And by explaining, I mean confessing and apologizing.

"Nitset" isn't real. She's my - I think the term is sockpuppet. That whole fiasco regarding Boosette got to me more than it should have; specifically, what she said about bullying. It ate at me, because I was worried that she might be correct about the "bullying culture", and if she was I didn't want to be a part of it. So I decided to create "Nitset" and post like I did in order to have positive proof about whether the PPC seeks to hurt people or just to have fun and encourage good writing.

Pulling a stunt like this was incredibly stupid and wrong of me, and I'm truly sorry.

I should have realized that I would get a response like this. I should have showed you guys more respect. I should not under any circumstances have contemplated taking the word of some person I'd never met over my own observations of your kindness and welcoming spirit. Anyone with sense would have realized that the accusations of a "bullying culture" were ludicrous, given the friendliness of everyone. I also had no right to deceive you guys the way I did.

I'm really disappointed in myself, both for the foolishness in this and for betraying my principles by assuming the worst without good reason. I'm also saddened that I've jeopardized my standing in a community I admire and respect, especially since that respect and admiration for you guys has increased exponentially. I hope I haven't done anything that will change the response to any real Nitsets who come along. I also hope you can forgive what I did here.

Fair winds!

Welome to the Board. Have a Star Destroyer replica!

Welcome to the Board! Please deposit your sanity in the provided receptacle. *indicates bucket marked "Warg Fodder"* You shan't need it here. Also, here's a deck of cards with half the Diamonds missing.

It's great to see a sporked author actually deciding to ask for help instead of attempting to burn the board down. :D Welcome welcome!

*glompz*

As many others have said, kudos for being genuinely interested in improving as a writer. I can't think of anything insightful to add that others haven't already said, so I shall skip directly to the newbie welcoming.

Have a platter of chocolate-covered profiteroles and a pet mongoose, and hope you enjoy your time a'Board.

Elcalion

As a lot of others have said, it's great that you've come to us asking for help rather than flaming the Board. I haven't read your fic myself, but it looks like your problems can be sorted by getting a beta - any of these Boarders would be happy to help you! After all, we'd be hypocrites if we weren't.
Good luck in improving your writing! I'll see you 'round the Board.

As the others have said, it's awesome to see someone brave enough to admit this sort of stuff, so kudos and hugs to you for doing so. And not to worry, if you want help improving, there are plenty of people here who'll be more than happy to help (myself included).

As a welcome gift, I present you with a bag of pebbles and a Random Shiny Object. Use them well. XD

It's lovely to meet you. Others have already said everything I would say here - we've all started out writing terribly, always enjoy what you're doing, and beware sea tutles - so I'll just present you with your very own Newbie Gift - a horseradish - and repeat myself:

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

I have absolutely nothing new to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. {= )

First of all, it's so awesome that you came to us asking for help. As you can see, that makes us very happy, and we're willing to do anything we can. We know criticism sucks, but the fact that you were able get over it and make the decision to improve puts you head and shoulders above most other amateur writers out there. I salute you.

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Beka Cooper, either. It's still a good idea to post a link to the story so someone who does know something can have a look at it.

I agree with Barid that it might not have been one of us saying they were going to spork your story, though. We don't generally tell fanwriters if we write missions to their stories.

Finally, I guess this is new: is English not your first language? I'm just curious. Either way, I know a couple of really good online resources for improving your mechanics, and these are them:

A Writer's Reference by Diana Hacker. Contains instructional and interactive material. Play around with it and see what you find. {= ) She also has a book by the same title, if you care to find it. I had it as a textbook in college.

Common Errors in English by Paul Brians. Also comes in book form, which is how I know about the website. Entries are alphabetical. What's really nice is that he includes differences in American and British usage when they appear.

One important thing to remember is: if you're not sure about something, double-check it. {= )

Again, welcome to the Board.

~Neshomeh

This is the sort of post we like, because it means we're not just scary monsters who eat amateur writers; we're actually trusted to help.

Commas need to be a bit more frequent, but grammatically, in this post at least, you're doing fine.

Sounds like your best bet in this case would be to find someone who's willing to work with you closely on this particular story you've written, and go over all the issues and help you iron them out. I'd offer to help myself, but my Writing Brain is Dead. But best of luck finding someone for it, and gratz on having the balls to come here and ask about it. :)

Like what has been said before, everyone starts out poorly at the start.


That said, there's two very important things about writing.

1) Enjoy it. If you enjoy writing, everyone else can just stuff it. Even us.

2) Accept constructive criticism. When you're able to do that, you're able to improve loads more than you would be able to otherwise, and if you actually get anything out of the concrit to improve yourself, it leads to enjoying your work even more.

Everybody writes badfic when they're starting out*. That you wrote something spork-worthy just means that you have stuff to learn if you want to get better. We, as you can probably tell, have nothing against you as a person. We've written badfic too, and sometimes we spork fic that we wrote when we were younger.

That said, welcome!

*Speaking of the Tortall fandom, I used to roleplay what would've been the most ridiculously blatant mage/wildmage/Queen's Rider Mary Sue if the board I RP'd on would've allowed it. As it was, she was still pretty horrible.

Congratulations on taking the first step towards improved writing! Most authors never get this far, so give yourself a pat on the back for doing so.

And welcome to the PPC Board!

First of all, I am glad that you are trying to become a better writer. It is something that all of us here are striving for and we will help you out as much as we can.

