Post by TwistedLover on Nov 24, 2013 20:29:17 GMT -5
Writing Rules
Welcome to the Writing Subforum of the Artwork Forum! Here you'll be able to post the stories that you've written, whether they're simple one-shots, flash fiction, novels, or any other kind of story that you can imagine.This thread will help you understand the rules that are enforced within this subforum so that you know how to behave, as well as what is and is not acceptable.
Please read through these rules. Anything that does not follow these rules will be locked and you will have a month to make changes before it is deleted.
What do I do if my thread is locked?
It's simple, you will have more than enough time to look at your thread. At the top of your thread I will add a comment in red text explaining what rules it broke. Then you will simply have time to either
-Rewrite/edit/add to the parts of the writing that you have in the thread. Then send it in a PM to myself, TidalMewMew, DragonSoulSong, HydroPumper, or ShinySharpedo. If any of us approve it we will unlock the thread and allow you a full day to edit the thread with the new content.
-Completely ignore that the thread was locked, in which case it will be deleted after two months. You'll therefore have more than enough time to fix everything or save the writing you had in the thread onto your computer for later useage.
-Decide to create a new thread entirely for the same story with your edited writing in the thread. You do not have to contact any of the moderators for this, however if it still violates the rules (Especially if you simply repost the original thread and change nothing at all) then it will only be re-locked.
What happens if I post something that breaks these rules?
Simple, it will be locked and your thread post will be edited at the top with a comment from the locking moderator on why it was locked. Then you simply have to do either of those three choices up there to change it so it fits.
These rules are not to punish anyone but encourage better writing practices. We've seen that the Writing subforum has become a place where popular trends happen that people just post up something that's around even a paragraph long, which is not acceptable at all.
Before you read any further, there is a difference between critique and criticism. Critique is where you point out flaws in something and make suggestions so that the owner can improve it as well as learn from it so they can do better in the future. Criticism is when you're only pointing out the flaws, doing so negatively and only caring about insulting the person's work. There is no concern towards helping the person do better, only showing off how "good" you are in comparison.
Know the difference between the two and always go for critique instead of criticism, it's the only way anyone will ever get any better. Think about it: Would you want someone only insulting you and what you've done? Certainly not! You'd want help making it better, which is what you should always do for everyone else.
Continual negative criticism can lead to warnings, account suspensions if continued, and in extreme cases a ban.
General Writing Rules
The number one rule that everyone should follow is to add "tags" to your writing, which is to be in your title after your writing title within "[]".
Examples are what type of writing you're doing, such as "poetry" "short story" "one-shot". Also add whether it is "ongoing", "completed", "abandoned", "hiatus". This will let readers know whether a story is finished, whether it is still going on, or whether it is never going to be completed.
It will also be expected that you add a rating system to your tags so that people know straight away whether or not they are mentally prepared for the story itself. The rating system used should probably be the regular one for writing, which is K for anyone including children, PG-13 if it has some swears/dodgy content, and M if only those prepared for mature and adult content should read it.
-This shouldn't even have to be said but do not under any circumstances post content that is not yours. Do not steal written material from others, it is unacceptable as much as artwork theft is and if repeatedly done can end in account suspension or banning.
-Any story that will have a prologue cannot have just the prologue posted up. You must have at least the first chapter done as well before you go posting the story. The prologue is generally accepted to be around 500 words, so please try not to only write short prologue blurbs that are really only trailers for your story.
-Do not post something if it is not finished. If your chapter (Or story/poem) is not written out and you haven't properly re-read it to check for mistakes then do not post it up. Only post finished content so that the readers don't have to re-read a chapter if you change things in it wondering what was changed. Some (I do this especially) may not even bother to re-read it because they don't want to hunt through your chapter to find what may very well just be a small change within it.
-When you post please make sure it's in paragraph format, and by that I don't mean one giant or multiple giant paragraphs. People simply don't enjoy reading that kind of writing style and it isn't very intuitive. Each bit of dialogue should have it's own line, each time you move onto something different it should be into a new paragraph. Don't end up with hulking and intimidating paragraphs. I know for a fact that when I run into those I either skip the story entirely or don't put in the effort to read the giant monsters within the story.
