00 Language | Meet Dr. Spell-Check (or meet my palm)

This is pretty self-explanatory. Everyone should spell-check their stories, unless it’s one of those picture-books. Also, you don’t need Microsoft Word or whatever to do it for you. AFF has a spell-checking function when you add a chapter.

01 Style | Show, Don’t Tell (otherwise known as Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory)

Many beginning or even advanced writers sometimes struggle with this concept. Some don’t use it at all. Some use it the wrong way. Some use it way too frequently. Hemingway once vaguely tried his hand at describing what “Show, Don’t Tell” means:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water

It’s actually rather simple. When you show the reader something, the reader feels it in her guts. When you tell the reader something, the reader processes it in her brain. This idea is therefore most useful for expressive sections of stories—when a character is suffering or undergoing metamorphosis, or when something dramatic had occurred. However, you must differentiate showing from telling in detail. When you tell in detail, everything is exposed. When you show, you can omit important thoughts and descriptions and the reader will still know exactly what you mean.

For example, telling is “Jack and Jill danced ily”. Showing is “Their bodies writhed together, fiercely like felines and close enough to feel one another’s panting, close enough to breathe one another’s air…”

When you “show” something, it slows down the pace of the story and puts the reader’s attention on what you’re showing. However, if you try to “show” through the whole story, the entire piece will be monotonous, hard to read, and very boring. A good writer finds the balance.

02 Characters | Meet Mr. & Mrs. Mary Sue

If you haven’t already met Mr. & Mrs. Mary Sue, I will introduce them there. This couple represents the flawless (and therefore obnoxious) characters that are written because the author secretly wishes to be just like them (but obviously fails). Symptoms of your character showing Sueness includes: lack of real flaws, consistent goody-two-shoed-ness, and full-time job in love triangles.

No matter how creative your plot is, if you have any of the Sue family members infiltrating it, the plot is a dead plot. Characters like these make the story unrealistic regardless of how hard you try.  

03 Plot | Face Reality (or not)

Always ask yourself: if my friend told me that this was what happened, would I believe her? If you wouldn't then your fic is clearly unrealistic. If you’re writing a crack-fic, at least ask yourself: if my friend told me this, would I think that she is joking or high? (Joking is the desired answer.) If you’re writing a fantasy/alternate universe, ask yourself: if I were in one of the characters’ shoes, would I think that everyone else is over/under-reacting to the situation?

When an action occurs, consequences always follow. Don’t just limit yourself to reactions from your characters—there are other forces playing: law enforcement agents (cops), parents/family, even passerby on the street. If your character is murdered, do the police come? Do the character’s parents seek revenge? Does someone on the street see it and scream?

Also, unless the protagonist has a serious illness, no one faints every other second. No one gets run over by cars every other second either.

04 Dialogue | I’m Not Listening

Sometimes pointless bantering is just pointless bantering. If you have long stretches of dialogue in your story that doesn’t actually progress the plot, then take it out. Unless you’re writing a comedy and the dialogue is the story’s only source of liveliness, of course. For example, useless dialogue includes conversations with a waiter that won’t show up again, petty arguments with the celebrity that doesn’t initiate or resolve anything, etc.

05 Plot | We Don’t Understand

If you ever feel like even you don’t really know what had just transpired in your story, then your reader will have even less clue than you do. If you think that your own plot is far-fetched, then in your reader’s mind they’re reading a three-year old’s account of how babies are born. Don’t switch POVs more than twice a chapter. Don’t flashback at every opportunity and don’t stick in random A/N’s explaining what had just happened at every break either.

06 Flow | Don’t Get a Watch. Actually, Get One.

People frequently write as a story like they were writing a recipe: put this in, stir that in, bake in the oven. Every minute is described with an equal number of words, no matter which minute is more important. It’s important to realize that writing is like dreaming: time doesn’t count. You can write an entire chapter about the events of two seconds, or you can write a paragraph that discusses the events of two millenniums. Obviously, the two seconds would be more important than the millennium—and that is the desired effect. When your character proposes to another character, that is the important two seconds. When they argue with their friends about what to have for dinner, that is the useless millennium. Throw away your sense of time when being dramatic.

When writing dialogue, it is essential to be aware of time. Jesus Christ, you think, half of my chapter space is taken up by a discussion on the color of Heechul’s boots! Jesus Christ, then, take out every other line in that discussion. If you insert useless verbal exchanges all over the place, it makes your story feel chunky. After reading a whole chapter just about two people talking, it makes the reader feel as if the writing has no substance.   

07 Language | Pretty and Awful

I see you grade-schoolers out there trying to use words like phthisis. It’s only impressive when you use it correctly. When you’re semi-familiar with a word, go look around first and figure out how it’s used before sticking it in a sentence randomly. Sometimes words look like nouns but really aren’t, or look like adjectives but really aren’t. Sure, you can be creative—but unless it’s on purpose, some words you just can’t “twist”. For example, you can’t say “giggling sob” or “she runs fabulous” because it just doesn’t make sense.

08 Style | We’re Not Stupid

This goes out to the authors who feel the need to announce every single POV change. Readers aren’t made out of straw. We have brainz (hopefully) and we can figure out who is narrating. If we can’t, all the better! That makes it more intriguing. But seriously, if we can’t make out any of your speakers without your broadcasting it in bold, underline, and italics; then you either lack in your writing or characterization. In any case, never ever stick a “Heechul’s POV” in your fic. It makes your writing look unprofessional like no other.

It's also very irritating to see "***** Flashback ****" and "~End flashback~" every other chapter. If there is a flashback, you don't have to annouce that so obviously. Sometimes authors writer "10 years ago" or a specific date for each part of the story. Have you ever read "~FLASHBACK!~" in a real-life novel? No. There's a reason why the authors don't chuck one in--it looks terribly unprofessional and makes the readers feel as if the author thinks their IQ is about equivalent to that of a bumble bee.

09 Language | Speaking of Stupid…

If you write with a thick stash of “OMFG!” and “EEEEEKKKKK!!!!” and feel the need to stick either excessive exclamation marks or weird punctuation marks (including but not limited to ~), you appear to me to be a seven-year old who has just found the wonders of the internet. If you haven’t seen your kind of punctuation or capitalization or acronyms used in a 20th century novel, take it out. If you read the more advanced writers’ fictions, you might actually catch some mad caps-locking, but it’ll be easy to tell that they’re doing it as a stylistic maneuver and not to sound utterly dim-witted.