Novel Writing Guidelines

- If this article is very tough to understand, then you need to improve your English for at least a few weeks before writing a novel in English. I'm no English expert.

Story Target:

Know what type of story you are writing before writing it.

- If you plan to make the mc overpowered, or evil(or 'good', but a murderer), go for it but be clear on this at the beginning.

- If you plan to make someone change their character from good to evil or opposite, it is good to plan this out at the beginning.

- It's exciting for a reader when they think the story is ending, but then the MC goes to a new place for a new adventure, so try and create a vast world to explore with lots of detail, places like seas and mountains. A part of the storyline could be in an underwater/underground kingdom, on a plateau, etc.

- Don't explain the structure of the whole world at the beginning of the book. Have the MC only know a bit about his location, and let the reader learn new things about the world with the MC.

- This is just an extra(it is not a must-have for a good novel, but I like it): Have a well thought out plot. Rather than bad guys sending thugs or hurting innocents while the MC goes around beating them up throughout the novel, plan out a more intricate scheme. I love to read moments when it feels like everything is going wrong, but it was all part of the plan. And this 'plan' shouldn't be some hidden power coming out and saving the day. Try to have characters solve problems by using their heads instead of brute force sometimes too.

Clearly defined arcs

- Arcs should be well-defined with a beginning and end chapter.

- Arcs should be small(can range from 40 - 200 chapters based on your chapter length and the length of your entire novel). A significant arc can be longer, but the author can divide it into smaller sub-arcs.

- Each arc should end with the tying up of some loose ends. Leaving too many loose ends(running storylines) could result in the reader losing track

- It's nice to hint some things early in the novel and then have them impact the story later, but only one or two characters(enemies and allies included) should be in this 'hinted' state, or we readers forget about them, which goes against the reason for the hint.

- It is ok to bring in new characters at crucial points in the story(like when the MC is close to death, etc.). However, doing this too much can make the plot armour too strong.

Good English

- Use Grammarly. This is very important. Grammarly is a software that will automatically correct most of your spelling and grammar errors.

- Language(grammar) is important. If your English isn't good, try taking some classes or asking a friend with good English to edit. Grammarly can help a lot here.

- Sometimes re-reading your chapter helps you find a lot of mistakes(as what happened when I re-read this guide).

- Fluctuate sentences, making some long and some short to avoid exhausting a leader

- Most sentences should be on the shorter side

- Sentences using conjunctions like 'and' many times are examples of those that could be split up.

- Obviously, follow the basic grammar rules, but also look into some higher-level language guidelines. There are great tips online on how to write well. Take the time to go through these, and try consciously implementing these in your novel.

- Capitalization: Always capitalize the first word of a sentence, and always capitalize the name of anyone or anything.

- Never capitalize an entire word. Using italics, bold, full stops, commas, new lines, or capitalizing the first letter to emphasize but capitalized words are irritating to read. At most, you can capitalize loud sound effects like BAM! or THUD! but WRITING SENTENCES LIKE THIS IS ANNOYING.

- I'll write it again for emphasis. Use Grammarly.

Chapter Updates:

- Premium: Charging for chapters is natural, and you deserve it for your work. But, try leaving the first 100 chapters free to get readers interested. Yes, readers might get the gist of your novel in the first five chapters, but they need to be more immersed in your story to spend money. Of course, 100 is an arbitrary number based on the average chapter length I've seen for such novels. If your chapters are longer, naturally, you know best. I would suggest two arcs as a good amount to leave free.

- The faster, the better is true. The more chapters you release, the happier us readers will be, except if:

-- The rush to release chapters results in subpar chapters. Be careful of the tradeoff. Quality matters. While readers would like fast updates, there's no point if they don't like the novel itself.

-- For translations, two chapters a day is a great speed. More than that seems sloppy.

-- For originals, 1 chapter a day is the max you should publish(unless your chapters are incredibly short). And even that seems like a lot to me. It takes time to write good stuff, so churning out hundreds of chapters super quick often means its not good work.

Breaking up the chapter into small paragraphs:

- Leave two lines between paragraphs. This not only makes your novel seem a lot cleaner and easier to read, but it also makes chapters seem way longer ;P.

- Large paragraphs should be written only when extremely necessary, where you have to describe a single aspect of something in detail.

Giving someone's background, or explaining some part of the story or logic are not good things to write as big paragraphs. For these, an easy fix is to start a new paragraph every 3-4 sentences. It may seem trivial, but it makes a significant difference while reading.