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 ]

[Perseid]

Always begin with the weather. Reader's love having the setting placed right flat out in front of them right at the start. Less to think about.

[Charlie_The_Bad]

Whenever you start a horror story, the weather must either be totally sunny and bright and cheerful to contrast with the bad stuff that's about to happen, then progressivly get worse throughout the story; or start of with really bad weather that perfectly fits the scene, and gets worse too.

[Alea Facta Est]

Jasper Riddle

~Your.Dilettante~

Why not Horror?

That's acceptable.

Or, for that matter, everything else. General fiction, anyone?! What about historical fiction and perhaps even poetry?

(Fanfiction's been worn pretty thin, too, but if that's all you write, stick to it.)

[Rid V]

How's this for general:

Whenever someone falls under suspicion, this will not effect how they are treated to any real degree. Not just in public, but there will be very little in the way of surreptitious efforts to keep them from doing any serious damage if they are a traitor. When someone voices their suspicion, the suspected (or even known) traitor's movements will not be impeded very much. And when they are finally put under guard, it will be in a situation that they can easilly escape from by climbing out a window or the like, or by taking the lone guard by surprise. This counts for all characters unless they are a main character.

Similarly, whenever the main character/s throw in with a small band of insurgent-types, it will always be to the news or with the news of a traitor in their midst. Your main character/s will, of course, be the only one/s who can figure out who this traitor is, and the only one who can deal with them. And it's always just one traitor, no more, and certainly no less.

In medieval times, or alternate realties/planets that are in their medieval times, the punishment for crimes more severe than the occasional theft is execution, even among the heroes.

[KiwiOfDestruction]

Your characters must make Freudian slips. Lots of them. More of them than humanly possible.

This allows them to reveal their angst without being emo. Example:

Person X: How's the weather
MC: Like a rapist with a whip who attacked me when I was 15.
Person X: Huh?
MC: Sorry. Freudian slip, I guess.

[Indigo Dagger]

Rid V

In medieval times, or alternate realties/planets that are in their medieval times, the punishment for crimes more severe than the occasional theft is execution, even among the heroes.

Or banishment. 3nodding

And as for the occasional theft, use any light punishment. Cutting off hands? Who's heard of that?

[Lolita Doll]

Pull a Charles Dickens, and make pages amongst pages of description about one or two items that have nothing to do with the plot. Hell why a few pages, when you can dedicate an entire chapter to that specific item. Charles Dickens did it and everyone loves him.

((That b*****d....))

[Mademoiselle Kit]

- The Love Intrest has two purposes, to get in the MC's pants, and to get kidnapped so the MC has to go rescue them, and then once again get in their pants.
- The best type of OMGFORBIDDENLOVE! is between a princess and a knight, or a prince and a poor peasant girl.
- Your MC must be a sex god. They wouldn't be the MC if they didn't have fantastic skills in the bedroom!
- Spies ALWAYS wear leather.
- "Sweatdropped" is a verb.
- You need a story to be spiced up? Then add a ninja.
- Need more spiciness? AN ARMY OF NINJAS!

[Indigo Dagger]

The Kitsune Hanyou

- The best type of OMGFORBIDDENLOVE! is between a princess and a knight, or a prince and a poor peasant girl.

Or a princess and a poor peasant boy.

Andin forbidden love, the two must ALWAYS be the same age. Who's heard of a 19-year-old with a 45 or 50-year old? That's sick.

[Lolita Doll]

Indigo Dagger

The Kitsune Hanyou

- The best type of OMGFORBIDDENLOVE! is between a princess and a knight, or a prince and a poor peasant girl.

Or a princess and a poor peasant boy.

Andin forbidden love, the two must ALWAYS be the same age. Who's heard of a 19-year-old with a 45 or 50-year old? That's sick.

What even sicker is a 19-year old that falls in love with a 42 year old woman. The man must ALWAYS be older or the same age as the female.

[Seiiran]

NINJA!!!!!!1111!!!!!

Ahem. But honestly, some cliches I hate include:
-Love triangles that aren't artfully done.
-Unless it's written extremely well, the whole "murderer turns out to be main character". An example of it being done well is Stephen King's Secret Window.
-Writing. Without. Conjunctions. I just have a problem with it. xD Example: "She is my sister, and I do not want to hurt her because I do not have anyone else."

