I have read many stories. Some good, some bad. Some downright ugly. Do you know the ones I mean?

"Hahahaha" said Gannondorf "i am going to destroy you link" "Not if i can help it" said link picking up the fierce dietys mask and putting it on. "Youre dead gannon" "AAAARRGGGGHHH!!!!!" yelled Gannon as feirce Link swung his sword and choped him in half "Yes I did it!"

Uggh. Pass the spork. Doesn't that sound awful? Okay. Hands up, class. What was wrong with that? (Apologies for turning into a teacher.)
Okay, perhaps that's a little harsh. But the truth is that I have read some which are even worse than that quick paragraph. I won't say who here - but if you can recognise your own style there, you know who you are.
That's what this little guide is here for. To help you get your stories into shape. This guide isn't going to turn you into the next Tolkien or Terry Pratchett, but it might just stop your fic from ending up gracing the pages of Godawful Fan Fiction.
Just remember - readers are a FuSsPaCk. They won't be able to see what's happening if your Formatting, Spelling, Punctuation and Capitals are wrong.

Well... Shall we go?

1) The formatting.
First rule of Fight Club: don't talk about Fight Club.
First rule of Write Club: don't talk on the same line. It's just so much easier to read.

Don't write long, long paragraphs. When the action shifts dramatically, break onto a new line. This is especially important onscreen. The number of times I've seen one long unreadable block-paragraph... The story might have been good, otherwise. But it's almost impossible to read your way through a long paragraph where the text, action, speech and everything else is jumbled into one long mess. Your audience's first impression will come from how good your formatting looks. And some, myself included, won't stick around if your story looks like an explosion at a type factory.

Break things up. Use the big old enter key sitting on your keyboard.

So... now, we have...

"Hahahaha" said Gannondorf "i am going to destroy you link"
"Not if i can help it" said link picking up the fierce dietys mask and putting it on. "Youre dead gannon"
"AAAARRGGGGHHH!!!!!" yelled Gannon as feirce Link swung his sword and choped him in half
"Yes I did it!!"

A bit easier on the eye - but we're only just getting started.

2) The spelling.
Time for one of my major bugbears. Almost every word processor has a spell checker, except for the likes of Wordpad on PC (and whatever its Mac equivalent is). For crying out loud, use it. Or try and get your hands on a dictionary.
Of course, real names are kind of exempt. But look at the manual for the game. For example - it's Ganondorf. Two n's, not three. And Rauru, not Ruaru.
(And my biggest annoyance of all in a Zelda 'fic: Fierce Deity. Your teacher was not always correct when he or she said 'i before e except after c' in junior school. What's a 'diety' anyway? Farore on Slimfast? It's no different from 'height' or 'weight', right? And as for 'feirce' - that's unforgivable. Sorry. I'm such a nitpick when it comes to FD.)

One thing, though. Try not to mix up similar sounding words - homonyms. You know - been, bean, your, you're, and all the rest of them. Spell checks can't pick them out - grammar checkers might, but they're almost useless. This is just going to take practice.

"Hahahaha" said Ganondorf "i am going to destroy you link"
"Not if i can help it" said link picking up the fierce deitys mask and putting it on. "Youre dead ganon"
"AAAARRGGGGHHH!!!!!" yelled Ganon as fierce Link swung his sword and chopped him in half
"Yes I did it!!"

It's improving... slowly...

3) Punctuation.
Ah, yes. Those little dots that go between the letters can make or break a story. I don't have room to go into things in detail here, but here's a few of the key things.
Don't forget full stops, aka periods, at the end of sentences. I've read a couple of stories where one sentence runs on and on and on and on and on (etcetera.) The worst I have ever seen is one sentence lasting for an entire screen (if you wrote it, you know who you are).

Words such as don't (do not), can't (can not), you're (you are) and so on need an apostrophe. The tricky one is 'its' means 'belonging to it', but 'it's' means 'it is'. Plurals don't need an apostrophe. Belonging-to-somethings - don't know the technical term, you know, like 'Link's sword' - do.

Commas help break up sentences, dividing one part from the next. They also help in long, boring, descriptive lists of adjectives. Also, they should be used when someone is speaking, instead of a full stop. Put a space after either a full stop or a comma. Technically, you shouldn't use a comma after the word 'and' or 'but' either (but I do anyway. I know. Bad).

