Yeah, some stories are better than others with their grammar. It’s a headache to read when things are past a certain point though. I’ve noticed that you can find a lot of five star stories made entirely of incomplete sentences.
Thank you for the compliment!
I think it's because most of the readers of those stories have English as their 2nd or 3rd language as well. That's why they don't mind the poor grammar. It's enough as long as they can understand the gist of it. Which is a bit sad really.
I'm also not a native English speaker. But I'm an avid reader. And I want my story to not only make sense plot wise, but also to make sense grammatically. Reading a story with a broken English is just headache inducing. It doesn't matter whether the idea of the story is good. A writer is not just there to give a good idea, they're there to tell a story. How could they do that if they couldn't even convey it properly thru their written words?
Well, it's just my opinion. I'm sure there will be people here who would say; 'who cares about grammar? as long as the plot is good that's all that matters!'. LOL. 
I totally agree. My opinion used to be that grammar didn’t matter as long as it was readable, but I met some good authors who changed my mind. Grammar can change the meaning, pace, and mood of a sentence so much that it can’t be ignored.
Trying to write a better story with bad grammar is like trying to win a race against a car on foot. You might be able to do it, but it isn’t going to be easy. Your plot has to be so much better that I don’t care about the migraine I have.
Don't forget the almighty Em dash— my best friend. :D
yaoyueyi Em dashes are great!
They provide more emphasis than a comma or colon, and can be used in lieu of parantheses (Not that we use parantheses much in stories)
As a non-native, I tend to get confused when to use commas or periods. Especially when adding dialogue or action tags 
@shadowdrake27 Maybe that's another topic you can deal with: Formatting Narratives
Ah yes—the em dash. It was explained in the next post so I don’t have to say what it is for, but it is a wonderful punctuation mark. Also one to be used sparingly though. If one were to put it everywhere—and it can go almost anywhere—it would lose its effect.
Hmm... I can try. That can be my next post, but I’ll say a few things about speech tags. If I mention an attribution, that is just a speech tag.
Dialogue follows some easy rules, actually. I’ll list a few rules below to see if that is easy user than a long paragraph:
Some additional notes
an ellipse (...) means the character paused and their voice trails off. It’s a specific type of pause and is usually only used in speech. A narrator wouldn’t have their voice trail off unless it is a framed story and they are a character.
ending speech with a dash means they suddenly stopped or someone interrupted them
speech tags are not always needed, but it should be obvious who is talking. I do it like this, the first time a character talks they get a speech tag. If two people are talking, then I alternate by paragraph after that and assume the reader can follow. Three or more speakers can be tricky. It is better to use too many tags than too few.
if the character does something while talking, you can break their speech into two parts and have an action in the middle. You don’t necessarily need a speech tag, but only the parts being spoken are in quotes. Only the speech tag is attached with a comma and made lowercase. Everything else is punctuated normally. See my example below.
“It’s not that hard,” the man said. “Punctuating speech follows the same rules.” He waved his hand as if to dismiss the subject. “Once you know them, you should be able to do them repeatedly.”
Let me know if anything doesn’t make sense. If I do another post I’ll include more examples and such to show how to do this.
shadowdrake27 care to link me to your novel? That is, If you're currently writing one.
Knowing you clearly understand what you're talking about, I'll wholeheartedly give you an honest review.
shadowdrake27 Or if you're not currently writing one have you considered being an editor?
Sure! I’m not an amazing author, but I love honest feedback! The grammar shouldn’t give you a headache... I hope. Also, let me know if you have a novel you want me to look at. It will be a long time for I finish my review, but I’ll put it in my library.
https://dynamic.webnovel.com/book/16930452606946205?utm_source=writerShare&utm_campaign=4311387755
I’ve never considered doing editing. Pointing out some mistakes during a review swap is as close as I’ve gotten. Being an editor might be fun; however, I don’t know where to even start.
