Gripes with writing

1. grammatical errors and dialogue

Yes, this is a personal pet peeve of mine.  None of this should be taken as great advice and rather just something to keep in mind.

I am aware I've probably done these things before, and it scares me.

I don't care if your story has some grammatical errors.  It happens even in paperback published books.  What does bother me when it happens nearly every.  Single.  Line.
I've run into books I thought would be really neat, but just was immediate interest loss because I couldn't understand anything due to grammatical/writing errors.

I can get it if people don't know a word, and I'm giving a pass to people who don't speak English as their first language.  English is fucking weird.

But, I will still bring up that there's spellcheck on wattpad and docs for a reason.  You can write on Google docs, fix any noticed mistakes, and just copy-paste it to here.  Hell, you could even just Google the word to see if you spelled it correctly.  Laziness is not an excuse.
(Again, giving a pass to people who don't speak English as their first language)

I can understand if it's only passion projects and not meant to be perfect.  No story is.  But understand that people will lose interest if you don't put in the effort to make your story understandable/legible.  It'll get frustrating after a while.

(And no, people who "fix" stories in comments are no better.  If the author doesn't ask for it, then do not do it.  You're their readers, not their editor.  Just drop the story if it's too difficult to read.
-if the author did ask for it, then I give readers a pass on suggesting edits and stuff.)

And this will go into a long dialogue rant now. A lot of the time, it can be confusing to see stories that try to change up how dialogue is percieved. I'll write an example below.

People using -hi!-, 'hi!', or 《hi!》instead of "hi!" for example.  It's such a change of how to write dialogue that it's confusing.  Usually, because - is used to signify interruptions in dialogue when a person is cutting off themselves or someone else is cutting off them. It's also used in ways like how I did above (copy-paste).

This ' is used usually for words like it's to signify it is instead of its.
And I have no idea why people use 《》 for dialogue.  It's just...  confusing to read.  I can't even tell if people are talking unless it's specifically stated they're talking.

^ Just use "hi!" please!  The other ones are just way more confusing.

Another way people write dislogue is lines with the name of the character and dialogue afterward.  There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but it's still executed poorly in a lot of stories.

Examples below:

Jesse: I can't believe you!  He crossed his arms, his anger evident. 

This in itself, I see writers do a lot.  They include character actions next to the dialogue with no separation between the two.  You cannot tell when they're talking or making an action due to this.  Especially when they mix the dialogue after the action again.  It's so confusing.

I recommend just, again, using "I can't believe you!"  It usually looks better, takes less time, and is less confusing all around.

Another way to do it would be to separate the two into seperate paragraphs

Jesse: I can't believe you!
Jesse crossed his arms, anger evident.
Jesse: You're horrible..

Or...

Jesse: "I can't believe you!"  He crossed his arms, anger evident. "You're horrible.."

Personally, I've seen only one person be able to make this work.  And even then, they had to change their writing halfway through because of the issue above.  And it's been so long I can't even say the story is good because all I can remember is how they wrote the dialogue.  That stuck with me more than the story itself did!

A way to write with this can be to do this when texting, and it would work.  But anywhere else, it just takes up a lot of space and adds too much emptiness.

This actually leads into another rant of mine!  That being...
Too little or too much spacing.

Even good stories have this issue, and it makes it hell to read through.
Blocks of dialogue and actions, but no spacing or line breaks.  This can be hard for people with - say dyslexia - to read through.  I can't speak too much on this because I don't have dyslexia.  I'm mainly going off of just the symptoms itself and how to try to make it easier for them.

One: for fucks sake use your commas and periods.  People make run-on sentences so often because of it and is a huge reason block texts even happen in stories.

Another one is just dragging on dialogue.  No line breaks or anything.  It can fill almost the whole screen before finally breaking off.
And I hate this.
It's so difficult to read through.  I can write an example just to get my point across here.

"Look. Jess."  The brunette tried to explain, her face painted with tears.  "Can't we please talk like adults-" she was cut off as he slammed his fists on the desk.  "-Talk like adults!  Ironic, you didn't want to do that when you were seeing my best friend!  You cheated on me."  Callie flinched back at his raising tone.  He never yelled at her before..  "If you would just listen-"  again, interrupted.  "-I did listen, Callie!"  He hissed, tossing trash bags out the door.  Bags that he had been pacing around and stuffing full with her items.  "You left me alone!"  She snapped as Jesse shoved her out the door.  "What was I supposed to do!?"
"Oh, I don't know..  tell me it was over, and then look for some fuck-toy?  Not cheat on me?"  With those last words, he slammed the door on her face, leaving her sobbing in the cold night.

There is an example.  No line breaks. It's just one big block of text.  I've seen way worse offenses of this, but I am not dragging this on long enough to completely get my point across.  Let's instead go over ways to fix this..  we can simply add spacing, and that should help quite a bit, along with a few edits..

"Look. Jess."  The brunette tried to explain, her face painted with tears.  "Can't we please talk like adults-" she was cut off as he slammed the drawer. Bags in hand.

"-Talk like adults!  Ironic, you didn't want to do that when you were seeing my best friend!  You cheated on me."  Callie flinched back at his raising tone.  He never yelled at her before..  "If you would just listen.."
again, interrupted. 

"I did listen, Callie!"  He hissed, tossing trash bags out the door, all stuffed full with her items.  "And I find it all outrageous how you find every opportunity to blame me."

"You left me alone!"  She snapped as Jesse shoved her out the door.  "What was I supposed to do!?"
"Oh, I don't know..  tell me it was over, and then look for some fuck-toy?  Not cheat on me?"  With those last words, he slammed the door on her face, leaving her sobbing in the cold night, alone once again.

Yes, I already prefer this way more than the last one.  Not too hard to read, and with simple edits after re-reading it already sounds way better than before.
I think I'm done with my rant now.  This is less writing advice and more just me.. complaining?

If I find something else to rant about I'll add it here.

Yeah, complaining.

Bye-bye now.