Okay, lets forget the multiple titles and things I seem to have collected while I am a member here at GA. When it all is stripped away I am two things - a reader and a writer.

When I first came to GA I came here as a reader. Off site, I was an English major so I read a lot of books. I read for school. I read for pleasure. However, any way you look at it I read. When I came here I did just that, I read the stories that appealed to me. If I enjoyed a story I left a comment. If I didn't, like any book I might not enjoy, i simply stopped reading and that was that.

I believe in order to write, you need to read.

However there are a few things I have noticed and being the big mouth that I am, I am going to comment on them and let people draw their own conclusions.

When you write you create a world. You breathe life into characters and let them come to life for your reader. It is what a writer does, create worlds.

There are different type of worlds and these worlds will need either little or major work so a reader can understand it. There are those set in the real world. Where the characters could literally be your next door neighbor. The world the writer has to create isn't so hard because the characters live in the everyday world. The reader knows stop lights, gravity, and basic laws so the focus is more on the characters and their relationships.

Then there are the worlds where characters almost live in the normal world but they are the step beyond. Think superheroes or elves. Here these beings have powers, but are living in the normal world. Their powers have to be explained early on and kept consistent. You can not begin with someone as powerful as Superman, then increase his power tenfold adding a magic ring, power over the dead, the ability to control sea-life, and then giving him a sidekick who can with a glance force anyone they see to do what they want. One you have stretched the ability of the reader to the breaking point and two who on earth do you come up with as a possible foe? The elf can't go running around with a gun, because an elf can't hold cold steel.

When you decide to deal with the major pre-created creatures of the night, before you put your spin on them you need to make sure you know the history of the characters. Werewolves, Vampires, Mummies, Zombies, and Elves all have a well traveled history. While every writer now wants to make their mark on these, they need to know the history before they make changes and they better be able to state why their creation isn't part of the norm. If your Vampire twinkles in the light like Edward of Twilight fame, then you better be able to say why he didn't explode and die in the sunlight. If your Zombie isn't shambling along at the speed of snail but running at Olympic levels after the main character, there better be a good reason for it or the reader is going to stop reading. If your elf is sitting in the middle of a iron office typing on a computer and making cell phone calls, well you get the idea.

Other writers will create whole new worlds for their stories. Here new rules, lessons, and creatures exist. Some of the old might be applied but not all. Here witches can change men to kittens, Warlocks summon demons from the depths of a hell, and Gods walk among the men and women granting gifts that are going to go horribly wrong. The laws reasons for all are carefully explained and once explained the reader will follow willingly. The main thing is to make sure that the rules are explained and then not changed.

Once the world is created and the reader has committed the writer has one last promise to keep - to make it to the end without changing the world. Nothing will tick a reader off more than accepting the world, falling in love with the character, only to find the author has written them self into a corner and changes the world to end the story. Suddenly the hero who has managed to fight everyone with his sword is surrounded and about to be swamped when his sword magically turns into a gun and kills all the bad guys. The reader stops, rereads this and is confused and angry. There have been no guns, and he has managed to climb walls, jump onto horses, or find a trap door every other time but now his sword becomes a gun? In plain English, the writer wrote them self into a corner and this was their way out of it. Only now the reader feels cheated because of the emotional investment and seeing what they felt was a great story suddenly fail. (Think of the television shows you loved that went on too long and the writers ran out of ideas. Like in Happy Days when Fonzie jumps the shark.)

World building is an art and is an important part of writing. Readers know this from the stories they have read. Authors need to remember this as they write. Just my two cents and I hope it helps.