Why I Won't Read Your Story, or in converse, Why I Will:

Part Two

By Mell8

My step-by-step, completely egocentric—yet strangely informative—guide ::rant:: to why I will not read your story, and conversely, why I will.

Review Responses for Chapter One:

First, thanks to everyone who reviewed. Like all authors, I enjoy reviews, so…hmm, should I be egocentric like my summary says and say, "keep them coming", or should I be coy and give out hugs and brownies to everyone who reviewed. Either way, I enjoyed your insights to my personal ranting essay/guide.

The general consensus of the reviews was that my philosophy on the amount of reviews a story receives is skewed, silly, and I end up missing out on some truly great stories. I am not blind to these facts. Rather, I feel that there has to be some sort of balance between what stories I click on and what stories I don't or I'll spend more time clicking on every story and less time actually reading. Since I run into quite a few poorly written stories with tons of reviews, I have always made the assumption that I miss out on great stories with few reviews. Still, I have found that the majority of stories with immensely fewer reviews than chapters tend to be the sort that I can't stomach.

In the end, I think I'll just stay with my slightly confusing sorting system.

Since the section on reviews was my own personal opinion, rather than unassailable fact like the rest, I reserve the right to leave it confusing and "waffling" so take what you want from it and enjoy the rest!

Capitalizing is essential in titles, but I do understand the point of style. However, I feel that if someone wants to capitalize the entire title or every other letter, it is not style they are attempting to achieve. Instead, I always feel that it is the author's attempt to garner more attention for their story in the most obnoxious way possible. In a real novel style in the title can be extremely beneficial. On this site it just doesn't work.

Congratulations, you made it past my exacting standards for title and summary and I have now clicked on the link to read your story. Set out before me is everything you've written, the good and the bad. Your characters are about to be introduced to me, as is your plot and setting, and everything else your story contains. Why, then, have you done that?! About half of the stories that I click on are actually not worth my while after all and I inevitably leave before I've finished reading the first paragraph.

Therefore I give you-

Part Two: Your First Paragraph. Why I often don't get past reading your first paragraph before I run away in disgust to find something worth reading.

Step 3: Author's Note

Some authors feel the need to give a little introduction about their story, or post a disclaimer, or write a more in depth summary. All of this can be very beneficial for your story, but it can harm you just as much.

1. Spacing. So, I've skimmed the author's note and found that there's nothing there I particularly want to read and am now looking for where the story starts…and I can't find it! As a writer you need to make sure to separate your own personal blab space from your story so the reader does not get lost or confused. As a reader, I often find stories that start on the same line as the last sentence of the authors note or on the next line, but with no spacing between them. Make the effort to separate your note from your story by putting in some sort of marker. I use dotted lines or stars, or even just one letter repeated a few times with line spaces in between (look to the beginning of this chapter for an example). There are other authors who utilize the line across the page option available in the editing space in the document manager offered on this site or have their own interesting spacing choice.

Now, this site has this little quirk where all the pretty formatting you've done on your home computer vanishes when you upload to the site. (You should see how pretty this guide looks with the actual formatting, rather than with the little bit I've been able to put on from this site). As an author, you need to look over your story at least once before you post to make sure nothing has gone awry. This means a little bit of extra effort, but it also means that your authors note will not become one with your story, thereby leaving your reader confused as to where the story actually begins.

2. Ranting and Pointless Drabbles. In the first chapter of your story all I'm looking for is to start reading. I don't care if your cat died or if you're using a computer in some foreign country. These conversations are between an experienced writer and their large following, so should be placed somewhere where those readers will go looking and brand new readers don't have to deal with it. Utilize the profile space given to you by this site or wait until chapter two when you've hooked those new readers to your story. By then they might start caring about the late Fluffy.

Putting these useless things in the very beginning of your story actually detracts from the first sentence. Instead of reading your story about Bob and his wonderful life, the reader is still thinking of Fluffy and Zimbabwe and can't concentrate on Bob. The reader inevitably forgets what they've read about Bob in their pursuit of learning about your life, and your story goes away.

Step 4: Paragraph One.

This is the first paragraph of your story. This is your one and only chance to pull in your readers and it is not just because it is an introduction to your plot that it needs to have chutzpah. The simple truth is that if I can't understand what you're writing then I won't read it. So, follow these steps in order to keep my attention through your first paragraph and beyond.

