How to write a story.

Grammar and Spacing

Chapter 3, Grammar and Spacing.

Personally, if I go to read a story and the basic grammar is bad, I won't continue to read. So even if you have a lot of imagination, a thrilling plot line and phenomenal characters, many people might be put off reading your work due to bad grammar.

I myself struggle a lot of the time, I have dyslexia which means that my brain doesn't like to pay attention to the rules of writing. However, I believe it's not right to use this as an excuse. Through practice I have learnt to use the correct grammar when writing.

The only time now I would not use appropriate grammar is when writing a not! or crack! fiction. For those of you who don't know what that means, a not! or crack! fiction is a writing style used often in fan fiction, the writer just writes down the concept of a story that they either can't be bothered to or don't have the time to write properly. Not! fics often have features such as 'And then he was all 'no! Not my dog!' which was when Susie walked in -pause for dramatic effect- with the bad news'. They can be funny and they don't have a strict format. 

But most of the time you wont be writing not! or crack! fictions so you will be following the basic rules of grammar. Some of this should be obvious to you, but I've read a lot on this website and you'd be surprised by the things people miss.

At the beginning of a sentence you should use a capitol letter, you should end a sentence with either a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark. 

Names and places have capitol letters.

Speech marks are used when a character is speaking. For example: "Hi, mom I'm home." Said Jane.

Commas can be used in lists, to connect two independent clauses  E.g She was tired, but she didn't want to go to sleep. Use them to set off introductory elements: Though she was tired, she didn't want to go to sleep. To add information. Though she was tired, after spending all day running, she didn't want to go to sleep. They can be used before speech and quotation. He writes, "It has come to my attention..." Use them when writing contrasting phrases. The world ended in a whimper, not a bang. They can also be used to create a short pause in a sentence. 

Mentioned books, films etc should be put in quotation marks. Eg; Sarah loved 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'. They can also be italicised. 

There= A place. Look over there at that bird.

Their= Possessive. The girls all looked very pretty in their dresses.

There's= There is. There's a lovely cafe around the corner. 

Your= Possessive. You dropped your bag.

You're= You are. You're very funny. 

Use an apostrophe to show possession or to shorten words. Eg Mary's pencil. You are becomes You're. 

You should use italics to put emphasis on a word not capitols and please refrain from writing dialogue in capitols to show anger, just use an exclamation mark. Inner dialog can be shown with either italicisation or quotation marks (or both). 

The full stop appears outside of the brackets if the brackets don’t contain a complete sentence.

Affect= 

Have an effect on; make a difference to: "the dampness began to affect my health". Pretend to have or feel (something): "as usual I affected a supreme unconcern".

Effect= 

A change that is a result or consequence of an action or other cause

In a title small words like the, of, and etc are not capitalised unless they start the title, all other words begin with capitol letters. Eg: The Little Princess, Time and Time Again 

If your grammar is bad try getting a beta reader to check and change your work before you publish it. 

Spacing.

When you come to a new subject in your writing, create a new paragraph, when a new speaker is speaking, create a new paragraph, when there is a change in time or setting, create a new paragraph. It is hard to read your work if it's all in one block. 

A chapter should be between 1500 and 3500 words but some stories will differ. For example, a story written as a diary may have some very short and some very long chapters. 

They're pretty much all the basics, I think. Let me know if you have any questions.

Oh how I just know there's some terrible grammatical mistake in this one.