Zed's Guides to Effective Fiction Writing

[oxfordtweed]

I post these every year, and every year, there are a few more to be posted. Here's a collection of guides and resources I've been compiling for quite some time, now. If you have any questions, or any requests, feel free to ask.

• Believable Fiction - Why research is important, and a few places that will help you do it.


• Research: How to Do It - Now that you know where to do your research, this tells you how to phrase your queries and what information should be researched.


• Organisation - Tips and tricks on setting up your pre-writing.


• Mechanics - Getting back to the basics of commas, hard stops, and all the little things people tend to learn and forget.


• Grammar: Parts of Speech - Nouns, pronouns, prepositions, et cetera. Even if you're a native English speaker, you may want to give this a read since the grammar lessons are the foundations for many of the later lessons.


• Grammar: Narrative Tenses and Parts of Speech - How different sorts of verbs are conjugated, and why other dialects of English can be confusing.


• Grammar: Cases and Grammar Nazi Nit-picks - Some stuff that they don't teach in schools any more, unless you take a foreign language.


• Language - Accents, foreign languages, and regional dialects. Specifically, how, when, and where to include them so as not to annoy the piss out of your readers.


• Dialogue - Constructing believable and natural things for your characters to say.


• Description - Finding the balance between Purple Prose and Talking Heads.


• Characterisation - Avoiding the dreaded Mary Sue.


• Modifiers, and Why you Shouldn't Misplace Them - More stuff that they don't teach in schools, even though they should.


• Point of View - Exploring various narrative modes, and when and how to use them.


• Punchlines and Payoffs - Writing a joke or a gag story, and exploring what goes into making them funny.


• Getting Started - You've got your ideas all figured out, but you can't seem to get any words down on paper.