1. Spelling and Grammar. I can't reiterate this enough. Spelling and grammar are the main reason why I, as a reader, cannot stomach so many stories. I don't want to have to decipher your work in order to understand what you've written. A simple spelling and grammar check on your computer should suffice, but if you don't have one of those, then a beta reader who does is a good idea. A few mistakes here or there does not equate a tragedy, but enough mistakes that I start to get annoyed with the writer's lack of effort and caring for their work means that I will go and find something else to read.

Homophones: This is the most frequent mistake I see on this site. A homophone is two or three words that sound the same but are generally spelled differently and have a different meaning. Two, to, and too and your, you're, and yore are the two most frequently occurring examples of mistakes made, but there are a myriad more. When a person is reading your story, the last thing they want to do is to be forced to pause and figure out the correct meaning to your sentence without the mistaken homophone. As a reader I have learned to automatically replace a wrong 'you're' with 'your' in my head because I don't want to let a few homophone mistakes take me away from a story with everything else going for it. However, when I start seeing 'ate' mixed up with 'eight', I, as a reader, know that you, as a writer, have put very little effort into editing your story. Mistakes do happen, but when the wrong words with totally and utterly different meanings and spellings from the right words occur often, I start to think that the writer has clearly missed out on their English classes in school.

Prefixes and Suffixes: A prefix is the part of a word added on to adjust or qualify that word. Some examples are ex-, re-, and non-. I haven't seen too many problems with prefixes on this site. However, something to be extremely careful of are suffixes. –ed and –ing have two different meanings and are therefore not interchangeable. In this case, suffixes affect the tense of the word and the sentence.

"I walked to the mall." is a perfectly good sentence. –ed says that I "walked" in the past. "I walking to the mall." does not fit. "I was walking to the mall." does fit. –ing is also past tense, but it implies an action in progress while in the past.

"I walked to the mall and was sitting on a bench to rest." This sentence is wrong and not many writers know why. This sentence switches tenses because of the switch in the suffix. If the author is using the –ed suffix for the first word, then –ed must be also used for the second. "I walked to the mall and decided to sit on a bench to rest." Or, "I was walking to the mall and was sitting on a bench to rest."

Truth: this last sentence is still not grammatically correct. Now you can see just how tricky this really is. To make it perfect the tense does need to switch. "Walking" is an ongoing action in the past, but sitting, because of the meaning of the word and the structure of this sentence, is a stop action word. A perfect sentence would be: "I was walking to the mall and had to stop and sit on a bench for a rest."

Capitalization: As a reader I expect certain things to be capitalized. Catastrophic things could happen to your story if you don't capitalize correctly. A character's name must always be capitalized. For example, if a writer is using the name 'Clean' for a character then I, as a reader, don't want to see a sentence like this: "I watched clean with the soap." At first glance a reader would think grammar mistakes: some words missing and the -ing suffix left out of the sentence. In their mind, a reader would read the fixed sentence like this: "I watched him cleaning with the soap." Yet, this detracts from you, the author's, original intent. Your sentence should have been read like this: "I watched Clean with the soap." Can you see the drastic difference between all three sentences? It's not about cleaning, which is what the sentence with the lack of capitalization insinuates; it's about Clean and a bar of soap. Make sure you capitalize so that mistake doesn't happen to you!

'I' should also always be capitalized. It shows very poor effort and poor mental ability to your readers if you cannot take the time or do not know to capitalize the one word in the English language that is always capitalized no matter what the context. It is unprofessional, lazy, and quite simply it's silly. If it's that difficult for you to capitalize 'I' then why are you writing in the first place?

The first letter of the first word in every sentence must be capitalized as well. This not only helps separate sentence from sentence and paragraph from paragraph, it is what you were taught in kindergarten.

2. Punctuation. I, hate it so much; when writers are unable, to punctuate their sentences…correctly. There are the comma happy, and the comma bereft. There are the run-on sentence aficionados and the semi-colon nuts. There are even those who have no idea how to write their punctuation after a character speaks! And every single one of these mistakes makes it more and more impossible for a reader to understand your writing. I find it somewhat difficult to follow a plot if the comma police are screeching over my shoulder the entire time.

Read your story aloud. The general rule of thumb is every time you pause to take a breath, you put in a comma. Every time you stop it's a period. Like all rules, there are exceptions, but keep in mind that more than two commas in a sentence is most likely overkill (lists are excluded). Four commas might mean a run-on sentence. Five commas are shooting the dead bunny again, just because you can. Any more than that in one sentence is just plain annoying. Read through your work aloud and see if it flows smoother over your tongue if some of those commas go away.

