this part is going to explore some of the little mistakes authors make that can end up affecting the whole story. every writer will find themselves succumbing to these every now and then, and it's difficult to completely avoid them. hopefully this will help you identify the most important mistakes you might be making !

MISCELLANEOUS MISTAKES:

- changing tenses every other sentence. i understand that some people have trouble with tenses, but unfortunately, accidentally messing it up just a few times can ruin the flow of the whole story. try reading your chapter aloud before posting it so that any grammatical errors will stand out. when reading aloud, you engage a different part of the brain than when you read in your head, and this can make it easier to spot mistakes.

- just rattling off what happened instead of using a variety of words and storytelling. "I got up and threw on my Iron Maiden t-shirt, then brushed my teeth. I strolled downstairs for breakfast and had a bowl of cereal. I thought about that hot guy at school, maybe I would see him tomorrow, he's in a few of my classes." that isn't a story. that's just saying what happened, and it doesn't draw you in. you want to build a world for your reader, not just list your character's actions disconnectedly like you're writing a recipe. think about the character's thought process, what senses they might be using, what physical sensations they could be feeling.

- this is a very specific point, but it's important that you bear it in mind: if you want people to see your book as different and above all the other average stuff, you have to make your ideas as individual as possible-- and this doesn't just apply to the concept of the story. don't start a book, or even a chapter, with a teenager waking up and getting ready for school. it's been done so many times, and no matter how original your character and your plot is, if you start off this way, you could already be losing potential readers on chapter one. make a unique start, and begin the story at 5am with your character desperately trying to plan out a three week project in an hour and losing all semblance of sanity, or just before lunch when your character is already totally done for the day and is genuinely considering killing the teacher.

- listing things in the place of an actual description. "I thought about him. His silky black hair, his beautiful face, his warm chest, his tattoos, his smile when his eyes met mine..." this does create an image in your head, but it's uninteresting, and doesn't accurately represent the way someone would imagine a person. what exactly does your character like about this silky haired guy's demeanor? how does it make them feel? what does it do to their thoughts, and how does their body react? do their hands go shaky, does their chest feel hot, do they forget about the fact that they're about to crash into a door? elaborate, don't list.

- when a character asks a question and you want to put emphasis on how shocked or incredulous they are, do not express it by putting both a question mark and an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, eg "You sold my guitar?!" it's not a literary tool, it's something people do in comics or children's storybooks in the place of proper descriptions of the character's tone/feelings. (im not insulting comics just saying that u cant exactly stick a great big description underneath the speech bubble)

- overfamiliarity: your pairing have known each other for two weeks. they're only just friends, yet they're calling each other "gee bear" and "frankie" etc? they don't love each other yet, and if they were in a real situation they would probably be real freaked out that some acquaintance was giving them syrupy nicknames. they wouldn't blush and giggle. it would be fucking weird. even if they were attracted to each other, it would just be unrealistic and strange. you have to imagine that you're in that situation yourself—if your new crush who you barely knew started calling you cutesy names, yes, you would be a little flattered, but also kind of disturbed, because it is not socially normal to do this. because it's a fanfiction about people you and your readers already know so well, it's easy to let them act like they're already in love-- but what's even more compelling to read is having your characters get to know each other from the very start, from barely knowing a thing about one other and not really caring. because right now to your main character, his love interest is just some dude with kinda cool hair.

that's all for now, but there is a part 2 of these tips and other cool stuff to come!!