Grammar

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Yeah, it's my personal enemy as well.

Good grammar allows your story to have a flow that can suck people right into the story, regardless of how good or bad the plot may be.

So, what exactly is grammar? It is the set of structural rules that governs the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. (If your eyes didn't skim over that technical description, then kudos to you!)

This refers to a set of rules that tries to create consistency across books. Such as details like keeping paragraphs under 5-8 sentences (although 2-4 is better with Wattpad's narrow reading column), having commas in correct locations, only using 'and' once in any sentence, and proper use of quotation marks.

Like most rules, there are times they can be broken, but do so with care and don't use it as an excuse to be lazy.

I cover these details more in-depth in the Nitty Gritty chapters.

My best advice is to pick up a published paperback novel and compare a page to yours. How did they use commas in long sentences? What did they do around the sections with people talking? How did they show a character's emotions?

I quite frequently do this, and it really does help. I often check books from two different authors since they usually have different styles. It'll take time to build your own style, and consistency is the key.

You will discover that different authors, web sources, and guide books can contain conflicting information. This is because different countries often have slightly different rules, and the authors might be using different writing guides, or are perhaps even writing to a publisher's special set of rules.

All this work sounds like fun, huh? Right. As fun as cleaning up your room, but it certainly does look better afterwards.

 As fun as cleaning up your room, but it certainly does look better afterwards

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