User blog:Urkelbot666/Urkel's Protips for the SOG Wiki

HOW DO I CREEPYPASTA?
You've watched dozens of Haunted Gaming videos, you've chatted in the LiveStreams, laughed at the Sh*tpastas, You've memorized every word of Jeff The Killer's hapless origin, and now you want to contribute to the land of Spooky Skeletons, Evil Spirits, Haunted Games, and Hyper-Realistic Blood! You want to write creepypastas.

Thats great! The SOG WIki is a good place to test your mettle as a writer. In the time I've been here, I've read the good, the bad, the ugly, and ECCO. I've also written a few stories of my own. One good thing about this Wiki is that people are willing to read stories and give feedback to people who are legitimately passionate about writing.

There are however, RULESon this site. And they are not here just to ruin your day. They are in place to help your writing, and get you noticed. Please do yourself, and everyone on the Wiki a favor and read through the rules in the link provided above. It won't kill you to take a breezy through them. Open them up in a new tab and read em'.... go ahead, I'll wait....

Now that you have read the rules, I'm sure you need no further help making a 5 star pasta and getting Mutahar to read your story through tears of joy. But just to be on the safe side, I'll list some tips for writing that may be helpful, or may frankly, keep you from getting flamed, ridiculed, banned, or getting your pasta deleted.

Tips on Format.
Break up your text! Never, under any circumstances post a story which contains a single unbroken block of text. It is unreadable, and will repel any readers, save for those who want to yell at, and berate you! Even if you on't know where paragraph breaks should be, or are most appropriate, just break the text up into blocks of 5-7 sentences. Even if it doesn't flow entirely right, at least people will attempt to read it.

'''Use Punctuation! '''Again, not everyone knows when and where to use semicolons, apostrophes  and hyphens. But at the very least Throw some periods into your writing. A period comes at the general end of a statement. A period has no space before it, and either one or two spaces after it. Always!

A Comma is not a period. While writing, if you notice that your commas are outnumbering your periods more than say, 2 to 1, go back and break things into more sentences. A couple small sentences are easier to grasp that one long sentence.

'''Check Your Spelling! '''This is a common issue that doesn't need to be major. Most folks don't know how to spell every single word in their vocabulary. That's okay, but when the amount of spelling errors become distracting to the reader, or make the piece hard to understand it's a problem. The easiest way to deal with this is to write your pastas offline in a Program like MS Word which has a pretty good automatic spell checker. I personally use Apache OpenOffice Writer because it's free. And if it's free, it's for me.

If these options are not feasible, there are ways to combat misspellings. A lot of times if I'm in the middle of writing and have a word that I can't figure out, I type how I think it might be spelled into Google, and it usually corrects it, or gives me options of acceptable spellings.

I know that people are going to spell words incorrectly. It's a fact of life. But the more misspelling you can eliminate from your story, the better chance it has of being read and commented on.

This is an English speaking site. If you are not a native English speaker, and are typing a pasta in English I commend you! However, I would suggest that you get in touch with a native English speaker who is willing to proof read your work before posting it.

Those are basic format tips. what follow are a few minor hints.
It belongs to = Its  (the dog lost its tail.)

It is = It's (It's here!)

You are = You're (You're an asshole)

It belongs to you = Your (that is Your asshole)

It is HERE

I can HEAR you farting

They are = They're

It belongs to them = Theirs (that is their cat)

Everything else = There

Sequential = Then (Squeeze my nipple, Then slap me)

Comparative = Than (My nipple is longer than his)

Tips on Content
It may come as a shock to you, but not every idea you come up with is worthy of a story, many ideas you come up with will not even be good. That being said, every idea Should be pursued!... just not in its own complete and finalized story.

If you have an idea for a story where Sonic the Hedgehog makes out passionately with Pikachu, by all means, brainstorm it, and draft it.

After you have written your masterpiece, resist the temptation to race to the wiki and upload it. take a day, or even a few days away from the project, reread the story and re-evaluate it. You may find that it isn't as good as you initially thought. You may even think it sucks. But, you may find in it some interesting story points, descriptions, twists, etc. that you want to use in a new story.

If you already went ahead and posted your unrevised story, all those ideas are already committed to it. But if you had gone back, scrapped the story, and taken from it the parts you liked, you could use them in a newer, better story yet to be written!

Re-Draft your Story -  Restating what was covered in the last section, take time to step away from, and then rewrite your story. While in the throes of creative fever, you may feel like every word you type is pure gold. But if you take some time to let it sit, then revisit it, you will most likely find things you want to change. This can be infinitely beneficial to the writing process, and can be repeated indefinitely for any story!

At Least Try to be Original - It's all well and good to take inspiration from other writers and stories. However, refrain from copying others' ideas outright. If you love Sonic.exe, but think it would work better with Crash Bandicoot, that's okay. But don't just recycle all the ideas. Try to come up with your own twist on the events and make the story your own.

In Conclusion
One of the most beneficial things a writer can do is read, take in as much (quality) literature as you can handle and you will inherently become a better writer whether you like it or not. Read often and find out what you like, and what you, yourself would like to read in a story, then write that story!

Most Importantly, Have Fun! As a writer, you should expect for people to bash you. Any artist should be fully prepared to be ripped apart, the trick is to not let it get to you. Read your critiques and analyze them thoughtfully before just reacting, or giving up.

Don't write for anyone but yourself. As silly as it sounds, you should like the content you write. Don't worry too much about what others say. Take the criticism and build off it to become a better writer for yourself!

I will likely add to this and update it. Also, other writers may feel free to comment and dit anything they see fit :)