[borderline_mary]

* AIDS is the only sexually transmitted disease in existence, and your MC will never have it (unless you plan for the story to be an angsty one-shot). This means that all sex is 100% safe. In the highly unlikely event that your MC has a tragic illness of some sort, it must be cancer or (preferably) lukemia. This illness must not impede the character's ability to kick the bad guys' asses, but will instead cause collapse and regurgitation of blood only after each major battle. Your MC should never, under any circumstances, have herpes, gonorrhea, chronic dry eye, or an embarrassing personal rash.

* Wounds tragically acquired in battle are magically immune to infection and festering. Septic shock is a myth created by newbies.

* The caps lock is there for a reason -- use it whenever your hero raises his/her voice for any reason. Make sure your readers know that s/he is a total badass and will pwn anyone who gets in his/her way. And no one wants to be pwnd.

* Every successful villain must give your MC the slip at least three or four times when the MC tries to kill or capture him/her, regardless of the impossible circumstances. Collapsed underground strongholds, burning ships and maximum security prisons pose no problem for your bad guy, who will eventually be taken down due to a careless mistake made in battle. This should generally be a mistake of enormous magnitude and should make your readers doubt that the villain ever passed the third grade. Until the final battle, however, the villain is crafty enough to stay one step ahead of the best your hero can do. This illustrates the all-important Inverse Intelligence Principle: the I.Q. of the villain must be inversely proportional to that of the MC, so that as the MC grows in experience and smarts, the bad guy eventually loses the ability to tie his/her shoes.

* Don't ever give your MC a physical handicap. An artfully placed scar or other cosmetic injury is acceptable, but anything beyond color-blindness will make the MC far too weak and give the villain an actual, realistic point to exploit. To avoid this, get creative -- why not have your hero have a rotten temper or an inability to do advanced math? This should be perfectly sufficient as a major character flaw.

* The only believable motives for your villain are power, world domination, or revenge. Don't give them a dying sister or a dream of their own, or anything wussy like that. Villains do what they do because they're evil, and being evil is fun. Revenge can solve everything -- which is why your villain will never achieve it. We wouldn't want them to win, now would we?

* Seriously. Roses are the cure-all for any relationship trouble. Be sure your MC has some on hand to guarantee his girlfriend's forgiveness in the event that he has cheated on her in previous chapters with both the villain's sidekick and that attractive waitress from the space station bar.

[izabethelay]

Your character may never have a genetic disorder.

[THE H4XULATOR]

Your character must have albinism, hermaphroditism, leukemia, irritable bowel syndrome, and AIDS, but can somehow save the world and get their special someone. Either that or they go and somehow spontaneously combust at the end of your book, taking all he evil baddies with them. And maybe the lover too.

[Rid V]

((Okay, here's a couple tailor-made for sci-fi (although they probably can be extended to fantasy at least).))

Although the ship functions on a four-hundred person crew, barring serious repairs, in a pinch, the thing can be run almost as easilly by four to eight people on the bridge, and maybe one in the engine room.

And future civilizations have very limited culture, that's why they only refer to books and movies from the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries, unless it's a textbook or other work of important nonfiction. It's not like their own culture would progress along with their technology, or anything.

((And, getting back to my favorite subject smile )

When writing a prequel, here's a rule that you should always follow: any important characters introduced in the prequel who have not and do not appear in the original story/ies, must die by the end of the prequel story arc. This is especially true for any love interests of the main character, and most especially if the character is the first person s/he ever fell in love with. Think of it, have you ever seen or read a Young (fill-in-character-here) where the love interest introduced in the prequel made it to the end? ((If so, please tell me, it would probably be worth the novelty.))

((My main series is written in middle, beginning, end, format, for a number of reasons I will not go into. I'm still writing the first (middle) story, and I've forced myself to keep from mentioning several characters who appear in the second (beginning) story, just so I can keep the audience in suspense about whether they're going to die or not. Okay, and because some of them do die, but the important part is, not all of them.))

No matter how strong/smart/whatever your main character was to win the day in the first story, s/he will be back to square one when the new villain arrives for the sequel. Doesn't matter if your main character came out of the first story with the powers of a demi-god, s/he can still get trounced by the villain of the next story, and almost any lackey thereof.