Run-on sentences are equally as difficult to spot. If a sentence has too many commas, more than two 'and's, and when you read it aloud you stop reading for a second before moving on, then you may have a run-on. The grammar check on my computer catches many of these, so make sure you utilize yours as much as possible. Others have a beta reader who is able to look for these sorts of things. These are tough to master, but are highly rewarding in the end. Try your best and pay attention in English class.

Quotation marks are another difficult form of punctuation to master, but once you learn the correct way to place them it will seem so logical that you'll never believe you used to write them differently.

1) "I have a chicken." Bob said. Incorrect.

2) "I have a chicken", Bob said. Incorrect.

3) "I have a chicken," Bob said. Correct.

1 is wrong because of the period. 'I have a chicken Bob said' is one sentence and should therefore not be split into two separate sentences. The idea is to separate the "speaking" portion of the sentence from the qualifying part 'Bob said' without splitting the sentence up. A comma is used to do this. A period separates the sentence and it also separates the speaking portion from the qualifying portion, thereby making it much more difficult to tell who was speaking and what Bob said, while a comma doesn't cause these problems.

2 is wrong because of the placement of the comma. The comma should always be inside of the quotation mark. It looks odd outside, yes, but that is not the main reason. The truth is that the comma belongs to the "speaking" section and is what separates it from the qualifying section.

3 is correct. There is a comma and it is correctly placed inside of the quotation mark.

4) "I have a chicken." He said. Incorrect.

5) "I have a chicken," He said. Incorrect.

6) "I have a chicken," he said. Correct.

4 is wrong because of the same reason as 1. This is one sentence and should therefore not be split into two with a period.

5 is wrong because of the capitalization of 'he'. Despite the fact that 'he' is after the quotation marks, it is still in the middle of a sentence so basic grammar rules for capitalization still apply. He is not a proper noun so has no business being capitalized. It is also in the middle of a sentence so should still not be capitalized.

6 is correct because there is a comma, the comma is in the right place, and 'he' is not unnecessarily capitalized.

7) "Can I have a chicken"? he asked. Incorrect.

8) "Can I have a chicken," he asked? Incorrect.

9) "Can I have a chicken?" He asked. Incorrect.

10) "Can I have a chicken?" he asked. Correct.

7 is wrong because of the placement of the question mark. Like the comma, the question mark (or an exclamation point, which can be substituted for a question mark) must be inside the quotation. The rules do not change just because the punctuation mark has.

8 is also wrong also because of the placement of the question mark. The "speaking" portion is being qualified in this case by both the question mark and the 'he asked'. But, the question mark gives specific connotations only to the "speaking" portion so should not be separated from it. Additionally, as the question part of this sentence does not continue past where the character is speaking, neither should the question mark.

9 is wrong because 'he' is capitalized. Despite the presence of the question mark, this is still one sentence. The question mark merely qualifies the voice of the character speaking; it does not finish the sentence. Therefore, 'he' should still not be capitalized.

10 is correct because the question mark is in the correct spot and he is not capitalized.

11) "If you eat your chicken," he said. "You'll get desert." Incorrect.

12) "If you eat your chicken," he said, "you'll get dessert." Correct.

13) "Eat your chicken," he said. "Then you may have dessert." Correct.

11 is wrong because of the split of the sentence. In this case, this is one sentence of someone speaking being split by the qualifier. Since this is still one sentence, a period should not be used. Instead, offset the qualifier 'he said' with commas and continue with the "speaking".

12 is correct because 'he said' is offset by commas, making this a fully formed sentence.

13 is also correct because there are two distinct sentences. In this case, 'he said' does qualify both sentences, but since they are two separate sentences, they should be separated with a period.

Look at the two sentences without the 'he said' in the middle:

"If you eat your chicken, you'll get dessert."

"Eat your chicken. Then you may have dessert."

Without the 'he said' these sentences work just as well. The qualifier is added in to tell the reader who is saying these sentences. You will notice that 'he said' is added where the comma and period is. Adding 'he said' arbitrarily in the sentence does not work.

So, I'm starting to run out of technical stuff to say. Part three will be focused on the larger chapter as a whole and will also be the last one on technical stuff. But, since I'm running out of specifics, I need you all to suggest anything I might have missed so far!

Please continue to tell me your reactions to what I've said. Is there anything you absolutely disagree with? Did you learn something new?

Mell8