Need advice from FanFic writers

[dogscoff]

Regarding the write-as-you play vs save-up-and-write: It's entirely up to you, and you don't need to stick to one or the other. The important thing to remember is that the game is only there to assist and guide the story, not to dictate absolutely to it. Pick out the events that would be interesting to your characters, or that highlight the aspects of the characters/ culture/ universe you want particularly want to get across. Ignore the rest. Don't feel duty-bound to report every single event in the game log, and feel free to make up events if that suits you (as well as making up all the different things that happen that are too small for the event log to notice)

My main advice to you though would be about rhythm and punctuation. You're not the only fanfic writer I've seen who skimps on punctuation, and I know a lot of people don't think this is important, but it makes a huge difference to readability. If you ever want to get published you'll need to get it right, so you might as well start getting it right now. I don't want to sound like I'm lecturing or patronising you, but I want to offer some friendly, constructive advice.

Before you post, re-read what you have written. Read it aloud, or at least read it aloud in your head (You know what I mean). Imagine you are a reader who hasn't yet seen this and has no idea what you are about to say. Take note of where you put the pauses when you're speaking- that's where your punctuation needs to be. For example, please read the following sentence aloud:
"The lift door slid open and Captain Ross stepped onto the bridge still buttoning his tunic and wiping the sleep out of his eyes desperately trying to look like three hours of sleep was enough as he took over the Last few minutes of the watch so he could oversee the warp jump personally."
It probably sounds fine to you, because you wrote it and you know what you're saying. You probably paused several times in there. Now read it aloud again without any pauses, and you'll get an idea of what I'm reading. It's a great sentence- I like the idea of him 'desperately trying to look like three hours of sleep was enough.' However, I had to read that sentence 3 or 4 times to get all the information out of it, simply because it has no punctuation. It has no rhythm and is very difficult to read. Please think about throwing a few commas in there, (probably after either 'bridge' or 'eyes') and then condier breaking the whole lot into two sentences. That might mean restructuring it completely, but believe me, it will be so much easier to read. You might even find you that by spiltting it into two sentences, you have room to throw a little more information in there.

The danger is that I will eventually not bother re-reading sentences like that and just skim over them, getting only half the information and eventually missing out on some of the best bits of your story.

Finally, and this is my advice to anyone- not you in particular- once you have written something that you think is finished leave it two or three days, maybe start writing the next installment in the meantime, then re-read it again. You'll almost certainly find a half-dozen things that you want to change, even if they're just typoes. I don't always have the patience for this myself, but when I do do it, that's when I get the best results.

[Starhawk]

Ah your right, thanks I'll try that.

Though to be honest I did think I put more commas and periods in then I did.
I suppose that's why I should leave it for two or so days though right?

Yeah I was considering that, because some of the stuff that I wrote down in my notes (such as a few colonies being established) I figured are unimportant to the story overall, because if those colonies ever come into play I can just make up some background.

The two main worlds though are of course Icara (being homeworld and Capital to the Icaran Empire) and Brandenburg (first and largest colony established by Icara).

[Will]

Definitely. With any kind of writing, write what you want first. Save it, and do something else for a bit, the come back and read/edit. Then you send it out into the world. Not only does it help in expressing what you mean, but in the case of fiction like this, it helps clarify what comes next in your own mind. So it just depends on which method you are more comfortable with, when choosing between write-as-you-go and write-after-the-fact, but always, ALWAYS re-read at a later time. First drafts are almost always universally bad