Exclamation and question marks should be used sparingly to emphasise particular phrases. They are most at home in speech rather than the main narration. Long streams of sentences ending in an ! don't read easily. There is no excuse for multiple exclamation marks, or indeed multiple question marks, in a serious piece of writing. Terry Pratchett, possibly my favourite realworld author, once said that 'multiple exclamation marks are a sign of someone who wears their underpants on their head' - and I agree with him. 'WOW!!!!!!!!!' is allowed in the review (though if you start putting 1's in among the !'s, you're just making yourself sound stupid) - but not the story. The only possible exception is where a statement is both a question and an exclamation - I'd say you can get away with double marks there. For example (this is from one of my own stories):
"Weak?!" yelled Link. "I'm not..."

See? Possibly that's not quite correct. But I won't argue and I don't know who would. If you would, tell me.
Anyway... now our test piece is...

"Hahahaha," said Ganondorf. "i am going to destroy you, link."
"Not if i can help it," said link, picking up the fierce deity's mask and putting it on. "You're dead, ganon."
"AAAARRGGGGHHH!" yelled Ganon as fierce Link swung his sword and chopped him in half.
"Yes, I did it!"

That's not too bad. It's certainly readable. One more stage to go.

4) Capital letters.
Not much to be said here, but they make all the difference. Use them at the beginning of people's and placenames, and at the beginning of a new sentence. Remember that I, as in 'I am a fiercely unhappy Nintendo fan', is a capital.
If we remember that 'Link' is a normal word as well as a character's name, it's doubly important.

It's bad practice to write in all-caps - as we all know, it just looks like you're shouting, and it's hard to read. There are places for it, but few and far between.

"Hahahaha," said Ganondorf. "I am going to destroy you, Link."
"Not if I can help it," said Link, picking up the Fierce Deity's mask and putting it on. "You're dead, Ganon."
"AAAARRGGGGHHH!" yelled Ganon as Fierce Link swung his sword and chopped him in half.
"Yes, I did it!"

Now. Doesn't that sound better? Let's compare it to our original paragraph.

"Hahahaha" said Gannondorf "i am going to destroy you link" "Not if i can help it" said link picking up the fierce dietys mask and putting it on. "Youre dead gannon" "AAAARRGGGGHHH!!!!!" yelled Gannon as feirce Link swung his sword and choped him in half "Yes I did it!!"

Eeww. I actually wrote that? I've got to wash my keyboard!

Now my test piece makes sense - let's see if I can improve it further. I've got the essentials down. This is just tweaking.

1) 'Hahahaha'? That's bad. Onscreen and ingame, maybe - but keep it out of the fic. Try saying what Ganon did, rather than simply writing it. The same with 'AAAARRGGGGHHH!'
2) Oh, sheesh. 'I am going to destroy you' - how boring does that sound? Don't use stock, pat phrases.
3) Action! Action! Description! We want to hear every clink of the sword, every breath, every... well, don't go over the top. But you get the idea.
4) 'Yes, I did it!' That doesn't sound right, does it? Not for a serious, adult character, at any rate. It sounds more like Sonic the Hedgehog (I'm not dissing Sonic, mind). Different characters are going to speak differently. There will always be a nitpicker who notices if someone's speaking completely out of character without explanation - usually me.
5) It's really not a good idea to write 'said X, said Y, said Z'. Try varying phrases occasionally - though don't overdo it. I can't even use 'said' once - blame my junior school year-five (don't ask what grade that is) teacher. Old habits die hard.

A couple more tips:
6) Author's notes in the middle of a paragraph? Bad habit. Try and avoid it, as they can break up the flow of a story. See if you can write whatever it is into the story. Otherwise, leave it until the bottom of the page, or put it at the top if it's something that has to be explained beforehand.
7) Chapter length. Twenty thousand words on one page? That can get rather hard to read, plus it takes ages to download if you're an unlucky AOL-using dial-up-modem-using muggle like me. If you can, try to break it up. I'd say that five thousand is a pretty good maximum - it's ten pages printed, which is a normal sort of chapter. Otherwise, you know how much you can write.

Now, let's see... (cracks knuckles)

The Evil King laughed maniacally. "Prepare to meet your end, Link!" he boasted, standing over his fallen adversary.
"Not if I can help it!" Link responded, breathing shallowly. He searched the ground around where he lay for the Fierce Deity's mask, and slapped it to his face. Climbing to his feet, recharged and powered-up, he grinned. "You're dead, Ganon."
Ganon yelled in pain as Fierce Link thrust his sword's twisted blades into his chest, before collapsing. "Don't underestimate me," whispered the triumphant warrior.

Well... I'd be proud to put that last paragraph in a story. And, in fact, I might just do that...

Got it? Now go out there and write the best darn fanfic of your life!