Library Tip! (No, HH, I would never want to plagarize your idea. Credit to HH for the creation of Library Tips.)

And this applies to all of you! All of you who think writing fiction is easy, rethink!

To many of us, we think of writing as something like a movie playing in our heads. Actions, ideas, plotlines, everything exists in the author's head.

All he has to do is to transfer it into words.

Easy.

Nope. Not easy.

In a movie, we hear sounds and music (the techno remixes and the sound of swash-buckling action, for example), we see the scenery and locations. We get the bonus of close-ups, camera angles and the actor/actrix's actual face and body movement to see the emotion!

On paper, we can't do that.

We are disabled, in that term.

To overcome the disability, we will have to eat a lot of grit (and sand) and take on a lot of effort. (Hence, good authors are hard to come by and do give credit for their hard work and endeavours!)

Tons of details we see, hear, experience and feel in our heads remain in our heads unless you convey them out. Here, the beauty of writing kicks in, and you will have to deliver to embellish your writing:

-Description -- This is a common woe for writers. Really. It's either too little, too much, or none. I leave the 'perfect' setting out, for that varies with different writers and their ideas. Description grabs readers and tells them what you can see, hear, experience and feel, and put it forward in a manner that they can receive it instead of them seeing it there like a fashion statement.

BZP writers have this flaw at varying degrees (and this applies to any writer.), where new people who step in normally have little to no description, and those who think description's the word add so much that you can't see the forest for the trees (meaning, you drive your readers in a frenzy of finding the story through the description). Both means no readers.

Once you overcome the disability of description, head over to the next one.

-Characters -- No one knows your character(s) except you. The readers won't love your character(s) [except you] until you show them off for who they are - and please, in an acceptable manner - to your audience.

Description falls under here too. Said above. No need for repeat. BZP authors may find difficulty in using canon characters (the normal characters which exist in Bionicle[TM])

Done with your little figments of beings? Good. Next!

-Plot -- There're two things you can do to a plot: Live it or kill it.

A plot also has to make sense. Take time, pause and think. Is this plot self-centred, or is it able to tell the tale instead of beig a circus which the main character is the sole and star performer?

BZP authors have good plots, I have to say. Some odd ones do stand out here and there, but more or less they follow a similar trend (war and fighting, matoran turning into toa and going on an adventure, etc. You know them all.) and the ones that turn heads with uniqueness are rare. BUT, hardly any of them are very bad.

That was a lot. Yet, overcoming these should enable you to write a good lot, and the level of your writing style would definitely catch the reader's eye.

And here the Library Tip ends. *breathes out a sigh of relief* I had to get that off my chest. I nearly missed my bus stop just thinking about it.