-Only minimal amounts of violence is acceptable, you can write fight scenes but it cannot go into the territory of pure gore. Remember that children could read these stories, don't go into horrifying detail of gross body parts and the like within your story.
-Do not overly romanticize your story. To better understand what I mean, only PG-13 material is acceptable within this forum, trying to put romantic M-rated material here will only result in temporary suspension and the removal of your story.
-Use proper grammar and sentence-structures when posting your stories, you want your stories to be readable by the members that are here and therefore you should spend some time looking over your story and making sure that the sentences make sense.
-General Pokestadium rules apply within this forum, therefore you are not allowed to insult or mock someone for what they write. If someone doesn't write as well as your standard is you do not under any circumstances try to make them feel bad about it. Instead write a critique of the story listing (In kind terms) what you think is wrong with it as well as what could be changed. Remember, your intent is to help them learn so that they can write the story/other stories better than they could before.
-Don't post spam within the stories themselves, you cannot simply just go "I liked this" or "Oh nice work". Maybe go into more detail about what you liked in the story. Knowing what their readers liked helps a writer to write more of that, so give them feedback on what's working in the story for you.
-Chapters should typically be more than 500 words, something to engage the reader as well as interest them. Please try not to write cliche stories that have already been done multiple times before, make something exciting and make sure that your chapters actually have something interesting within them! Don't post up a chapter if it's just a small blurb about your character waking up and realizing something has happened. Add more action to it!
-Don't ask for characters within your story, make them yourself or look up character ideas online. You want the story to be yours, you don't need to rely on other people when you have a great imagination with a wide assortment of people just waiting to jump into your writing!
There are different kinds of stories and therefore it's nearly impossible to have just a general rule for stories within the Writing Sub-forum. Instead there will be varying rules depending on what your story is meant to be.
The story categories we will have are: Flash, One-shot, Short story, Poems, Long stories.
Flash story: These are typically referred to as flash fiction and are meant to be very short stories that capture a moment in time or a quick event. They can be extremely open to interpretation by readers as well as very detail oriented at times depending on what the writer wants. A widely accepted word-length is around 300-1,000 words.
One-Shot: A story that has no chapters within it, it's simply one long page of written material. It can be a few pages to many, depending on what the author wants. These stories can and often do contain multiple scenes however, therefore it's not just one long scene continuing on and on.
Short Story: Short stories can be somewhere between a flash story as well as a novel. There is no set length to them, therefore they can be as short as you want or as long as you want. These stories typically have a small amount of characters and focus on a single event or theme, attempting to keep a consistent feeling throughout the story itself. These can also be very detail-oriented, involving different senses so that the reader feels like they're actually there in the story along with the characters themselves.
Poem: These are typically found in sentence-formats, it's rare for a poem to use actual paragraphs. These are more meant to make the reader feel a certain type of emotion or interpret the poem itself based on their life experiences. Can be really hard to write well because they use a lot of varying techniques to work.
Long Story: Like with short stories the exact length that's considered to be a long story (Novel/novella) varies depending on who you'll ask. Therefore it's easier to understand this type of story as one that can have a large amount of characters and focus on many events. Usually the events occur over time and can overlap into an overall "story arc". (Think Harry Potter, each book had many characters. As more books came out they got longer and each one had their own series of events going on but they tied into the overall story.)
Category Rules
We may decide to add further rules as time goes by, therefore when a new rule is added this thread will be unlocked and the new rule will be posted so everyone knows it now exists. It will be edited into where it fits in the rules and the thread will be re-locked once more.
Flash Story
These stories should have at least 300 words in them, they can of course be longer than 1000 words if the writer wants to lengthen it.
One-Shot
-These stories should be longer than a page and can be as many pages longer that you want.
-It should be easy to understand. You can play around with where you place events within the story (Baccano is a good example of this. They have three ongoing timelines at once, one several hundred years ago, one hundreds of years ago, and one a hundredish years ago. They change what timeline you're viewing between episodes, but in the end you get an idea of what's going on and understand what you've seen/read.) but it must have some kind of logic to it. Don't just simply start writing about one event and then skip to another without any warning, then go straight back again without warning. This only confuses readers and isn't good for story-writing.
