This is more of a tip but opt for precise words whenever you can. There is no such thing as a very tired man. Use exhausted. There is no such thing as an extraodinarily sad man. Use melancholy. There is no such thing as extremely mad man. Use furious. Another tip is watching out for tenses. There are times when I've encountered an author change from present to past tense halfway through the story. Be cautious of how you break up your paragraphs. Really short breaks inbetween and you'll annoy your readers meanwhile really long breaks inbetween will make the story [more of a] chore for your reader to get through. Crack open any novel and when do you see a long, winding clunk of text? Another tip is to be mindful of how you communicate character growth to your readers. You can't have your MC hating guns in chapter 1 but by the end of chapter 3, she can't stop marveling at the weight of the metal in her hands just for the sake of adding conflict to the story. Something I personally love is when the author sprinkles in clues and hints to something that shows up/ occurs later on. Good luck with your fanfictions!
Agree with what has been mentioned in earlier comments. Please do not use running fonts to write, as even with largest settings of size, its unreadable on a hand phone screen. Also a big no-no to coloured fonts. Please be considerate to reader's eyes. And then there are those popular ( because of overdose of ) fics where the english grammar has gone for a toss.. A few people like me need to read the first page, before subscribing, just to see if the author can write in english where the story / scenario plot can be imagined. Pen down your imagination & narrate your story... But situations like MPreg ? Err Hmmm. Last one on my list.. Do not leave your story incomplete, once its FEATURED !! Please try to complete it Or give it a closure if you have a writer's block. Thank you. - Sincerely.
Opinions are subjective, so it's kinda hard to say whether or not a specific thing is a do or don't. Though, I will say that all of the things that the people listed below are good examples. Here are some of my don'ts for writing.
-Don't put author notes or pictures in the middle of the fic. They're annoying and mess up the flow of the story. You shouldn't put a picture in place of actually describing something in your story. Adjectives and description words exist for a reason, use them.
-DO NOT WRITE BUTTERFLY KISSES AS LIGHT, FLEETING KISSES. That is not what they are, and it still pisses me off to this day that people are using them wrong. Butterfly kisses are done with eyelashes. Stop writing that your characters are rubbing their eyeballs all over someone else's body.
-Don't threaten your readers. It's extremely immature and makes people unsubscribe when you threaten to stop posting just because they don't reach a certain quota you put out for subs and/or comments.
-Don't use character lists to introduce your characters. Characters should be introduced naturally through the story itself, not have the readers read some crappy mini bio about them in the foreword section.
Do: write whatever the f u wanna write n don't let others discourage you! Use capital letters when needed and proper punctuation (I tend to over-use commas laksjdfkl). also do write in black n don't go all out with colors lmao! Also do use readable fonts.
Don't: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT USE KOREAN WORDS WHEN YOU'RE WRITING A FIC IN ANYTHING THAT IS NOT KOREAN. things like 'hyung' or 'noona' or of that sort are... acceptable, but it makes me cringe sO bad when ppl use 'annyeong' instead of just hi/hello or other things... like, please... or than that whatever --Syke-- and SugarSystem said~
I agree with --Skye--, there are a whole lot more things about what not to do when it comes to writing... Punctuation and text format are important, besides bold/italic, the color is also important. I've came across with threads using bright pink as the color of the whole text, it tires our eyes. Another thing I personally think it's bad is inserting a bunch of difficult long uncommon words to look professional and superior. Exploring vocabulary is wonderful and there should be some unused words in your story, but one after another is honestly tiring and make the text hard to understand. Fanfics should be easy, the purpose is having fun, diving in a new world, if it's boring and way too serious, people probably won't like it.
well there's a lot of dos and donts when it comes to writing and i'm definitely not going to name them all. but something i find important is proper punctuation -- a story could have perfect grammar but if it has improper use of punctuation i cant read it lol. same thing with some writer putting their whole fanfic in bold/italic when its unnecessary? so a do is get a beta who can check these things for you or try and figure it out yourself. a dont is being lazy about these things!!
