I thought this might be useful for those of you who find this whole thing difficult. If you've got questions, let me know and I'll put the answers up here.
Kathy.
Get help with Grammar - Get help with Punctuation
Use a dictionary - and your Spellcheck - then get a friend to help - or get someone to beta-read your work. A list of commonly-confused words (with a special note of any I see in TYR fan fiction) is here.
Keep them short, with not too many clauses.Make sure they're full sentences. Use the active rather than passive voice, eg. 'The marshal chased the bandits' rather than 'The bandits were chased by the marshal.'
Avoid one sentence paragraphs, unless you're using dialogue. Even then, try to use more than one sentence at a time for pages and pages... If you're writing non-fiction, the first sentence of the paragraph should be a topic sentence ie. one that explains what the paragraph will be about. Then expand on the topic sentence. Remember: one paragraph, one idea.
99% of the time, use the past tense only. In English, almost all fiction is written in the past tense, and unless you really know what you're doing, don't change this. 'He rode the horse' - past tense. 'He is riding the horse' - present tense. 'He will ride the horse' - future tense. There are further divisions, but that explains all you probably need to know.
Except in instructional pieces such as this, the second person (You) is never used. First person 'I' is for autobiographies (fact or fictional) and some academic disciplines. The rest of the time, use the third person (write as someone observing the action.)
Avoid clichés like the plague! (LOL) Figures of speech become overused very quickly, and boring! Don't forget also that the Internet community is made up of people from everywhere, who may not be familiar with your colloquialism.
Go through your first draft and cut out any unnecessary words. Verbosity is confusing and pretentious - don't say 'more economically viable' if you mean 'cheaper', at least not in fan fiction.
Rather than boy/girl, use 'child, etc.
We usually only vary speech by changing the placing of the adjective, i.e. we change the he said part of the sentence from the beginning, to somewhere in the middle, or to the end. Here's the correct punctuation involved:
Be careful - you can only use one period or full stop per sentence. Have another look at the use of the commas in the examples above.
These are used to show ownership, the mane of the horse - the horse's mane. It is never used to show that there is more than one of something. one gun - two guns -not two gun's. (OK, it's one of my pet hates....Does it show? :-)
This is the easy way to remember it:
Apostrophes may also be used to show that a letter has been omitted - does not – don't, etc.
Numbers under 100 in formal writing should be written out - one hundred.
This list is by no means comprehensive. If you have a question, email me.
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