hi there I'm currently writing a book. It's about a group of people who get are chosen "to test a MMO" but instead get sucked inside the game itself and have to fight their way through conflict after conflict while trying to find a way back home. my question is would it be wiser to just write the entire thing in a notebook or type it out on my computer and if i type it what font size should i use? thanks hope i can get some help on this i got the idea earlier this year but didn't have time because of high school but now its summer and i have all the time in the world.
To be honest, it's all up to really what you prefer-- either writing or typing.
I, for one, much prefer typing. I can honestly type so much faster, so it allows me to jot down any of my ideas faster, and it's MUCH, MUCH easier to edit than on paper, such as format and whatnot. You can also go back and easily add more. The only problem with the computer is that if the computer blows, you lose everything, which means you'll probably want a backup. This isn't a big problem, really-- a flash drive would work perfectly or a backup drive if you have one. As for the font... Well, I always use size 11 Calibiri (Body), but it's really up to your own preference as YOU will be writing it. And if you want to change it, all you had to do of course is CTRL+A and then select the new font and presto! It's all changed. :)
As I said, my personal preference is the computer. Notebook works fine, especially if you prefer to write over typing. A notebook is good in that you won't lose it if your technology craps out, but you would want to keep track of where you left it since you can't really have a back-up of a Notebook. Also, you'd probably want to write in pen since pencil can smudge and fade (I've had this problem before and it's sooo annoying trying to figure out what I wrote), but then that also makes it harder to erase, since, well, it's in pen. Unlike a computer, though, you can take a notebook pretty much anywhere and it doesn't need to be plugged in, where as, obviously, a computer does. Just make sure you keep track of where everything is and try to keep it all together.
You could also write in the notebook and then transfer it to the computer, too. I've done that before when I didn't have a computer available.
In the end, it's your choice, but hopefully my, uh... long reply will help in deciding :)
Ok i decided to type it i play world of warcraft and since my book takes place within an MMO i thought i'd put my guild members in the book as well. feel free to read it and give some input like i said this is the first story i've ever written so tell me what you all think =)
Prologue It was a long cold night and the air was still, Myth stood watch over the camp as the others slept, and the only light to see by was the illumination from the camp fire. It wasn’t something he wasn’t used to, for weeks now he had watch duty while they were on the run. Myth set his sword and shield down to rest for a moment, as he looked around the camp he felt a familiar feeling nagging at him in his chest, despair.
“What am I doing here?” He found himself asking not for the first time. “It seems just like yesterday I was a average teenager in High School….” He started to shake. “And now…”
The air was suddenly filled with a horrid stench that made him sick to his stomach.
“Oh no…” a chill ran down his spine. He grabbed his sword and shield and quickly ran over to one of the cots. “Buddy!” he said shaking the man laying before him awake. “Buddy wake up!”
Buddy repositioned himself to a sitting position. “What do you wa-“ He looked in Myths eyes and groaned. “What is it this time” he said as he got up and grabbed his twin bastard swords.
“You smell that?” Myth asked as he went to go wake the others. “Get up you idiots!”
Buddy sniffed the air and gagged. “God that’s awful!”
“Then you know what that means.” Myth walked over to another cot. “I said get up Tak!” he said as he kicked Tak in the Ribs.
“Ouch!” Tak yelled. “What the hell did you do that for?”
Buddy walked over and helped Tak up. “We’ve got goblins, and by the smell lots of em.”
“Ugh!” Ghost said getting up. “It’s to early in the morning for this!” He got up and walked off to prepare.
The stench was getting worse and they could hear tiny voices somewhere nearby. The group fell deathly silent waiting and watching for their enemies. “Eeeeek!” the stillness as suddenly broken as the goblins let out a shriek like war cry and charged over the hill.
“Here they come!” Myth announced to the group as he composed his stance. “Buddy you know what to do, let’s go!” He then charged at the enemy yelling his own war cry back at them, Buddy joined in and together they went to teach the goblins not to mess with them.
“This is ridiculous!” Tak yelled as he summoned a rain of fire to thin the enemies numbers as they charged.
