Your Guide to Writing the Per...

By _thewritersdiary_

207K 9.2K 2.7K

As the title states, this is your tutorial, created by me, to writing a story to the very best of your abilit... More

Introduction
Cover Making
Capitalization
End Punctuation
Commas
Quotations
The Difference between Semicolons and Colons
Dashes
The Wonders of Word! . . . And Spell Check
Past, Present, and Future Tense
Point of View
Flow
How to Use a Fragment Sentence Properly
Planning Your Story
Researching Your Story
Finding the Plot
Creating Conflict
Writing Effective Background
Originality
Tone and Mood
Your Style: Your Story
Important Organization Tips and Skills
How to Start Your Story
Prologues
Writing Effective Dialogue
Dialogue Tags
Twists: When and How to Use Them
Developing 3D Characters
Changing Characters for the Worst
Naming Your Characters
Developing Character Relationships
Stereotypes, Archetypes, and Clichés
Writing Strong Antagonists
Bad Boys
Love Interests
Love Triangles
Being Realistic
Figurative Language
Writing Effective Descriptions
The Difference Between Good and Bad Fanfiction
How to Write Short Stories
Mystery Musts
Writing Historical Fiction Properly
How to Write Science Fiction
How to Write Romance
Effective Endings
Epilogues
Choosing a Title
Everything You Need to Know About Chapters
Fillers
Fighting Writer's Block
Writing Humour in Stories
Writing Foreign Languages
Dealing With Criticism
Offensive Language - Being Aware
The Pressures of Updating
Killing Procrastination
How to Promote Your Story Properly
Creating the Perfect Synopsis
Means of Improvement
Finding a Good Editor/Critic
Plagiarism and Copyright
Is Your Story Worth It?
The Publishing Process
Conclusion

All About Text Talk

1.2K 88 8
By _thewritersdiary_

This is going to be a short chapter because there isn't all that much to say about text talk.

One of my biggest writing pet peeves is when people decide that they're going to trade "you" for "u" or "cool" for "kewl" or whatever idiotic spellings and acronyms they think sound kewl. Well, guess what? It only makes you look illiterate. And I don't say that to be disrespectful; I say it because it is true. My default action whenever I see a book that has writing like that, no matter how few times, I immediately stop reading because I just assume the writer doesn't know what they're doing or how to write a story.

It is no different than spelling errors. They make you look inexperienced and are just plain annoying to read. So don't write in text talk, not even in dialogue. You can abbreviate in dialogue and drop g's and whatever else you want to do, but just don't talk like you are texting.

There is an exception, however. You can talk like you are texting if your character really is texting. Except you should keep the texting in your story to a minimum. It doesn't have the same emotion or meaning behind it as dialogue does and too much gets tedious and makes your story seem lacking in narration. The worst is when people decide to have a fight over text.

I cringe every time.

Having a character not even respond to a text speaks a whole louder than: bish, i h8 u go screw urself

It's almost comical, actually.

Anyway, moving on. Try not to lay out your exact texts. Instead, you can just sum up what the other person is saying.

Example: My fingers flew across the keys, telling Sonya to meet me at our spot. She didn't reply right away, but I knew it wouldn't be long. Sonya was always on her phone. Sure enough, it showed me she was typing and a minute later I received my reply. She'd be there.

My next point to you if your character is texting is that you should try to leave out as many acronyms as possible except to make it seem realistic. If you do include acronyms, make sure they are something everyone will know, like "brb" and "ttyl" or "lol". Not everyone knows what "afaik" means. (As far as I know.)

So that concludes my rant. Hopefully you took this to heart and I won't be seeing any more text talk mistakes for a long while.


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