Help on Making a Story

Chapter Five: I've Devised New Ways to Torture You

Paragraphs:

1) You need to mostly use your judgement on this. Try to be very careful about not having a paragraph that's too long. One time I read a story and then stopped because there was a paragraph that went on for a really long time and it just seemed too long. The key to stopping your paragraph in the right place: Every time it switches to a new topic, you make a new paragraph!

2) "What if it's a quote?" There's an answer! Look below:

"Your materials..." He rattled off all of the things we needed on the list. "Don't forget the sunscreen! And the towel.

"Now, about flying!"

You see what happened there? A quote, and when he moved on to a new topic, the end of the quote didn't have quotation marks but the beginning of the new paragraph did, and it was in a new paragraph and not on the same line. Ta-da! (By the way, that's how professional writers do it; if you don't believe me, the next time you read a book, be on the lookout for something like that and you'll see that I'm right!)

Be Clear:

1) After publishing each chapter, read it again as an outsider. Does anything not make sense? Does anything seem a bit unclear? Also, it's okay so be a little vague in the first chapter or so, but by the third chapter you need to start explaining everything. Otherwise the reader will have no idea what's going on and will lose interest; try, if possible, to explain in the second chapter if you can, because the longer you put off the explaining, the more readers you'll lose!

Cover:

1) Having a good cover is extremely important! A good cover can both catch people's eye and be intriguing at the same time. If someone's looking at a list of stories, you want them to pick yours. I recommend zooming in on a face or an eye; that's always spine-tingling.

Title:

1) You want your title to both be spine-chilling, catchy, exciting, and self-explanatory, all at the same time. By the end of the book, your reader should know exactly how you got your title. Your title should be somewhere in the book, even if it's not the main idea. Like, if the last line in the book is, "We have to find them," the book can be titled something like, 'Lost,' because the line "We have to find them" hints to the fact that either people or objects are lost and have to be found.

Maturity:

1) If your character is four, don't have them too reasonable, or have a great sense of humor. They should still understand "potty humor," something that's introduced to youngsters often and is actually not humorous at all once you realize how silly and pointless it is, which people often do not realize until they get older. They should be over that kind of humor by the age of ten.

2) Don't make your character too immature. If you don't know enough about the age, either research it, try to be observant to people around that age, or just don't make the age that age at all. Since I'm thirteen, all of my main characters so far have been twelve to sixteen, which is probably the easiest perspective to write from.

3) It's okay if your character has either too much maturity/too little maturity, as long as they stand out from the other characters their age for that reason; they can't all be immature or too mature. They can't laugh at stupid things or crack stupid jokes or do insensitive things if that's not in their age group, unless they're a bit abnormal in that way.

Main Character Experiences:

1) Your main character should be in the thick of the action 60% of the time. The other 40% should either be:

a) Cowering

b) Hiding

c) Looking from a distance, unable to do anything

d) Unaware that it's happening at all

e) In another place

f) In a side-battle

g) Unable to do anything

2) Your main character should not always be the smartest, the prettiest, the most popular, the best. But try to make them a little more awesome than the other characters. If the readers complain, too bad for them; why couldn't Harry Potter be about Ron instead? It would be a lot more boring if it was from Ron's perspective. Sometimes it seems cheesy that the main character always is the best, until you realize that if someone else was the best, the perspective would be theirs instead!

The Boss:

1) There has to be an ultimate boss! The boss should have a boss who has a boss; it goes on 'till it stops at the ultimate boss! Like, in the Hobbit, the second part (SPOILER ALERT!), Sauron is the boss of the pale orc, who's the boss of the guy with the weird eye, who's the boss of the orcs!

Apostrophes:

1) I know, I know! But every little detail counts, okay?! There CAN be a topic for apostrophes alone--just watch! You can use apostrophes when there is a word and "is" is after the word. Don't say, "The man had a cow who's cow had a calf." No, no, no! It's "whose!" Remember that. If you're (YOU ARE! See?) making a character that has a possession of some kind, it's "whose," not "who's."

2) If you're talking about the possession of a plural group of people, the apostrophe is AFTER the S. Example:

Girls' Bathroom.

If it was "Girl's Bathroom," it would be talking about a single girl's bathroom! And no school only has a bathroom for one girl! The next time you see something that says, "Girls' Bathroom," unless it's pretty unprofessional, the apostrophe will be AFTER the S. I repeat, AFTER!