The Anti-Guide

How do you try to improve your writing?

I try to avoid old, stupid things.	17.5%	[ 2370 ]
I add new things.	14.7%	[ 1993 ]
A combination of both (if one more than the other, pick it).	67.8%	[ 9169 ]
Total Votes:			[ 13532 ]

[wingnut the improbable]

Punctuation abuse is the best thing ever!!!!!!!111!!!!!! So are putting little smiley things in your stories (you can do that in Word)!!!!!!!!1!!one!! And making your whole story in pink with an illegible font!!!!1!!!!!1!!

And, of course, don't forget semicolons; they make a story that much better; they just keep your sentences going and going; nobody will murder you with a fork tied to a stick; trust me...

And if anyone vanishes, it's always 'into thin air'. Is the air actually thin? Who cares?

[KiwiOfDestruction]

Your character must never do anything bad. The assassin cannot be the hero, the felon cannot be the hero. They must be the villain. (Actually, I'm writing two stories, one where a felon is a heroine and one where an assasssin and someone who caused the apocolypse are the heroines). Your hero is the "chosen one" because he is sinless and pure of heart.

"Beautiful" means one thing, and one thing, only. For a girl:
An hourglass figure, a small nose, wide eyes that are never hazel, brown, gray, blueish-green, or a regular blue. They are always sapphire-colored, emerald colored, or, if you're feeling aventurous, amethyst-colored. They have an oval-shaped face that is described as "delicate". They must have long legs. Their hair must be long, and it has to be golden. Not brown. Not dirty-blonde. Not platinum-blonde. Not red. Not auburn. Golden. And always long. Anything shorter than waist-length will not fly. And preferably straight. Second-choice is curly, but wavy is way too plain. And any unlabelable hair textures (such as stringy and always mistaken for dreadlocks (Like my hair)) is unthinkable. Their skin must be "fair", and is cannot have any of the freckles that fair skin almost always has, it cannot have the pimples that come from adolescence. If the female does not pass this test, they are not attractive. So, even if it's a modestly-curved girl with wavy red hair down to the middle of her back, a round face, a nose with a slight point, hazel eyes, and a few faded freckles, she is an ugly hag. Even if she's be considered attractive in the real world. Unless it's a villain. Then, her skin must be "pale", she must have black hair, MUST, it MUST be straight. And her eyes must be black or "bloodred"/"ruby red". Or else she's not beautiful.

Which reminds me. There is no gray area between drop-dead gorgeous and butt-ugly. There is no "slightly-ugly", there is no "plain", there is no "average" there is no "pretty" or "attractive". You're either beautiful or a hag. Case closed.

The female can get anyone to do anything by batting her eyelashes.

Weapons:

The heroine must never carry a weapon. EVER. Only the hero can do that. And it must be a sword, the most valuable one in the world. No daggers, rapiers, axes, spears, lances, scythes, or anything. And ABSOLUTELY no broken swords, even though being broken probably makes it sharper and more deadly. It must be a sword. And it has to have jewels along the hilt, never mind the fact that it's completely unnecessary.

[Chattan]

What I do is look over what I've written, and say, "Well this sucks.. What was I thinking?" Then I change it to make it more interesting. That usually works.

[hecate-athena]

Chattan

What I do is look over what I've written, and say, "Well this sucks.. What was I thinking?" Then I change it to make it more interesting. That usually works.

...

[LaverneTerres]

Chattan

What I do is look over what I've written, and say, "Well this sucks.. What was I thinking?" Then I change it to make it more interesting. That usually works.

WRONG. Read the rules there. Go! Shoo!

[Lebki]

LaverneTerres

Chattan

What I do is look over what I've written, and say, "Well this sucks.. What was I thinking?" Then I change it to make it more interesting. That usually works.

WRONG. Read the rules there. Go! Shoo!

