How To Write An Article

Of course, we all need to start somewhere. Not even the most amazing authors were born with a pen in their hand and a thousand ideas in their head! At first, you may have the ideas, but when it comes to putting them onto paper they all seem to run out your ears. Perhaps you simply don't know where to start.

This is where I come in.

In this article I will teach budding writers the do's and don't's of writing - not just for Neopia, but for the Real World, as well. These rules can be applied to practically any form of writing - the Neo Star, Neopian Times, petpages, roleplay boards... you name it. These are, in short, the most basic of ground rules to get you started writing not a standard, not an okay, but a good piece of work. Something free of those annoying little habits we writers seem to love, which you will love writing and which everyone else will enjoy reading. Even for more seasoned writers, hopefully this article will give you a few tips.

So, let's begin:

What To Do

- Make your writing seem intelligent. Use long words but only if you understand exactly what they mean, and are sure you're using them in the correct context. Throw words around blindly to make your writing sound clever, and two paragraphs down your readers will be reaching for the cutlery drawer to gouge their eyes out with a spoon in a desperate attempt to bring an end to the horror. On the other hand, however, vary your words and use long words if you can. Don't always say "said" - say "chided", "sneered", "droned", "giggled", "pestered". Dig out your old thesaurus and have a flick through it, see what nice-sounding, interesting words pop up and try to work them into the story. But remember, don't get carried away - no one likes a story that looks as if a thesaurus chewed it up and spat it back out again. Don't be afraid to still use basic words sometimes - they can actually be very effective when thrown in occasionally.

- Make sure your story has a solid plot with a beginning, a middle and an end. Your English teacher will probably have drilled this into your head so many times you'll be sick of hearing it, but it's an extremely important point. A story without these things is boring to read and often downright confusing for the reader. Try to have a key event somewhere around the middle - think of, say, the big fight scene in an action movie - and finish it off with a memorable climax.

- Remember, your story does not have to be in chronological order. If done properly, it can be incredibly effective to use a flashback, or switch around the order of the events, as long as it still makes sense and there's a purpose to it. For example, instead of writing a simple story where a pet walks down the street, wanders off the path into a forest and becomes lost, begin the story with the pet sitting underneath a tree, cold and starving with no idea of where he is, looking back on the events that lead up to that moment. This can increase the quality of your story tenfold if used skillfuly, but be warned: use it carelessly, and it could completely crush your story into the dust. Pointlessly muddling the events around does nothing for the plot and is simply confusing.

-Grammar! Grammar is a key point in writing; if your grammar stinks, the story will stink. Thankfully, it is not a skill that is hard to grasp - it is easily remembered once it's learned and anyone can (and should) do it. When writing, always remember to use proper punctuation and grammar - apostrophes in the correct places, commas when needed, and paragraphs at the beginning of a new subject. Another very useful tip is, before you finalise your work, open up a Word Processing document on your computer and run it through a spell-checker. This will point out and help correct any little mistakes.

What Not To Do

- A key point in your writing, wherever it is going to be, be it the Neo Star, a petpage or a roleplaying board, is to make it look professional. This means being very stingy when it comes to the two things that will send many readers clicking the back button - exclamation marks, and capital letters. Of course, both of these things - the latter in particular - are needed, but I have came across many writers on this site who are a little overly generous. NEVER, EVER DO THIS!!! This is bad; very bad. If you are trying to get a point across or put emphasis on a word or a phrase, use italics and one exclamation mark. One is all you need.

-Purple prose. You may or may not have heard this phrase before, but purple prose is a trap many potentially brilliant writers fall into. Put simply, this is when a writer douses every single element of their story in sugar, flowers and rainbows. They take twenty lines to describe a garden of flowers, a glass of water or someone's hair. For example, instead of saying "the boy was pale", they will say, "the boy had the most perfectly smooth skin that almost glowed incandescently as if a match had been struck from behind, as pure and perfectly white as freshly-fallen snow in a beautiful country landscape before it had been disturbed by human feet, like an angel's wings with long, soft, perfect white feathers reaching up to point to the sky".

