but in story life the human body can paint a foot ball field in blood and never die, like in mortal kombat deception!

Of course! And these cuts and stuff can't get infected. Your hero's better than that.

[hecate-athena]

Ch. No anti-climactic ending for your hero. It has to be a massive spectacle, with fighting, love speeches, and some apocalyptic event taking place in 5-10 seconds.

[Khalista]

Rantress Granny Duck

See if you can do a little research on what yime period, or what you're doing the story on. Add backgrounds to all of your characters, even the less important ones.

And you should never, ever read the guidelines for the magazine/publisher/site/forum you are submitting too. Everyone will be soooo impressed with your story that they won't care that it's totally out of place, submitted incorrectly, etc.

[Jasper Riddle]

Khalista

Rantress Granny Duck

See if you can do a little research on what yime period, or what you're doing the story on. Add backgrounds to all of your characters, even the less important ones.

And you should never, ever read the guidelines for the magazine/publisher/site/forum you are submitting too. Everyone will be soooo impressed with your story that they won't care that it's totally out of place, submitted incorrectly, etc.

And throw in as many spelling mistakes as possible. Anyone who betas or edits for you will be overjoyed. mrgreen