30 Ways NOT to Write a Story (And other tips)

#1: Once upon a time there was a kid who lived in a house. (we want something interesting, people!)

#2: Onc apon a tim a astriod hite te arth. (use good spelling, or you will look silly, because you didn’t use auto correct.)

#3: There was once a boy who had two mean old parents who didn’t care what he did. He left home (and now we don’t have a plot.)

#4: There was a block of stone. It wasn’t alive. (do something interesting)

#5: Once there was a boy who lived a normal life (no plot here)

#6: Once upon a time there was something so complicated we don’t even know how it works. (do something you understand yourself but you also want others to be able to understand it, too!)

#7: There was a post-apocalyptic world with only 7 people left. Soon it would collapse and they had no way off. Luckily, they thought if they got launched off an airplane they could make it. (don’t make a hopeless plot hopeful if there’s no chance it actually could be, even when writing fiction! You CAN make small stuff like that, but don’t go TOO far.)

#8: Once someone wrote a book even though they had no ideas. (don’t write a book just cause you want to write something, get a legitimate idea!)

#9: Once there was a person with a tragic backstory who got struck by lightning and got superpowers. (Ugh, so stereotypical!)

#10: Once there was a character. (Name them! We aren’t naming here because that would be a whole lot of names, but still name them in the story)

#11: Once a magical realm existed. There were many creatures there. Then the ultimate evil showed up. (Wait a little while before immediately exposing the main plotline!)

#12: Once someone fought an evil snorkelbill and then a duckmog, then slew a whole entire gogthrod! (Explain those creatures! To anyone besides the writer, over half of that is a whole different language!)

#13:Oncesomeonewastypingwithoutspacesitwashardtounderstandtheirwritingbecausetheyalsodidntusepunctuation. (Don’t make the book an example of this)

#14: HellO My NAmE Is JOe I WeNT tO THE MAlL ANd THeRe WAs A MONstEr. (Things can be hard to understand with unnecessary capitals, can’t they…what looked like it said mail was actually saying mall, it just had a capital and lowercase L)

#15: “Arshkifol? Groop glogrl ygygygfy! Yarp!?! Snorp snorp snorp! groooooooop!” (Please explain your magical language)

#16 Salve, hic liber est, potestis intelligere me: Bene, una dies facta est magnum malum! (Translate your book out of latin! Oh wait it says Hello, this is my book, can you understand me, well, one day there was a big evil! Wow, the content in English is bad. Next!)

#17: Shoe burgers woof frog dop jet! Glop crunch smoosh! (We don’t speak gibberish here)

#19 *Insert musical song here* (No music in books!)

#20: Prologue: It had officially been a week since school ended. Joe was playing with friends when his mom made them go home. He was sad. He ate dinner gloomily and went to watch TV. then he went to bed. (If you’re going to make a prologue, make it interesting and important!)

#21: Once upon a time the end. (Too short)

#22: T h e r e  o n c e w a s a  y o u n g b o y (Don’t put a space in between every character. )

#23: The man got in his car, the police were after him! He drove one foot and the car ran out of gas. (Make police chases interesting! The car should go somewhere! Or just chases in general, whether that be running or even in spaceships!)

#24: “Hello. Said John. hello.” said Joe. they were both in a very serious conversation. (Put the ending for quotation marks and parentheses in!)

#25: Jack was in the middle of an incredibly important and hard math test. He finished the final problem. 2 days later, his math teacher was explaining the final problem, which no one got right. It turned out to be 11×5=57. (If you’re going to incorporate math in your story, at least triple-check your answer, or it will look really silly if the math is wrong!)

#26:  In a beautiful place, in one form or another, a slope full of magic, (Uhm, what?)

#27: Once there was a word. This word was next to another word. This word was next to another word. This word was next to another word. This word was next to another word. This word was next to another word. (We get the idea!)

#28: Memes (Just because there are memes doesn’t mean that it is a good story)

#29 There was a massive space battle between the dragochickens and the lazersquids, they were fighting over a large ball of energy (Too generic)

#30: Once upon a time, there was a man who created whole in the space-time continuum, then they went into the multiverse and did some more world-breaking stuff. (If you do stuff like this, then you’re story will A. be incredibly complicated and B. can go on forever and ever with new stories and be incredibly complicated also)

The End

(Although never actually say the end, it’s cheesy and sounds bad)