STEP BY STEP       

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

HI! My name is Hajar, but I'm usually called Hye Jin.

Okay, I have this smart tip for novice writers and everybody scared from all the “Grammar” trolls they meet during their writings.

The tip is to write step by step.

No! I didn’t mean to write slowly

I mean this!

STEP I: Write the basics.

I’ll explain it in the easiest way I can manage, okay?

Imagine that I am writing a story. If I do, I’ll start this way.

Draft N°1: Basic

“I looked at Joseph and John. Joseph threw a paper toward John’s chest. John didn’t react.”

Okay, it’s pretty simple. You did put the main actions of the story (I know it’s short but you will guess why did I use such small paragraph.)

Draft N°2: Connect

In this, if you need to connect phrases, you use connectors as “But, Therefore, so, and, However, etc.” in this case, you may even change the punctuation! BE CAREFUL ABOUT YOUR PONCTUATION!

Let’s go back to our small paragraph and let me add the connectors!

“When I looked at Joseph and John, Joseph threw a paper toward John’s chest. However, John didn’t react.”

Oh! The whole small paragraph grew a little! Yehet~<3.

 This is the basic form your story should be like.

Step 2: Colors and tones.

This step is pretty hard for novice, I tell you. So, don’t force yourself to draw a PERFECT image. Go Simple.

Draft N° 3: Tones

Let me explain what I meant by tones first.

Tone is how the story expresses you. If you are angry, it will be seen in your story; believe me. That is what tone is, and I don’t need to give you a whole article about it now! I’ll do it later, okay?

Let’s continue with the same paragraph.

“When, startled, I looked at an angry Joseph and a shocked John; Joseph threw irritably a paper at John’s chest. However, speechless, John didn’t react.”

Even if in basic form you could feel the tone of anger I used, adding emotions to the story give it a clear tone. You can feel the anger in the story even better, right? (HELL YEAH! I AM FREAKING PISSED OFF AT WORK *taking a deep breath*)

So the first thing, give your plot a tone; it will be easier to understand the plot if the emotions are well expressed. Don’t use a looooooooooot of bad words, just a word expressing the feeling of a character is enough. Isn’t the example I gave a better proof?

Draft N°4: Colors!

Colors are obviously the details!!!

Let me show you with our example:

“When, startled, I looked at an angry Joseph and a shocked John standing in the middle of Hallow Bridge; Joseph threw irritably a white paper at John’s bare chest, making some aged women passing by throw a startled look. However, speechless, the usually furious John didn’t react.”

As you can see, I added details that fit the paragraph but the details can go over other things as decors, events, minor characters (I’ll make a whole freaking chap about characters!), etc.

Step 3: Auto-correct!

Okay, most of us don’t speak English enough well to correct themselves but you can always check! And always ask yourself:

Did I write this right?

Is it how we spell it?

I am sure that I made a grammatical mistake or two. I can’t see them now, but I’ll see them when I’ll reread this whole article later. I at least read my articles 10 to 12 times per month, so that is why I take time updating lately. It's the last thing I do before saying "I finished the chapter".

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author's note:

┌                                                                              ┑

I hope it helped!   

┗                                                                              ┘