You're all familiar with the importance of presentation.
Whether it be story writing or project making, the most important aspect which makes your work stand out from the rest is the way it is presented.
If your presentation is great and unique, people are more likely to check out and keep reading your story.
But what exactly is meant by a good presentation?
Today, in this chapter, we're going to discuss about presentation in fanfics and how to accurately do it.
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The main things that are covered in presentation are letter spacing, line spacing, paragraph changes, chapter dividers and then some are optional aspects such as banners, ribbons, page dividers etc etc.
It is a well known fact that lack or excess of anything is bad. The first case we are going to discuss is the lack of presentation.
Case 1:
If a story has lack of presentation it means that the whole format is kept extremely simple. There are no paragraphs, no gaps, no line spacing and obviously it looks as if a lot of words are just cramped together.
The way it looks is something like this:
[Never mind where this piece of writing is from. And if the actual writer of this comes across it here, then I'm sorry I just found this on the internet and included it only for the outlook it gives not the content].
Not only does it seem crowded but also makes it difficult for the reader to read and process everything. Long paragraphs make readers freak out most of the time. It happens to me too. Remember that if your story is easy on the eyes, then obviously you are more likely to get your readers to read everything in it. And it it has lack of spaces among the text, there's a 75% chance that the reader will just leave your story no matter how great the content is.
For example, let's suppose you made a vegetable salad but instead of arranging the vegetables you just put them in a bowl and mix and mash them altogether such that the salad looks more like a gooey paste.
Would you expect anyone to eat it then? No.
It is quite similar to what you write. If there are good spaces such as appropriate length paragraphs of like five to seven lines on laptop/computer (you can have 10 to 13 lines if you're typing on the smartphone), a separate paragraph for each speaker so the reader doesn't get confused among the dialogues etc, then you're doing a great job.
A good piece of writing should look like this:
Note how the paragraphs are divided and it also seems easier to read. The spaces give a nice and easy outlook to it. But that's just one thing from lack of presentation that we have discussed. Other errors that may interfere with presentation are punctuation and capitalizing.
Do not write in all caps or none. Make sure the first alphabet of each of your sentences is capitalized, the pronouns and names of places etc are also capitalized. If there is a good balance of uppercase and lowercase letter it looks fine. If not, then you should go and immediately revise it.
Unless you're writing a random book.
Random books don't have as many rules since they are rants, opinions, advises etc. It would be great to write with presentation in there as well but if you don't, it doesn't matter.
Case 2:
If your writing has too much of everything then it isn't considered okay either. For example having too much spaces between text and dialogue that the reader completely forgets what was happening, too many emojis/banners/symbols etc also make it seem cramped.
An excessively presented layout is like a pasta with too much ketchup on it. So try avoiding it.
This is okay as long as it is just a tweet. But if you use emojis like that in writing, then I advise you to go and remove it.
Also, you don't really have to italicize everything or write many words in bold to capture reader's attention. Just do it when you really have to such as when you're stressing on a word in a dialogue or mentioning a news article or something that needs to be highlighted to separate it from the narrative text.
Banners are good for starting a book or a chapter. Some authors I know at Wattpad work hard on making the perfect banners for their stories. I understand that it's very dear to you people because it's like your signature on a book. But remember don't overdo it.
I place a banner having my name and a little intro at the beginning of the book as an opening and also place it at the end as a closure. Having one banner for each chapter is okay too I guess.
But if there's a banner screaming Cliffhanger! and #OTP! popping in throughout the story (or just notes the author wanted to add) then it won't do for me or for some other readers as well.
Keep your banner simple with one background, one image and some text.
Then some of you have page dividers that look like this:
Just use them with caution. I know they look nice and all but if there are too many, it would seem more like a wedding invitation than an actual book. You can use them for where chapters end or to divide scenes. Just don't use too many (like more than eight) in one chapter.
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I guess that's all I have to say on presentation.
Hope this was helpful.