Top Tips For A Successful Story.

Since a vast number of GSBians write Mibba stories here are my three top tips that in my opinion will help create a good story. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, all that stuff goes without saying…these are just the things which people seem to forget.

1. Individuality

“Omg, then I went on tour with [insert band here] and married [insert band member here] and we had sex and I had his babies but then he got drunk and said he didn’t love me but it all worked out and we had tons of kids and sex.”

Now I’m not saying don’t write that, write whatever you want, just it’s been done so many times before and has reached the rather corny level; unless you can do it in an individual way, which I know some people can. Write love stories with band members sure as long as they show individuality, or even slash, whatever floats your boat, just individuality will cause your story to stick out. Some plot lines will never really be successful, for instance ones where Billie Joe leaves his wife for a 14 year old he randomly slept with and got pregnant.

2. Chapter Lengths

Make them a suitable size. I find that if they’re too short people tune out and don’t take the story seriously. Say about 300 words minimum [as an average] if you’re doing a more than one parter, which can often be about 200 words. Short chapters are alright if you update every few days, just so your readers are entertained. Also long chapters quite often drag on a tiny bit, unless they have a lot of drama, in which case long chapters are preferred. But if you have ages of the person crying over the same thing, just changing the location from the kitchen to the lounge, it does get tedious and then we all get a little bored and again, tune out. It’s also good to be consistent.

3. Sentence Structure

I was talking about this to someone the other day and we both agreed it was rather off putting if we see this:

“Teddy walked down the stairs. He took two steps at a time. Teddy reached the bottom and he walked into the kitchen to eat his breakfast.
“Good Morning,” he said. Teddy’s brother Dan was in the kitchen.”

The repetition of proper nouns and pronouns will annoy people and distract people from the plotline. It’s not hard to change it to something like this:

”Taking two steps at a time, Teddy recklessly jigged down the stairs, pausing for a brief moment to regain his composure at the bottom. Choosing to visit the kitchen for what he’d call his breakfast, although it was more lunch time, he spotted his brother sat at the table in the seat furthest from the window.
“Good Morning.” He chirped, smiling at Dan”

Although the standard has not improved so much, the sentence structure doesn’t tend to annoy people as much. Connectives are very useful for this type of thing. As you can also see with a varied sentence structure it adds length, which can also help if your chapters are too short.

Other Top Tips
-Try not to use images. You’re meant to be telling us through words not images what the person looks like or is wearing. It doesn’t matter within summaries just mid story it is often frowned upon.
-Update regularly to keep readers tuned in. I’m not saying everyday, just every 2 weeks or something?
-Roughly sketch a plot line to follow. You don’t have to stick to it exactly, but it can help the ideas and cure writers block
-If using dialogue, try to get a nice mix with descriptions, actions…etc…

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That’s just what I think will make a good story, if you follow these general tips. There are a lot more things that are important, just I feel that most of the issues above aren’t noticed or at least not recognised enough…oh and it was written in the early hours of the morning so, sorry. I’d like to thank fellow English GCSE students for their help, advice and ideas on this blog, and you for reading