Now, I have a couple of questions for you:

1) Can you provide a link to your story? It will help us make better suggestions if we can see the work in question.

2) Are you sure someone in the PPC said they were going to spork your story? There are many groups that do sporkings, and they all have different ways of going about them. The situation you've described does not sound like our MO, so it may have been someone else.

That said, we welcome you to the Board. Feel free to stick around and get to know everyone and ask questions.

~Barid

Having not read the story in question, I can't pinpoint exactly what it was that made one of us choose it. Do you know who it was who said they were going to spork it?

Italian for Grandma has given a very in-depth explanation of grammar problems that might be of use. If you could give us some information about your story, it could help us tell you what someone thought was worthy of sporking. Just hooking up with a canon character wouldn't be enough.

Well, compared to a few trainwrecks I've seen, you're actually pretty good. From what I can tell in your post, you seem to have spelling pretty much down, and that's good. You also said you want to write "well," not "good," and you used the correct "to" instead of "too" or "two." Yup, from a grammatical standpoint, you're not half bad. You're not *completely* there yet, but you're not half bad.

I do have a few tips for you, though. Number one: words like "don't," "couldn't," and whatnot need an apostrophe. That serves to indicate that two words have been merged together. So, it's "don't," not "dont." (By the way, once you have that down, it can help you with other problems like the difference between "there" and "they're." If the meaning you're looking for is "they are," i.e. has two words, then the word you're looking for is the one with the apostrophe. That's how I mastered that particular problem.)

Second. I'd recommend you review your period, and comma rules. To illustrate my point, I'll use one particular sentence from your post.

"I read a lot of the mission things and they were funny but it kind of hurt to realize that you guys thought my story was that bad but I got over it and now I'm hoping you guys can help me write better because I dont want that to happen again."

This is a run-on sentence; that means it goes on for too long without the proper punctuation. To fix it, you'll need to cut it up into smaller sentences and add the right punctuation. Let's start at the beginning.

"I read a lot of the mission things and they were funny..."

For starters, I'd put a period right after "things." You've said what you needed, so don't go overboard. That sentence stands on its own. Eliminate the "and," and you get:

"I read a lot of the mission things. They were funny..."

Doesn't that look better? Now for the next sentence:

"They were funny but it kind of hurt to realize you thought my story was that bad but I got over it..."

This requires a bit more work. Put a comma between "funny" and "but," because "They were funny" and "but it kind of hurt..." are completely different ideas in the sentence, and you need to separate them. Put a period after "bad," because the sentence is pretty much complete after two ideas are introduced. So:

"They were funny, but it kind of hurt to realize that you guys thought my story was that bad. But I got over it..."

Next: "But I got over it and now I'm hoping you guys can help me write better because I don't want that to happen again."

Put a comma between "it" and "and," to separate those two ideas. Then, put a comma between "better" and "because." Once that is out of the way, say "I don't want to get sporked again" instead of "I don't want that to happen again." That eliminates the need for the next sentence, which makes things a lot simpler. A general rule of thumb: the simpler things are, the better.

"But I got over it, and now I'm hoping you guys can help me write better, because I don't want to get sporked again."

And the final complete product: "I read a lot of the mission things. They werefunny, but it kind of hurt to realize that you guys thought my story was that bad. But I got over it, and now I'm hoping you guys can help me write better, because I don't want to get sporked again."

There! That's much better. Incidentally, this is how *I* would revise this sentence. Others on the board may tell you differently, because there are many different ways you could fix this and still be correct.

So, there you have it, you need to work mostly on your punctuation and sentence structure.

Now, I didn't give you any advice on subtler problems, like characterization and plot plausibility. To do that, I'd need to read your actual story...but I wouldn't recommend you talk to me about that. I'm not familiar with Beka Cooper, so I wouldn't be much help there. However, I'm sure that someone here is, and you can link them to your story and have them give you some advice.

All in all, I'm glad you've continued writing after having some hurt feelings. You're doing a good job so far. Keep it up, and take help whenever it's offered, and you'll be writing like a pro.

Good luck.

Woah, you found us all by yourself...

Anyways. I can see that you're being honest. You want to be a better writer, as do I, and I respect that. I'm not exactly the best writer either, to tell you the truth, and I'm not the one who was going to spork your story.

You don't seem too bad, to tell you the truth. You wrote that story because you were angry, and I've written some not so great stuff while feeling rather emotional. Though what we do has some negative connotations to it, we aren't actually about mocking writers (Even if they really deserve it, like whoever the heck wrote My Immortal). I'm here because I want to tell a story inside the PPC setting, for example, and most people are here to have fun and enjoy themselves.

There I go, ranting on again... Anyways, welcome.

You're a repentant Suethor? My god, you have no idea how happy this makes all of us!

First of all, we're happy you came to us rather than start madly flaming us, like most people do. I'm pretty sure I speak for everybody when I say we would absolutely love to help you with this. Happy to have you here!

Okaaay...I'll admit right off the bat that I have no idea what Beka Cooper is, but I'm pretty sure someone else here does. However, it sounds as if you're main problems are with spelling, grammar, and the like, so if you would post a link to your story I'm sure I, or someone else, could help you.

As for the spelling and grammar of this message...Spelling is mainly fine, and I don't think I see any grammar errors except for lack of punctuation. Commas are your friends!