Writing a novel.

[x-darshee.livejournal.com]

Hello! (:
First, I’d like to say thank you to the creator of this community! Creating this community was an excellent idea, because I think
writers can communicate with other writers and definitely learn new things to improve their writing skills. Kudos, my friend.

Okay, now to introduce myself.
My name is Darshee, fifteen, from Malaysia. I'm currently half-way through finishing a fantasy-genre novel. However, I myself have noticed that I have problems with grammar and similar ballparks. In where I'm living, they don't teach us stuff like this, so I rely on dictionaries and reading. Therefore, please excuse my wrong usage of language. I'm still learning! Hahaha.

What I really want to know, right now, is the main and most important rules on writing a novel.

For example:

"Thank you." He said?
"Thank you," he said with a smile?

I'm confused, and was hoping someone could explain the whole concept to me.
Thank you so much!

Darshee.

Comments

[starlight83.livejournal.com]

Everyone I've tried to teach grammar to has lasted about a day with me before jumping ship. Maybe I've just never had a good student! :)

I wanted to add one more rule to this, because it was done incorrectly once in the comments above. ^

If you have punctuation at the end of a bit of dialogue that isn't a period (like a question mark or an exclamation point) you leave that in the dialogue and put a period at the end of your "he said" tag. So you'd have sentences like:

"Can you help me with this?" she asked.

"Of course!" he replied.

And if you don't have a tag, it works pretty much the same way that full stops do:

"Can you help me with this?" She looked upset.

He slung an arm around her shoulders. "Of course!"

[x-darshee.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, thank you so so so much! *hug.
You're amazing.