Tips for Writing on Wattpad

The Basics of Grammar

A story can have an interesting plot, a consistent upload schedule, great characters, etc, but It's hard to read a story that doesn't have correct grammar and spelling. My best advice for making sure your story is grammatically correct is to proofread. Once you finish writing a chapter, read through the entire thing, and check for mistakes. Of course, it's hard to proofread if you don't know what mistakes to look for. In this chapter, I'll go over the most common grammatical mistakes I see on Wattpad. 

1. It's vs Its- Oftentimes, people mess up the correct forms of these words.

It's is a contraction. It's a shorter version of it is. Ex: It's an elephant

Its is a possessive pronoun, meaning belonging to it. Ex: Its golden shine, or, The pigeon lost its feathers. 

2. Correct dialogue formatting. 

Use Quotation Marks to Indicate that people are talking. 

Right: "I'm tired," Cory said. 

Wrong: I'm tired, Cory said. 

When a new person is talking, you start a new paragraph.

Right: "I'm tired," Cory said. 

"Me too," James replied.

Wrong: "I'm Tired," Cory said. "Me too," James replied. 

Dialogue Tags Stay Outside the Quotation Marks. Dialogue tags are used to show the reader who is speaking ( he said, she whispered, they replied, etc)

Right: "I'm tired," Cory said.

Wrong: "I'm tired, Cory said." 

3. Run-on Sentences. These are two sentences that are pushed together, without periods, semicolons, or commas. Here is an example of run on sentences

Today was the best day in the whole world my family began our beach vacation!

This is a run-on because it is two complete thoughts in one sentence. To fix this, we would add a punctuation mark. 

Fixed: Today was the best day in the whole world! My family began our beach vacation!

You could also fix this sentence by using a conjunction, such as or, and, if, or because. 

Fixed: Today was the best day in the whole world because my family began our beach vacation! 

All of this grammar may seem tedious, but it's important that you know it, so that your writing flows better when people are reading it. I hope this helps!