Someday I'm going to have to make a character patterned all these n00bs. "Oo, look, 0mg! i dont need 2 rd the rules, im kewl like that!!!111one" gonk For a horror story. "Revenge of the Literate."


Any supporting character must never take away any of the protagonist's spotlight. When they're running through a field of chickens, it's the support that must be pecked to death, and the protagonist makes it out unscathed. God forbid the supporting characters obtain weapons and learn to fight.

[Minion Ripley]

Your story pattern must either be the extreme of one of two things:
Predictable. If your readers are not able to foresee every single letter in the story, you're doing it wrong. Nah, your readers won't ever get bored.
Random. You should be able to confuse everyone, including yourself, with your story. Making sense is for wimps. And you're not a wimp, are you?

When you post your 100-page story somewhere or give it to someone to read, you know they hate it if they do not give you a kissing-your-feet-in-worship review within a minute of beginning their reading. If that is so, you need to replace what you have posted or given with a long rant cussing out everyone and how everyone hates you for no good reason.

Let's all remember that no parents are actually good-hearted people who love their kids. They must be cruel, alcohol-filled adults who just love to cause their kids pain. C'mon, we all know curfew times are the sign of evil.

[Xiraes]

Abuse artistic liscense.

If you want to break all boundries of what even remotely makes sense, go right ahead, after all, you can write what you want, can't you? Do whatever you want, and don't bother to even explain it, or have the characters wonder either. (Ex: Character is survives a nuclear explosion) No one will mind. Or, if you want to have an explanation, use technobabble or a form of it, so reader's see how smart you are (Ex: Nuclear explosion didn't affect character because of the precise sub-atom elecneutron colliding with the ambience nucleoids in the lower left inner chamber of the demi-protons in the atmosphere.... or, him/her is "The Chosen One"

[Ravelin]

One word: Blood. If you (your hero/ine, that is) is going to fight, there's going to be blood, seeing as you'll be flinging around sharp metal objects. Nobody ever dies of blood loss, however - no matter how much you lose, it just makes the matter look more serious. Unless, of course, it's an enchanted wound delt by an enchanted weapon. Only then do you really have to worry about the wound not closing up. Otherwise, after you've finished your enemy off (that'd be maybe a minute, no? I mean, it's not like swordfighting is hard.), you can just wrap it up and bingo, you're done. No infections, no weeks of taking it easy before it heals, and no terrific, ropy, pinkish, nasty scar - unless that fight was a particularly significant battle in your eyes. But then, it'd be the nice clean dramatic kinds of scars, the nice, attractive shiny white ones. No icky ropy pinkness for you.

If you need to travel after getting the wound, it'll just cause twinges of pain - when you most need them. You know, when a comrade askes uncomfortable questions, your stress will most likely set the wound off, and if you clutch at it just right and say something to the effect of, "Augh, my horrible wound," he/she will probably lay off. Wounds are convienient that way. Nobody ever forgets you have it, nor do they think you're a pathetic sap for moaning all day.

Infections only set in at a walkable distance from town. If you think you're feeling feverish (you can always detect an infection by the fever it induces), stagger over to an inn and let your comrades patch you up. Infection-fevers only really last about a day and a half, and although you moan and sweat and look terrible and reveal information from your past by mumbling nearly incoherent phrases in your delerium, the effects are never really long lasting and once it clears up, you'll feel fine. Everything'll be perfectly normal, and you can go about your business.

[Caffeine and Painkillers]

The only time your characters ever get sick or under the weather is if they're fending off a particularily virulent and plot-affecting plague, or if they're cursed. They are unable to just get a head-cold; whenever they start feeling bad, it's either because someone laid a curse on them, or the undead-causing virus infected them, too.

Kill EVERYONE. That's how the reader knows your plot is serious! Invent great peoples, huge armies, then slaughter them without mercy. Stack the bodies to the trees. There's no way that this'll devalue death as a whole. It just makes the plot more SERIOUS!

