I really am getting aggravated with seeing all these stories around that people submit and seriously thinking they’ll get praise for it.

So.. to put gently and avoid pain from not only you and your readers, here is some advice on how to get your story a bit… better.

1) Give it time.
Don’t rush yourself. A reader can tell when the author just rushed the story, or when he/she took time and effort into it.
Give yourself at least half an hour to produce a decent chapter of a series. If you take less time than that, then go proof read it, making a checklist of all of these steps. If you still have only sacrificed less than thirty minutes, then your chapter is painfully short, possibly suffering from lack of detail or story development.

2) Spell out your words.
Do you realize that about half of the users at MMOTales twitch whenever they see a “u” or an “r”? Spell those out and you’ll seem smarter ;]
Just as “proper writing etiquette”, restrict the use of acronyms or using the number pad. What I mean by that is… It just seems proper if you type out your numbers, like saying “the two went out on a date” instead of “the 2 went out on a date”

3) Punctuation
Stories get messy without proper use of punctuation and can confuse meanings, such as talked about in “4) Clauses, Phrases, Commas, and Sentence Structure”
As a big pet peeve for me and a major sign of noobiness… USE QUOTATION MARKS TO SIGNIFY A CHARACTER IS TALKING!
Also, don’t be holding that “1” and “/”… Having sentences like “Then he took out a sword!!!!!?!!??!??” takes out a lot of dramatic affect. (In my opinion at least)
Don’t forget the use of apostrophes in contractions. Just those small details start to pull together a fine paper.

4) Clauses, Phrases, Commas, and Sentence Structure
The comma is the most confusing punctuation mark in my opinion, but a good essay always uses them correctly for style and organization.
There are a lot of different types of clauses and phrases… Independent, dependent, direct, modifiers, adverb, et cetera. Learning all of the rules will go a long way, such as how misplaced modifiers can make you unintentionally funny.
But really, learning about phrases and clauses will boost your style. Instead of placing those details in parenthesis, you can insert a little appositive and let that define your subject for you.

5) Homophones
There, their, they’re…
It’s just a personal pet peeve of mine.
Don’t mix them up.

6) Capitalization
Meh.
Not much to say besides “capitalize names, beginnings of sentences”…
And for crying out loud, capitalize “I”‘s.

7) Proofread
For total refinement, a polished paper, something that does not make eyes bleed, and good reviews, I underline proofread thrice and highlight with many colors.
One tip is to write all blogs into Microsoft Word or some other program of the sort to catch all of our sloppy spelling mistakes. Typos happen… Do not be afraid of the power of spell check and the red squiggly lines!
If you DO just plain write it on MMOTales, then look up some words you’re unfamiliar to spell. Let dictionary.com be your best friend and learn how to spell “exercise”.

My final tip for Proofreading that I emphasize is to just plain… re-read the story. See if it makes sense.

This was just a basic rundown of improving a story technically with grammar and such, so I may be back with another one discussing other areas.
However, I hope you at least SKIMMED this blog and think again before you submit another of your nasty stories.

Let the grammar revolution begin!
Good luck, have fun, and I hope to see a better turn on things!