“Shut up and kill” Ghost yelled at Tak as he cast a spell on a goblin making it start to swing and lash out at its allies.
Buddy faced ten goblins head on hacking and slashing like a machine. One goblin armed with a short dagger attempted to flank him on his left side, Buddy made sure the it wouldn’t be able to correct its error by quickly bringing one of his swords down in an arc slicing the goblins head clean off. The remaining nine wised up after seeing their friend die with his blood sputtering out his neck. Five of the remaining goblins attacked at once in sync. Three of them sprung on his shoulders and the other two tackled him from the front. Buddy started to falter the weight of the goblins started to force him on his knees , and the entire time the goblins were trying to find chinks in his armor to maim him. Buddy mustered all of his strength and let out a yell while he threw his assailants off him. He went into a berserker rage grabbed his swords and hacked away at his attackers, two of the goblins escaped death with major wounds but the other three weren’t as lucky, Buddy had slashed through one of them diagonally and swung his other sword in a arc at the other two and cut them right in two. Buddy took a step forward towards the remaining six surviving goblins. “Boo!” he said grinning wildly.
The goblins panicked and tried to run away but only succeeded in running into one another. One of them looked up just in time to see a giant ball of fire hurtling towards them. It shrieked once in surprise and then nothing.
“Thanks for the assist Tak!” Buddy yelled across the battlefield waving his sword in the air. “How are you holding up Myth?”
Myth blocked a blow from one of the goblins he was fighting and quickly cut it down to size. “Great, this is the most fun I’ve had all week!” he replied and he hacked another goblin in two. “Look they’re running off!” the goblins had started to turn tail and run in a attempt to save themselves.
“I got em!” Tak yelled as he made it rain fire on the fleeing assailants.
The goblins started to panic and tried desperately to run away from the rain of fire. One goblin tripped on a tree root and others started to trip over him. As they tried to get up a ball of inferno fury hit them disintegrating them without a trace.
“Hell yea!” Buddy yelled running back up to the camp. “That was awesome! Nice job with the fire Tak.”
“Thanks.” Tak replied as he tried to concentrate on containing the fire storm.
Myth looked around him, the earth was scorched where fire had impacted and was littered with goblin bodies and blood. He then looked up and saw that the smoke from the burning trees and bodies was rising up over and could probably be seen a mile away. Myth walked over to the camp and sat down his smile gone.
“What’s wrong Myth?” Ghost asked worriedly.
“We should get moving.” Myth replied getting up and walking past Ghost. “More will come” he said looking up. “The smoke from the burning bodies and trees will draw attention, and he will find out, he will find us….” Myth turned away to go pack up his things, and as he did so he whispered. “Figol will find us.”
I have to head out soon and won't be back until late, so I won't really be able to reply until tomorrow, but I'd be happy to look over your story and help out if you don't mind waiting :)
Dude I don't have advice but I want to read this story of yours when it is done. I like how small stories like these have RvB potential nowadays and can gain mucho exposure over the internet.
Sn: The Figol cliffhanger sealed the deal for me. I am very interested in this. This is a great prologue with good action and enough intrigue to keep people interested in it's future. Or at least that's my opinion.
Definitely type it out. Start with Times New Roman at 9-10 point font. The pages won't fill as fast as you'd like to see and will force you to write more. When you think you have enough done to finish a section/chapter, switch it to Courier at 11 point font. Slightly larger than TNR at standard 12 and get a slight ego boost on how much you've accomplished to keep you going.
As for story, would like 5 chapters done before I take a read. But, I think it'll be good if you let it flow.
Okay. I actually managed to get home and finished doing a read and a rough "edit". I'm going to go over points, both in regards to story and grammar/spelling/structure/etc. It's probably going to be pretty long, so bear with me. Also, even if I seem like it I do not mean to offend or hurt anyone's feelings when I help out with story writing. I know I can be a little blunt and forward, and sometimes overbearing, but I am just trying to help.
