Quotes:
1) I know I gave this whole long boring lecture about how to use quotes, but I just realized I'm not done yet, so get out that little section of your brain that you save for this story called "Read Now, Realize the Boringness Later," and let's get discussin'!
Okay, so you know how I said you go like this:
"...and then she went to the door.
"She knocked three times like she always did."
Well, when writing from inside a book, where a character is reading, you do it in italics and apostrophes, which are for a quote inside a quote! Can you believe it? Probably, but I'm gonna go with no. So anywho, it'll go like this:
And she began to read, "'And the boy walked to the door, and he knocked--' Oh, what is it, James?"
Or like this:
"'And the boy walked to the door, and he knocked.
"'And now the lady came to answer the door, her frizzy candyfloss hair scattered wildly across her face.'"
Semicolons:
1) I know, I know! First apostrophes, now semicolons? How much more boring can this girl get? The answer is a lot, so don't complain about this in comments if you know what's good for you. So anyway, you use semicolons when you want to join two sentences together and you're too lazy to write a period and start a new sentence. Like this:
"She opened up the bookshelf and was instantly amazed and slightly overwhelmed; dozens of books were crammed into each shelf, each one a different shade of some bright primary color with gold lettering printed across the sides."
TA-DA!
Gray and Grey:
1) This is pretty straightforward. There are two ways of spelling "gray/grey":
a) The BRITISH way: G-r-E-y
b) The USUAL way: G-r-A-y
No need to get worked up over this, ladies and gents. English dudes usually spell things very differently, like putting E's at the end of half of the English language and somehow acting more dainty and elegant and whatever the heck it is. American English is more lazy and straightforward. It's not where authors came from and it's definitely not where formal writing came from (that'll be introduced in the next chapter--yes, there's more!).
2) What you're probably not wondering but what I'm going to tell you anyway is that when people from England write a story and it's published in America, editors change the spelling to the non-British way so that people don't get all confused about how to spell.
Point of View:
1) There are three points of view. The most common is first person, where you write from the person's point of view: "I saw the dragon and climbed on."
2) The second is extremely rare and went out of fashion years ago. It's how they talk in dungeon and dragons: "You go down two staircases and take a right, where you find a ______. (Turn to page 40 for a lion, and 80 for a fire-breathing dragon!)
3) The third is pretty common, but not as common as first person. This talks from a side point of view: "Vanessa was scared. After all, who had told her it could explode? She felt inexplicably angry as she walked down the long hall."
Common Grammar Mistakes:
1) Defence? It's defense! When you say roll, it's as in, "stop, drop, and roll," not "my roll in the play"! That's r-o-l-E! And "tried" is NOT spelled "t-r-y-e-d"!
This is a short chapter. You should be pretty happy, you were probably able to survive this one.
YOU ARE READING
Help on Making a Story
RandomThis is a book about common mistakes that any writer can make, and how best to fix stories and writing. Though some of this is about Wattpad, some of it is about writing stories, or just writing in general. It's all useful information. It ranges fro...
