Chapter One: Some Important Pre-Story Tools

Oh, I know. Goat forbid you make any pre-writing preparations. Well, suck it up, Bucky (can I call you Bucky?), because here, time is quality. And quality, my friend, is… um, quality.

1.Writing Style

The first thing I'd like to mention is more of a graduate-as-you-write kind of thing. Your writing style is basically a certain pattern or technique that an author sometimes uses to make his or her story their ownandunique to their writing… Mostly without even thinking about it. It's kind of hard to explain, but after reading a certain author's different works you tend to notice a certain similarity that they use over and over again out of habit. I love figuring these out… Take my sister Danae versus our good buddy Kara. They've both been writing for at least three years, and they've each developed their own styles, slowly but surely. Danae tends to use choppier sentences, sometimes taking a jump into the character's mind. Kara pops metaphors out like my mother's best Italian friend pops out little Italian children (who have a strange obsession with trying to destroy my left shin with plastic swords and unnecessary hiking boots... bloody hiking boots...), and likes lists. Take a look at some old stories of theirs and try to see what I mean…

Excerpt from 'Change: Diapers, a Piece of Banana, and the World' by Danae Melavowig (aka, starsnmoons91)

Oh, Mum, he took it away. He took it away, Mum! What are you going to do about your husband? Hmm? What? Surely YOU know how it feels to… Oh, you don't. That big toothy grin of yours. It makes my heart melt, Mum. It's the same with James. He talks about you when he rocks me to bed. Your smile, your pretty hair, the eyes you gave me… Somehow… I'm not quite sure how that works, but my dad says I have good genes. I don't know what that means, Mum. Genes. Didn't you tell me you wore them the other day? I wish you would answer me every once in a while. Lily. I like your name. I really like it, Mum. I- MOTHER, PICK ME BACK UP!

Excerpt from 'Shallow' by Kara Rhinehardt (aka pippagethetook01)

Harry felt no emotion. There was no grief, anger, melancholy, nothing, until a spark lit in the very foundation of his heart, which had stopped…Years? Minutes? Seconds?...an unusually long time ago. This ember, while small, was like a switch turning on a million lights all at once. He felt once again.

What it was that he felt was hard to say, really. An atypical jumble of remorse, grief, loss…but most of all, anger, odium, malice. He stood up, and with a huge swish of his wand, threw an advancing death eater against a wall so hard that a rather satisfying crack was heard.

The corners of Harry's eyes were red, and he did not consider the staggering odds. He lifted his wand high and a bronze dome formed all around him. Random curses, jinxes, words flew out of his mouth like falcons, not a one missing its target. The last one pulled Ron into the bubble and then he Apparated both of them into a small dark room.

Spotted? I really hope so, Bucky, because this is kind of hard to explain.

Anyway, the best way to develop a writing style is simply to write! No beginner has one yet. I think. But forgetting I said that, you probably won't even realize you HAVE a unique technique (AN UNUSUAL RHYME!) until you sit there and think about it.

It's one of those nice things to have. Kind of like a dog. I can think of SOOO many metaphorical similarities betwixt the two… But I won't bother you with things like how they can both help you out in a pickle, serve recreational purposes... All that kind of stuff.

2. A Plan

In all honesty, I must say that I feel like a complete hypocrite for even adding this to the tutorial. All but a total of one multi-chapter stories I have EVER written had a planned ending, and that ending was iffy. But this is just a tool chapter, so I'm safe. My beloved One-Shots back me up, too.

A plan is good for several reasons. First off, it is a much easier way to keep your story on track. When you have a destination in mind, it makes it that much easier to get there.

Another is time. Since you've got your story organized and figured out, you'll be able to get there that much faster instead of thinking up somewhere to go chapter after chapter. Who likes a great story that takes a year to read?

And the last thing I can think of (tee hee) is for your own sake. How hard would it be to put a good mystery together when you have no idea what the resolution will be? I mean, maybe that's my inner can't-write-a-good-mystery-worth-curdled-milk coming out, but I'm just trying to give a good example. Okay? STOP YELLING AT ME, BUCKY!

3. A Good Writing Program

Don't even get me started. DON'T FREAKING DO IT.

Alright, too late.

A good writing program (such as Microsoft Word XP) is crazy important. It's like… (and here we see my metaphorical grandeur…) if Notepad was black paper and Word was white paper- with spell check- and you had a black pen, which would you rather write on?

…Okay, that was stupid.

But you get my point, right?

Just forget the last four sentences.

Basically, Buckster, all I care about in a program are two very important things: Your Three Main Doo-Dads (SO I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE CALLED…) and Spell Check. The former of which isn't completely necessary, and the latter being almost as important as the words you write themselves.

The Three Doo-Dads (You know them as bold, italics, and underlines), I think, make adding your story to the site ten million times easier. Of all the acceptable documents on Fan Fiction, all but Notepad (which SUCKS BOLOGNA PUREE) carry these thingies over from the original document to the Doc Manager. That's all I have to say about that.

Now, Spell Check. Notice I capitalize 'Spell Check'. This is because Spell Check is very, VERY IMPORTANT. Spell Check has saved me from many an embarrassing typo and has probably auto-fixed even more. Spell Check loses its beauty-osity when morons disregard it.

And that's all I have to say about that.

…Spell Check.

The next Luchadore to wear some sweet and stretchy recreational pants,
Kyle Ignatious Melavowig, the freakin' FIRST AND ONLY