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 ]

[Astarael--Banisher]

There is no such thing as Choice. There is only Fate. Your main character MUST BE FATED, or otherwise, it's... uh... something. But not normal! Your character must have been CHOSEN and have their DESTINY ARRANGED BY THE GODS. Free will is for uber-losers!

[hecate-athena]

demagoguery

No! J'adore les pingouins!! N'heurter pas les pingouins!! *weeps*

LoneGothic

(So gotta agree on the elves thing)

Dwarves are ugly. Nothing to it. They've been under the ground and mining. Thus, they're ugly. WHO CAREZ ABOUT THE VALUE AND MORAL OF THE HEART?!!11ONE

silly LoneGothic. Beauty of the heart doesn't count unless you're beautiful on the outside. Duh. But not a conventional beauty! Oh no!!

*nods solemnly* Yes. A PENGUIN. All because of Sue writers who can't tell that no one wants to read about their characters.

[Cerussa]

3nodding They must be bound by fate and chosen by prophesy or the Gods, or they are desperately trying to break free of fate.

[Astarael--Banisher]

If the male hero does not get the girl of his dreams, she instantly is whore, a slut, and she snivels, too. If she dared reject the HERO, she can't be a good person! After all, the reasons the hero fell in love with her in the first place is pure accident, not because she was a good person! Uh-huh!

[Astarael--Banisher]

There's nothing worse than the same old familiar... So spice things up a little! Make the familiar *gasp* not an animal! Make it a ROBOT! Or a COW! I mean, that makes the originality peak over the top! Besides the fact that it's still a familiar that will eventually die to save its master...
Oh, and if your hero is in another country, if they can't speak the language, then the people must be evil. Otherwise, they'd learn English and save the hero the difficulty of thinking!

[Astarael--Banisher]

Zombies? Mm, zombies. You know, since they're made of rotting flesh and their muscles have dissolved away, they can jump twenty feet in the air and leap across buildings! Mm-hmm! And, of course, they are always evil. Thinking zombies that are nice is just plain icky. Imagine a zombie dripping ichor all over your nice shoes! No, they're better as evil slaves of some necromancer who happen to be able to think independently.
Necromancers, by the way, wear horns. Who knows why, but they do. They HAVE to, the MUST! And they're always evil. Always... That is because anyone who animates dead bodies is evil, where people who raise living spirits and enslave them are good. That's because it's okay to enslave spirits. They're not real people, they don't have feelings!

[Astarael--Banisher]

((Gee, I hope no one is reading this and intending to take our advice. That would be... *shudders* Ugh. The worst of the worst. It would cause riots, a story like that.))

[Astarael--Banisher]

((Has anyone read Diana Wynne Jones Guide to Fantasyland? It's everything we wrote and more in a caustic book. I need to find a copy of it...))

[Veive]

The best ways to start out your Epic:

-with a fight scene- show your character kicking a**, and everyone will love him. Really. And then you don't need any more character development.
-with an angsty scene- I mean, everyone will immediately connect with your character. They won't go "zuh?!". I promise.


Also, it's always "could of" or "should of". Those silly people saying it's "COULD HAVE!" are deluded.

Never, ever use contractions in your dialogue. They're a sure sign of an amateur.

[M00NEY]

Astarael--Banisher

There is no such thing as Choice. There is only Fate. Your main character MUST BE FATED, or otherwise, it's... uh... something. But not normal! Your character must have been CHOSEN and have their DESTINY ARRANGED BY THE GODS. Free will is for uber-losers!

Your hero should never be destined to do something simple or easy. It must be a difficult, gut-wrenching task, possibly one that puts a love interest in danger, resulting in lots of angsting over the prophecy and "OMFG WHY ME?!?!111"

[demagoguery]

I was born to eat this sausage!! And no one will stop me from achieving my destiny! NO ONE!!! *very cool swordfight ensues*

Many apologies. But heros never desire power, as M00NEY touched on. They don't believe in themselves. However, we all know that because they don't want the power they actually deserve it etc. If someone desires power, they are evil. Or stupid.

[Ryu_chan]

Never, ever, under any circumstances, should the evil villain die in any way other than by the hero's sword. Who wants to read about a villain who catches pneumonia from sitting around in his drafty mountain lair waiting for the hero to arrive, or gets eaten by his own guard dogs? That cheats the reader out of the obligatory ending fight-scene.

[Garlyle]

OH GOD.

So much sarcasm.. so HILARIOUS.

Its going to kill me, this thread is pure gold.

[Darylene]

+ Just because nothing in the story believable, why should it be a bad story too? Its only a fantasy... go read a textbook if you want facts
+ Go ahead write a neverending story, it just shows how good a writer you are.
+ Don't listen to those reviewers...after all you know everything already

[LoneGothic]

hecate-athena

demagoguery

No! J'adore les pingouins!! N'heurter pas les pingouins!! *weeps*

LoneGothic

(So gotta agree on the elves thing)

Dwarves are ugly. Nothing to it. They've been under the ground and mining. Thus, they're ugly. WHO CAREZ ABOUT THE VALUE AND MORAL OF THE HEART?!!11ONE

silly LoneGothic. Beauty of the heart doesn't count unless you're beautiful on the outside. Duh. But not a conventional beauty! Oh no!!

*nods solemnly* Yes. A PENGUIN. All because of Sue writers who can't tell that no one wants to read about their characters.

*weeps and runs off to save the poor Little Penguins at Phillip Island* crying