Now, onto the edit/review/whatever-you-want-to-call-it:
1. You have a good start, and by that I mean you have a fast-paced, engaging battle that will entice the reader's interest. You also leave a cliffhanger, which will leave people either wondering who "Figol" is or why he's after them. Furthermore, Myth's note about being a normal teenager not long ago will make reader wonder what he's talking about and also keep them interested.
2. The idea you have is good for the start, but you need to work on your spelling/grammar. I didn't really see anything so much as SPELLING, but grammar was an issue. Some of them could easily be fixed by using a spelling check, so I would advise that. I'd also suggest you read over your things once or twice and maybe even say them out loud so then you'll know if it sounds funny or not. I did notice some things that came up more than once:
a. You're forgetting commas and semicolons in many places where there are compound sentences, lists of adjectives, and a few others things I can't remember the definition name for. For example,
"It was a long cold night...",
should have a comma and look like this:
"It was a long, cold night...".
Because it's a list of adjectives less than three, you need to separate the two with a comma. You also had a sentence with a list of actions that needed commas. You also have instances of this:
"Buddy yelled running back up to the camp."
which should have a comma between "yelled" and "running":
"Buddy yelled, running back up to the camp"
There's a word for why, but, for the life of me I can't remember what it is, but I know you're supposed to do that when you have them doing two things at once without using a conjunction (and/or/but/etc.)
b. You left our periods where they should be. I imagine some of these are simply silly mistakes, so I'll just say to watch and read over your work carefully for that.
c. You messed up a few "an" here and there. If you need to use "a" but the next words starts with a vowel, then you need to use "an" instead. For example, if you have A BONE, you use "a", but if you have AN Animal, you use "an". I didn't see it too much, so that could have been a simple error, too.
3. Okay, onto the story structure. The idea is good, but you need to work on things.
a. Description - You don't really have much. In fact, I don't really even know what any of the characters look like. All I know are names, but that's not enough. Even small characters that maybe show up for a few pages get some kind of description in all the books I've read. Even a tiny detail, such as eye color or hair, but yours have none. Or, well, I understand Myth is a teenager, but that leaves me with a lot of options and assumptions, but I want to KNOW what the character looks like, not ASSUME unless that's part of the "mystery" to the story.
I'm not saying you need to go into immense depth or anything, either. You don't need to give an entire biography or list of what their wearing, but at least give a short description of maybe their hair or eyes or clothes or even build. You can even work it into small things, like let's say one of them has black eye-- you could easily put that his "black irises looked this way and that" and BAM-- I now know he has black eyes.
Furthermore, description gives us a sense of the situation. The best way to do this is to use the scenery. You did use it a little with the "long, cold night" and the smell, but if you wrote how the characters were dirtied or ragged or their eyes were sunken in, then we would assume they'd been going through a VERY rough time and that things were not all happy and sunshine with them. You didn't describe the goblins much either by the stench. That did hint at them being disgusting creatures, but it would be even better if you wrote how grotesque or wild or beastly they looked-- such as sharpened fangs or tusks, blood-red eyes, or that they were growling or shrieked like banshees. Things like that. They can go a long way. And continuing on with the scenery-- while "chills" and "stench" make it seem dark, you could write how the land around them was black or filled with shadow or that the trees were looming over them or seemed to be crowding in; it would make the situation feel all the more tense. Scenery can make a moment and even hint at things hidden from plain view, so to speak.
b. Names/Nouns - Okay, so this was definitely a problem. While names are the easiest and most definite way to idenitfy a character from the rest, you should-- and personally I think one should NEED to-- use different ways of describing them. Using Myth or Tak over and over and over and OVER becomes incredibly repetitive, and repetitiveness can become annoying very quickly. So. Instead of using the same name, use some feature unique to each character to describe them. For instance, if Myth is a young man, call him a "young man" instead of "Myth". If Tak is, say, tanned, put "the tanned man/mage", seeing as he can cast spells. Heck, you can even just use "mage" if you'd like. Of course, don't shy away from using their names, especially if all of them are talking together and keeping track can be difficult. However, in long non-dialogue areas such as the fight, use those other nouns to describe them rather than their name.
