This is NOT the contest thread. This is the separate thread for links to rules about how to write.

Many of these rules are, in fact, pretty good. Even if you might end up breaking a few, you can improve by thinking about them. (ADDED: And maybe experimenting with them?)

https://www.fimfiction.net/writing-guide
This is very good, and full of useful tips!

https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/08/21/elmore-leonard-10-rules-of-writing/
I like this list partly because this professional novelist argues with other people (including other acclaimed professionals) whose rules are different.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one
Rules from accomplished authors. At least a few of these tips, Some, I think, are provided more as fuel for contemplation, than as mandatory rules you must always follow. Also includes at least one rule telling us we should sometimes break the rules.

A few fun things about reading these rules from different respectable sources:

• Some rules disagree with each other.
• Some rules talk about when and how to break the other rules!

Some of the rules and advice in this article are very useful! But you'll have to decide for yourself which apply to you, for where you are now and what you want to do.
https://lithub.com/ten-rules-of-writing/

Another doubtful rule for all stories to follow...
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/80103-borges-said-there-are-only-four-stories-to-tell-a

"Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum."

― Paolo Coelho

I have no idea whether Borges really said this.

7809014
Somehow I think there are more than just those four stories, too.

Which of those stories is Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis"?

--Sweetie Belle

7809021

Three out of four?

Familial love between three or more people, while they struggle for power over who has to (or gets to) go to work, and poor Gregor makes the voyage into the a new world of being a giant cockroach.

7809021

Which of those stories is Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis"?

This one!

TAnon Is Missing: The Mystery of the Enormous Ladybug (Or, the Mystery of the Hotel Maid Who Danced on Flowers)

• MLP: FiM
• Comedy
• Mystery

Anon vanishes from his bed, replaced by an enormous ladybug. Rarity and Spike investigate!

• Sex
• Rarity
• Spike
• Lyra
• Other
• Anon

Mockingbirb · 6.3k words  ·  9  1 · 356 views