I Have A few small things that I'd like to comment on. While these things have nothing to do with grammar, they're things that I feel it's important to keep in mind and pay attention to.
When You Write a story, believablity is really important. As I've already mentioned on other pages, the internet is an amazing tool for writers. If you aren't absolutely sure about something; say, the average height and weight for a girl of ten, then look it up. It will almost always be quite easy to find. A "rather short" ten-year-old girl would not be "five feet, five inches tall." That would be a very tall ten-year-old girl. The median height of a ten-year-old girl is four feet, six inches. Believe it or not, it's these tiny details that can destroy the believability of your story.
As An Example, in one of my stories, when I originally uploaded it, one of my characters put a DVD into the DVD player and started a movie. That would be fine, except that the story was set in 1990. DVDs did not come into common household usage until around 1994. It was a small detail, but trust me when I tell you that eventually, someone would have noticed it, and commented. It took away from the believability of the story. I rewrote it with a VCR, and uploaded a corrected version. Again, it was a case of, "Google to the rescue!"
Details, If I can rely on my email from readers, are critical. Part of that means getting your facts straight, even though you're writing fiction. What is fiction, at its heart? It's really just a very grand lie. Any good liar will tell you that the very best lies always contain as much truth as possible. Aside from having the facts correct, the more detail that you can put into a story, the better. The details will do nothing but add to the believability of your story - your grand lie. I'm not suggesting that you try to imitate Tolstoy, Dickens, Styron, or Melville in the amount of detail that you use. But the more small details that you can add to your story, the more the reader will believe you.
Always Remember Your audience! Yes, first and foremost, the majority of us are writing for ourselves. We do it because we have a need to get something out there for others to read and understand, and hopefully enjoy. But when we forget about the audience and write only for ourselves, what we're doing becomes an exercise in narcissism. All of those things we've already discussed, if neglected, can give the reader the feeling that you simply don't give a damn what they think. The goal is to have the reader suspend his or her disbelief for a while, no matter how outlandish your story may be. If you can get them to suspend their disbelief, then you'll accomplish your goal in writing. The best way I've found to accomplish that is to always keep your audience in mind while you write.
As You Write more and more material here, you'll find, if you're lucky, that you'll begin to develop a regular audience. As you do, keep in mind what I said about remembering your audience. When they've come to expect certain things from you, they'll be disappointed if you don't consistently deliver those things. I'm currently rewriting a recent story, because many of my regular readers told me that they felt I'd short-changed them with it. In an effort to appease the people who send me "hate mail" on occasion, because I "take too long to get to the good stuff," I wrote a story that was lacking in my normal detail, back story, and character development. My regular readers let me know that they didn't like this change, and that they were very disappointed. So I'm rewriting it. The people who take the time to read your work regularly deserve to have your best efforts each time you put something out there for them.
As Other Things come to mind, I'll very likely be adding to this page. For now, that's all I had in mind to talk about for this section.
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