I've had several people ask me for writing feedback on Wattpad, and some of the same questions kept coming up over and over again, so I've collected the answers for anyone who needs them.
Disclaimer: I'm no English professor. I can only tell you what I've learned through reading and writing for most of my life. You might disagree with me, especially if you're someone who's very new at writing or as stubborn as I used to be when it came to getting critiques. I hated any advice that said my babies weren't the most perfect stories ever, which meant that for a long time, it was hard for me to improve my writing.
However, once you acknowledge that your work is far from perfect, you can make amazing strides to improve your writing. I had to come to that realization at one point, as does every decent author out there. With that said, I hope that my tips can bring your writing to the next level.
Side note: I'm talking specifically about American English grammar in the following paragraphs; other languages and regional dialects of English follow different rules. Also, to people who read and/or write a lot, these tips might seem stupidly simple, but the majority of the books on Wattpad fall prey to at least one of these mistakes, if not more.
Dialogue Formatting
There are several ways to punctuate dialogue. The most basic way is using standalone dialogue or dialogue with an attribution tag (I/he/she said).
"Hi, my name is Sally," she said.
"Of course it is," he said, "because you look like a Sally."
"Right."If the characters are doing something while they speak, you can write a character's action, then have their dialogue. You can do this with an attribution tag and a comma.
Sally smiled and said, "I love flowers."Or you can do this without an attribution tag, using a period.
Sally smiled. "I love flowers."You can also write a character's dialogue, then have them do an action. Again, you can do this with or without an attribution tag.
"Isn't this a wonderful day?" I asked, picking up a rock.
"This is a terrible day," she said as she stole my rock."I agree." Sally huffed.A third type of dialogue is where you put an action in the middle of dialogue.
"I think this is terrible," Marcy said as she licked the rock. "I hate Mondays."
"I hate them too." Sally laughed. "Stop eating rocks."
"This is... well," I said, clapping my hands, "it's really bad."If you do the last type where the two halves of the dialogue joined by commas, the two halves of the dialogue are supposed to be parts of the same sentence.
"I love pancakes," she said with a groan, "but I hate syrup."The following sentences are examples of dialogue punctuation mistakes that range from mildly annoying to makes-me-want-to-tear-my-hair-out terrible. You have been warned.
"I love pancakes," she said with a groan, "I hate syrup.""I love you" she said
"I hate you"
"Don't you love it" she asked with a smile "I love it"
"It's wonderful, I love it, don't you love it, I wish I had more of it," she said. I'm not completely sure if the following sentence can even be dignified with the status of "sentence," but for the love of sanity, don't use text speak unless a character is literally texting.
"I lov u and ur house omg it's amazing and so funny LMAO." Punctuation No-No's
Commas and periods are not the same thing. You can't write something like "It's wonderful, I love it, don't you love it, I wish I had more of it" and say that it's a grammatically correct sentence. If a statement can be its own sentence (like "I love it" or "you love it"), there are only a few things you can do with it it.
1. You can make it its own sentence.
I love it.2. You can join it to another sentence that could be its own sentence using a semicolon.
I love it; you love it. 3. You can join it to another sentence that could be its own sentence using a comma and a conjunction (for/and/nor/but/or/yet/so).
I love it, and you love it. I love it, but she hates it. 4. You can join it to another sentence that could NOT be its own sentence using just a comma (if the not-sentence comes first).
Because you love it, I love it. Before you loved it, I loved it.5. You can join it to another sentence that could NOT be its own sentence using nothing (if the not-sentence comes second).
I love it because you love it. I loved it before you loved it.There are a few punctuation marks and formatting items that aren't technically correct or incorrect, but overuse of them can be distracting and/or annoying.
Exclamation marks!
Ellipses...
Italics (In this case, I'm just talking about using italics for emphasis. If you're using italics to indicate thoughts etc., it doesn't matter how much you use it)There are also several formatting and punctuation marks you should never use, under any circumstances while writing a novel. Unless, of course, you would like to give your reader a brain aneurysm.
Bold Words
Underlined Words
ALL CAPS (I know I use all caps in my blog posts, but my tips are about writing novels, not blogs)
Exclamation points and question marks together??!?!?!?!?
More than one exclamation point!!!!!!!
More than one question mark???????
Txt spk (Text speak is pretty much always bad. Other abbreviations that aren't well-known are also bad unless you explain what they mean. Famous abbreviations like NASA or NYC are fine to include without much or any explanation)Thanks for reading, and I hope this was useful. If you have any other questions you would like me to go over, don't hesitate to comment or ask them in the forums!