Notice the word "perfect" was repeated, the similes were stretched out painfully until you forgot completely what the author was actually describing, and there were a ridiculous amount of unnecessary words in there - for example, "human feet". Why the "human" part? What else would she be talking about, a gorilla's feet? In fact, why that part at all? That isn't needed; leave it out. Also, the "with long, soft, perfect white feathers reaching up to point to the sky". This is an example of purple prose in its most horrific form. For the sake of your potential writing career, never go down this road. For one thing, if we are talking about this person being pale we do not need to know the feathers his skin is being compared to are "long" and "soft" and we certainly do not need to know which way they are pointing; that's just ridiculous. Of course, some of these things are needed and will improve your writing, but this is why so many writers fall into this trap - they believe that if they use buckets and buckets of it, it will make their writing better. Wrong. For example, say you are writing about a vampire, or vampires. For many years, in literature, vampires have been described as being very pale and attractive (no, I am most certainly not making references to Twilight here, I am making references to every other vampire novel out there except Twilight). The first time you describe your vampiric character, you can use some of these elements to paint a picture of what they look like, as this, of course, is important. But only do it once. Do not do it the next time you write about him in the next paragraph, or even the next chapter, or the next twenty chapters. We don't need to know - we already have the image in our heads. But please remember - stick to a happy medium with description. Description is fantastic; purple prose isn't.

- Although the term itself isn't particularly well-known among writers, the actual thing is something we've all seen many times before; and, I'm sure, something we all hate. A Deus ex machina is a mistake many writers make, when an object or a person appears completely out of the blue with no indication of existence at any point earlier on in the story to help overcome a difficulty that would otherwise have disastrous consequences. A character may, for example, wind up in a burning plane, and the writer will panic because they can't have their character die. So, they will do this (the part highlighted in bold is the part which you should avoid at all costs):

."Flames were flaring all around Bob, his ears assaulted with the constant snap and screech of charred metal as the fire's orange fingers tore at the plane's foundations, throwing sheets of blackened iron through the smoke-drenched sky. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe for the suffocating smoke. He only had one choice - he would have to jump. But would he make it? ."Suddenly, the smoke parted miraculously to reveal a round, red button on the dashboard that read "EJECT" in big black letters. He had never seen it before. "Yay!" said Bob as he pressed the button with a smile on his face. The seat sprang into the air with Bob gripping the sides and swinging his legs. A parachute spread out above him and he floated gleefully into a field of flowers as the remnants of the aeroplane behind him crashed into the water, leaving only a great turret of black smoke. "Wow!" said Bob as he picked a flower and unclipped his seat belt, hopping to his feet, "That could have been me!

... No. Just, no. Never do this. To be fair, my example is the worst it can possibly get, but I see this a lot in roleplays, petpages and even published novels. Instead of this, Bob could have jumped and landed in the water, where he could have held onto a sheet of metal from the crashed plane and tried to find his way to land. He could have found himself on a desert island, or be rescued by a passing ship. These would have opened up new and exciting paths in the story and wouldn't have made the reader slam the book shut in disgust. And besides, after Bob landed in the field of flowers, what was he going to do? Phone his mum to be picked up, go home and have a shower? Wow, what an exciting story that would be.

- Plot holes. Plot holes are terrible, terrible things, but again they are a regular occurence among writers. A plot hole in basically when a writer leaves out an important element of the story which could otherwise affect it greatly - put simply, the writer just forgets about it. Forgetting isn't something you can do when you're writing; it will be noticed, and the quality of your story will go down the drain. To prevent this, try keeping a note of all the elements of the story - even the ones that don't seem important, because those are the ones you're most likely to forget about - and later on, go back to each one and see if it still applies. Compare it to real life - is this something your character could really get away with? Would this really happen, or am I just doing this to make my life easier? Tread carefully; never cut corners.

Conclusion

And there you have it. Hopefully this article has given you a few helpful pieces of advice you didn't know about before. Go forth, budding author, and write the best-seller we have all been waiting for, and may your pen and your mind both stay sharp!