c. Dialogue - I know there can be some exceptions, but I looked through a few of my books to make sure. Don't do this:
“What am I doing here?” He found himself asking not for the first time. “It seems just like yesterday I was a average teenager in High School….” He started to shake. “And now…”
The "this" refers to putting "He started to shake" between quotations. While, yes, you can put prose between dialogue, but it should only happen ONCE, not twice or multiple times. So, the quote should look like:
“What am I doing here?” He found himself asking not for the first time, his body starting to shake. “It seems just like yesterday I was a average teenager in High School….And now…”
Or something along those lines. You can added multiple lines of prose between TWO dialogue quotations, such as adding on after the "shake" and then, after everything is written, you add the "It seems just like...". Essentially: keep dialogue quotes at the beginning and ends of prose in between.
However, if the prose comes BEFORE the quotations then you need to have a comma after it (at least, from most everything I've read and done you do, so I'm fairly confident in that). For example,
Buddy walked over and helped Tak up. “We’ve got goblins, and by the smell lots of em.”
should have a comma instead of a period, here...
Buddy walked over and helped Tak up, “We’ve got goblins, and by the smell lots of em.”
Or that "eeeek" part-- don't do that, either. Make that a NEW PARAGRAPH, and then add the other sentence after it. It is okay to have a one-sentence paragraph, as I've used them many times, although I do so to add some dramatic effect or something along those lines.
4. Okay, I think that covers pretty much all the structure/grammar/spelling/etc. Now, I know I probably seem like I've going bat-shit crazy on this or being mean to you, but this is what I told all the people in my creative writing class when I helped them or anyone after that. These are the "rules" or "guidelines" I follow by myself and use every time I write.
5. Again, the story has some GREAT potential. You have a fun idea going on here that could work VERY well. It need some work and polishing, but it's there. Diamonds don't just happen right away, after all. It takes a long time for them to be made. Thankfully, you are not a LITERAL diamond and do not have to be buried in the earth :P And, as you said, this is only the beginning of a BOOK. You obviously have a LOT more to show and reveal to us, being this is just the prologue. You've already shown you're good at writing action sequences, which is a MUST for a story such as this, and you're dialogue was fairly engaging and I found some of the interactions humorous. I would advise maybe slowing down. The prologue felt VERY rushed. Everything just suddenly happened all at once without any real transition into it. Description will help you with this. When you describe things you just might end up surprised how much it adds and how it can make things move along at a nice pace. Again, don't OVERLOAD people with description-- we don't need a biography, just enough to get a picture.
6. Perhaps my biggest and most told tip: SHOW us a story, don't TELL us one. This comes from using description in the form of imagery, action, and dialogue to make our minds picture a story-- a movie, if you will (it's what I do) in our heads which plays as we reach each and every word. Telling us takes all the fun away and makes it more like you're a director taking us on a tour. Don't take us on a tour-- show us a movie you made. Dazzle us. Make our minds blow with what we "see". Show, don't tell.
And that's what I have for you. Sorry about the length-- I tend to get rather... long-winded when I give writing tips. Again, I meant to offense or ill will with anything I've said. This is honestly the process I told the other students in my classes when they wanted editing and what I went through on my own to get my writing good enough to win Gold Keys from Scholastic at the High School level and, hopefully, even higher.
Thanks, again, and, well, I'm not a professional writer (I want to be), but I do write a LOT in my spare time. At the moment i'm just working on a fanfic, but I have original pieces I plan to work on once I finish the former. :)
I thought it written very well (I do agree with TMWolf's corrections, but it is a fine start). One thing I would try to improve is the cliche "I was just an average teenager...". It is okay to express that he went from a normal life to what he is living now, but you should add more detail. In this short thought that the character has, you do not have to add much, but just a little more. I may just be picky, but this kind of thing annoys me when I read it. I hold back from exampling what I mean in fear that it may be something that you think while reading this, and then it could look like plagiarism. I am sure, however, that you will do fine in the future creation of this novel.