Gay characters = OBSESSED WITH SEX. You can't be a gay person with a normal sex drive. You have to either be stereotypically flaming, hitting on everyone of the same gender as you, or the flawless main character who makes everyone go ******** them. Either way, gay people never turn down some hot gay sex because they're feeling bad, or don't like the guy, or just don't want sex at the time. Big giant homosexual libidos, all of them.

Just the same, none of your characters can never say 'no' to a sexual advance unless it's overtly humorous. Anytime someone hits on them, it's either going to be a ridiculous encounter to the hitter-ons possible genital injury, or a serous liason which either ends in a love interest or guilt and taking-advantage of. No "no, sorry, I don't feel like p***s right now".

Hookers are always women. Male hookers are icky and disturbing.

By the way, you can just add wings to anything and it'll fly. Stick wings on a cat, a person, an elephant, a whatever, and it'll fly. Despite the fact that its body structure is too dense or its body is simply not aerodynamic enough. Wings = flight, and that's that.

[[...Afternoon Tea...]]

* Go ahead, write about your life story...everyone will think that's just totally groovy and believeable!

* Just make everyone perfect! Everyone loves reading about perfect people!

* Write your story like it's the OC... on paper!

* Always name your characters after yourself, and your friends! It'll be so cool!

* Never check for grammatical errors. Who cares if you throw around a couple of 'wuz's or 'haey's.

* Always end your sentences with prepositional phrases...

* Have endless dialogue without quotations! Yah baby!

* Include author's notes every few paragraphs! It'll be just like a fanfiction! The reader will really be pleased!

[IrkenMegara]

Mermaids must always follow either the Disney or the Barbie example. If their tails are not green, they must be either pink or purple or sky blue or something like that. Coloring that blends in with its surroundings, like speckled tan, or something that resembles an actual fish, is unheard of.

They all wear flowers in their hair. Never mind that a real flower would be all floppy from being surrounded by water and/or crushed by the water pressure, and that the plants that do grow beneath the surface don't produce flowers, because they don't need bees or butterflies to pollenate them.

They must also all have names like "Marina," "Misty," or "Aquafina." ( xp ) Because how else can you tell that they live in the water?

They are either gorgeous, yet naive, maidens of the sea, or seductive vixens whose only goal in life is to lure sailors to their doom with their singing. Because nobody wants to fall in love/lust with a girl with a face that resembles the Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Oh, and mermaids always long for the world above the surface, despite the fact that they wouldn't be able to breathe up there and would dry out within minutes. Gills and lungs aren't superfluous at all!

[Tavreynya]

IrkenMegara

Oh, and mermaids always long for the world above the surface, despite the fact that they wouldn't be able to breathe up there and would dry out within minutes. Gills and lungs aren't superfluous at all!

Your hero/ine can breathe underwater. Nuff said. But they should angst about it, because their Designated Love Interest can't breathe water, and if they ever go swimming they'll be ALONE! Horror of horrors!

Either that, or both sides of the happy couple can breathe underwater and have sex at something like -300 ft. Water pressure and laws of physics are of no import. It's just sex. Under 300 feet of water.

When all else fails, make up a word.

[Minion Ripley]

Tavreynya

When all else fails, make up a word.

When you do, make sure to never give any clues as to what the word might mean. After all, letting your readers in on what's going on would so ruin the plot.

The protagonist should either be bisexual or straight (but open-minded). They should never be sex-related bigots. Although you do need at least one good character to be homosexual, that can be slammed on side-character #4 easy-as-pie. Only villains are ever allowed to be asexual (but you can always change that momentarily for when the baddie seduces the hero; we all know no one actually wants to be asexual).

The hero should never actually have a job. If he does, he should hate it with all his might (even he's paid a good amount to do absolutely nothing for a few hours) and soon quit because his boss pesters him a bunch (just leave it at that the boss annoys him 'cause god forbid should your hero suck at work). Then your hero can begin his earth-saving adventure and travel around the world with no expenses to worry about whatsoever.