V.E. Schwab’s Advice On Creating Memorable Characters.

how to format your story, a crash course

because my writing major soul dies a little bit more every time i see a perfectly good story improperly formatted.

this is a guide specifically for ao3 posting

1. Put A Double Return (Enter) Between Each Paragraph Instead Of An Indentation

fanfic is not academic writing. you don't need an indent at the beginning of each line. for the sake of scrolling it just makes it more organized and easier to read. The double return puts a space between the two paragraphs as seen here:

2. Make A New Paragraph Every Time The Camera Moves Or A New Thought Is Addressed

what the hell does that mean, youre probably asking. allow me to show you.

these are each three separate thoughts. so they each get their own paragraph. think about it like the reader is taking a pause between each thought, where should those pauses go?

3. Put A New Paragraph Every Time A New Person Speaks

do not and i repeat DO NOT write your dialogue like this:

"blah blah blah" he said. "blah blah blah" she said. "blah blah blah" they said. "blah blah blah" he said. "blah blah blah" she said.

it is impossible to read and its confusing and people will click off your story. dialogue should look like this:

see how each time a different person talks there's a new line? there can be not dialogue mixed with the dialogue, but every time the person speaking changes, there would be a new line.

About 1 out of 5 Parental!RoyEd fics: “When his youngest subordinate goes missing, the Flame Alchemist will stop at nothing to bring Ed safely home.”

Meanwhile, Roy in Brotherhood: “Fullmetal’s gone missing up North? Hmm, sounds like a personal problem to me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a coup to plan.”

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

an author i love just tweeted about how “big joy and small joy are the same” and how she was just as content the other night eating chocolate and cuddling her dog as she was on her Big Trip to new york and honestly. i think that’s it. this morning i was listening to an audiobook while baking shortbread in my joggers and i realised i really didn’t care what Big Things happened in my future as long as i could keep baking and reading at the weekend and maybe that is the kind of bar we have to set to guard ourselves against disappointment. just appreciate and cherish the mundane stuff and see everything else as a bonus.

Jjjjjjj~

“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

Watching my neighbors across the street having a block party during a literal time of pandemic makes me wonder if several hundred years ago there was another person looking out their window watching their neighbors congregate during the black death like verily forsooth, thou art truly ass-headed knaves.

“What is significant about fan fiction is that it often spins the kind of stories that showrunners wouldn’t think to tell, because fanficcers often come from a different demographic. The discomfort seems to be not that the shows are being reinterpreted by fans, but that they are being reinterpreted by the wrong sorts of fans - women, people of colour, queer kids, horny teenagers, people who are not professional writers, people who actually care about continuity (sorry). The proper way for cultural mythmaking to progress, it is implied, is for privileged men to recreate the works of privileged men from previous generations whilst everyone else listens quietly.”

— Sherlock and the Adventure of the Overzealous Fanbase by Laurie Penny  (via basilandtheblues)

i just had to draw this because i feel like screaming tbh

This has the potential to be a great story

(aftermath:)