1. Use the passive voice.
What? What are you talking about, âdonât use the passive voiceâ? Are you feeling okay? Who told you that? Come on, letâs you and me go to their house and beat them with golf clubs. Itâs just grammar. English is full of grammar: you should go ahead and use all of it whenever you want, on account of English is the language youâre writing in.
2. Use adverbs.
Now hang on. What are you even saying to me? Donât use adverbs? My guy, that is an entire part of speech. Thatâs, likeâthatâs gotta be at least 20% of the dictionary. I donât know who told you not to use adverbs, but you should definitely throw them into the Columbia river.
3. Thereâs no such thing as âfillerâ.
Buddy, âfillerâ is what we called the episodes of Dragon Ball Z where Goku wasnât blasting Frieza because the anime was in production before Akira Toriyama had written the part where Goku blasts Frieza. Outside of this extremely specific context, âfillerâ does not exist. Just because a scene wouldnât make it into the Wikipedia synopsis of your storyâs plot doesnât mean it isnât important to your story. This is why âplotâ and âstoryâ are different words!
I like this advice, but I also want to add: if the thought of having to use Exactly Correct Perfect Punctuation gives you so much anxiety you might not write at all, and your choice is between "write something poorly" and "don't write at all," please just let yourself write poorly.
Honestly, everyone needs an editor anyway, even those of us who are pretty good at the orthography thing, and the stakes are pretty low for publishing short fics on social media.
yes. WRITE.
If you come across something you want to know more closely, do some research occasionally. but write.
this way you learn as you go.
