General Writing Techniques
Applying to the Harry Potter FanFiction
Volume 1-Typos
There is an epidemic I have been noticing in "Fan Fiction", ravaging the (allegorical) golden plains of decent writing-the careless mistake. This "disease", so to speak, has reared its ugly, ugly head in many forms.
The first is the "TYPO." You may not have realized this, but TYPO is a marvelously clever acronym for TYping POop. This is exactly what a typo is-a spelling error, an extra comma, or something of the like. The simplest way to fix this problem is to use spell check, and to triple check your work. Here are some exercises to keep your typo-spotting skills sharp.
The wand flue out of Harrys hand and Draco caut it with a evil grinn.
What did you spot in Ex. 1? It was started off right-with a capital letter-but the third word is incorrectly spelled. "Flue" is actually a word that means a smoke or heat outlet, or a type of organ pipe. The correct spelling is "flew."
The next error is in our own hero's name-this is a possessive "s" and should be proceeded with an apostrophe. The next thing is actually optional-depending on the writer's preference, a comma may be inserted after "hand", however, the sentence is grammatically correct without it.
The third gaffe is in the tenth word of this messed up sentence. It is no more than a simple misspelling, and takes only a second to fix. "Caut" should be "Caught". The three last words contain two errors that I hope you've spotted- "a" should be changed to "an" because "evil" begins with a vowel sound. The last slip-up is the very last word-take off the one extra "n" and you will have successfully typo-proofed your sentence.
This is what the corrected sentence looks like:
The wand flew out of Harry's hand and Draco caught it with an evil grin.
For the record, and for everyone's amusement-
This iz wut ive scene setunses look lik. Ppl writ abut harrie and drako and hermyone witout even capatalising they're namz. This iznot what a paragrafshould lok lik.
Pick up ur wand, harry! Snape said harry piked up his wand and then drawped it and picked it up again in hishand He said Avada kedavra and almost killed snape but snape dodged it and then Killed harry but harry dodged it and came back to living yo Snape you helped Voldywort kill my mum now u gonna die harry said Snape stared back and harry killed him But snape dodged it and came Back to the living but Then he had a heart Attack and died from Clogged arteries harry said YEAH and then went to Make out with some hot american Exchange stoodent
I'm going to make this story all better-delete it. If your writing looks like that, hang yourself.
Nice work, eh? The last thing I want to address is the use of the words "Your" and "You're".
"Your" refers to an item belonging to someone, i.e.-
Your robes smell like a dead cat, Ron.
"You're" is a contraction for the words 'You' and 'Are', as used here-
You're in need of some deodorant, Ron, or perhaps Febreeze.
One last thought before I urge you to review with your successes of trying my infallible method, though-TYping POop can make or break a story. Remember that, and you will do fine.
-Rudy