shadowdrake27 i am currently editing my 93k-ish word novel in google doc. I don't post on here, but I would appreciate some feedback on a chapter or two when you have the time. Dont sweat it though. And thx for the novel link
Maybe next week sometime you can share it and I’ll read a chapter or two. That is quite a long work! You should be proud of it. I have never written anything that long.
shadowdrake27 this isn't me at all I have brilliant grammar okay I have alright grammar maybe just normal grammar fine I have terrible grammar and English is my first language so I have no excuse it's just I have a bad problem of forgetting i am writing a book remembering that I was supposed to release a chapter last week then focusing all my attention on writing that chapter and then I forget to proof read it so when I release it there so many grammar mistakes that it is hard to read.
shadowdrake27 Wait, exclamation and question marks in a spoken sentence are placed outside the quotation marks? As in: "I hate you."! instead of "I hate you!" ?
And how do you show that something is the thoughts of a character instead of general narration, if you don't put thoughts in quotation marks?
Rushing always leads to more mistakes. No bid deal, it is easy to update on this website. You can go back and edit for grammar later. Sometimes it’s more important to gets the words down first, then go back and make it look nice. That’s what multiple drafts are recommended when writing something serious.
shadowdrake27 thank you for the advice
Great questions!
First of all, question marks and exclamation marks do go inside the quotation marks if they are being said. They only exist outside of them if they are not a part of the dialogue.
I’ll use your example:
“I hate you!” she screamed.
Later, if someone is talking about “her”:
“Did you hear that she said, ‘I hate you!’?”
Or you could do it like this:
Didn’t she say, “I hate you!”?
That is grammatically correct. Note that the single quotes in the first example contain only the direct quote. It uses single quotes because it is inside another quote for dialogue. The question mark is not a part of the quote, so it moves outside. The second example only has one set of quotes, so they are double quotes. Still, the question mark is outside of the quotes.
Here is another example that doesn’t have an exclamation point.
Aren’t you mad that she said, “I hate you”?
In this example I am asking a question, but the quote doesn’t include a question. The quotation marks omit the period because it isn’t necessary to convey meaning, and the question mark is outside.
In a story you hardly ever see this happen because the narrator hardly ever asks questions about character quotes. If you are writing a story, it’s safe to assume the exclamation or question mark goes inside the quotes with the character dialogue.
As for showing thoughts in your work, italics in the technically correct way to do it. You would put the thought in italic font, followed by a comma and thought tag. It would look like this (note that I’m putting the italicized words in parenthesis because I can’t do italics on my phone):
(Wow, that looks delicious), he thought.
There is, technically, a way to do internal dialogue as well. Internal dialogue would be the character talking to themself internally. It also uses regular double quotes. This is tricky because it can be extremely confusing if you have both external dialogue and internal dialogue. Basically, you are only supposed to include one at a time. It would require you to setup the whole scene as the character having an “internal conversation” like a monologue or aside in a play. That way it is clear that all conversation in the entire scene is internal dialogue.
In my opinion, you shouldn’t need to include that many thoughts in your fiction writing. If your characters feel something, then it should influence their behavior. Show us the behavior and let us assume the feelings. This is part of “showing vs telling” in a story. In particular, you should never include thoughts of a character who isn’t the point of view character because it breaks the narrative. An example is below:
(I’m scared), Tina thought. As we walked through a dark forest
Tinas eyes darted from side to side, trying to see what was hiding in the forest beyond the light of the torch. She started trembling.
shadowdrake27
Ah, thanks. I don't think that italics are possible on webnovel though.
That’s unfortunate.
I’ve been considering the single quotes are thoughts thing to be fine as long as the author is consistent. Even if it is not technically correct, writing in a way the readers understand is the ultimate goal. That seems to be a popular approach on Webnovel, and people understand what is happening.
shadowdrake27 I think you forgot about multi-paragraph soliloquies, where each paragraph within the speech gets an opening quotation mark, but only the final paragraph gets a closing quotation mark (unless broken up with tags). But I suppose no one is reading a several-hundred word tirade on Webnovel even if someone had the time to write it.
Otherwise, you are providing a great service, and I commend you.