-One-shots can interconnect. Meaning you can write a one-shot for say a Pokemon trainer who battles her way to winning the championship. You can still write another one-shot focusing on that same character or perhaps another character within that storyverse for another story altogether.
Short story
-Same as the one-shots, please make sure that your chapters are longer than a page at least. You can post as many pages as you want within any one chapter. It would also be preferred if you would place your separate chapters (And prologue if you have one) into spoilers within the first post once you have more than one chapter up. If you hit a word limit within your post you may instead put links to where each of your chapters are located within the thread.
-If you have more than one chapter and you're linking to the post for each chapter please put a link to the previous chapter at the top of that post as well as a link to the next chapter (If you have it posted) at the end of that post as well. This helps readers navigate through your various chapters without having to move back to the first post.
-Because these are short stories you may not have chapters, therefore if you don't you can simply post the entire thing that you've written up all in the first post.
Poem
-Don't post confusing things, please. Your poem should make some degree of sense and not just be simple ramblings. If they are ramblings they should be so for a reason and it should have clues for the readers to understand what's going on.
Long Stories
-Same as the one-shots, please make sure that your chapters are longer than a page at least. You can post as many pages as you want within any one chapter. It would also be preferred if you would place your separate chapters (And prologue if you have one) into spoilers within the first post once you have more than one chapter up. If you hit a word limit within your post you may instead put links to where each of your chapters are located within the thread.
-If you have more than one chapter and you're linking to the post for each chapter please put a link to the previous chapter at the top of that post as well as a link to the next chapter (If you have it posted) at the end of that post as well. This helps readers navigate through your various chapters without having to move back to the first post.
-Please, please if you're going to devote your time towards this be ready to write for the long haul. And if you're not able to continue writing make sure that you inform your readers on your thread that you've discontinued writing the story. It's really disappointing to continue waiting for a new chapter that's never going to be coming out and you don't even know that.
Writing Help Material
There are several resources that will be available for writers to receive help in their stories from.
Brainstorming Critique Thread
Link to thread
This thread will allow a writer to post a description of what they're thinking of writing about. Such as "I'm thinking of writing a story where two trainers have to battle against a masked man while struggling with their mutual dislike and rivalry towards each other". (Pokemon Special shoutout anyone?)
Of course you'll probably want to put a little more detail into it than that, it's hard to give critiques when you have so little description but you get the idea.
Anyone who wants to can comment on the description you've given and give tips on what you could change to make the story more interesting or add more feeling/depth.
Don't think the thread is just for when you're wanting to make a story! You can also use it for simply scenes within the story, or chapters.
Have a few characters you're wanting to have fight some strong Pokemon and the scene you have written or are thinking of writing feels wrong? Explain what you're attempting to do, how things go in the fight, and get feedback on how you could make it better.
Beta Reading Thread
Link to Thread
This thread will focus on people who will be "Beta Readers". Basically they will accept having your story/chapter sent to them so that they can read it and edit it to make it better or fix up little grammar mistakes. It's all up to you what you want them to do, each Beta can determine what they're willing to do.
You may have one Beta who will read your story and fix all your grammar/sentence mistakes and another Beta is willing to help re-write some scenes that were tricky for you. Either way, they're simply here to help you out with your stories and chapters so that you can learn and get better.
Not everyone is a grammar or writing expert, even the best authors have their publishers editing their works to fix mistakes that slip through so don't be ashamed if you're interested in this!
Character Critique Thread
Link to thread
This thread is for writers who have a character or characters for a story but they aren't sure whether they're interesting or unique enough. Think your characters might be too cliche? Well, write up a description about them, such as their personality and looks, and people can give you suggestions for what you might do to make them more interesting or different.
Don't be afraid to post your characters here, everyone needs some help with figuring out what might be wrong with their character. Sometimes the character is too powerful and you didn't even realize it, or they come off as annoying when you write them. It's just something that happens to everyone and getting help for it shouldn't be shameful.
