Who wants to read something that's boring? Answer: No one! Not even that little nerdy kid that always sits in front of the class with his face buried in a textbook. Use these tips to keep things interesting and fun to read.

Sentence Variation please! A good story should start with a short sentence (around 30 words), to capture the audience's attention. Long sentences make things flow easier, and are good to include similes, metaphors, and descriptions. Short sentences are good for straight-forward facts. Longer sentences should contain a good deal of description on a single subject, or be kept to-the-point. Maintaining a good balance of these throughout the entire story is essential to keeping readers... reading!

Word Variation is important because it shows off your vocabulary, and helps your readers to build a vocabulary too. Well, as important as a good lexicon is, that's not the main reason. Variation in words makes things interesting! Instead of using the word "ran" all the time, try words like "sprinted," "fled," "bolted," "darted," "hurried," or "dashed." Not only are these words more exciting, they also are more accurate. For instance, you sprint in a race. You do not flee in a race, you flee in terror. See what I mean? For help with finding alternative words to use, try using one of these online thesauruses: Encarta Thesaurus Reference Thesaurus Bartleby

Speaking Variation: It gets pretty boring when authors always describe the way someone has spoken as "said." Example:

"Blah blah blah," he said.

"Yadda yadda yadda," she said.

The word "said" does not do a very good job of relaying the emotions the character is feeling. Try using other words, like growled, hissed, spat, meowed, purred (these are especially good for Cats fanfics), yelled, screamed, cried, moaned, groaned, told, murmured, whispered, replied, answered, questioned, asked, queried... and the list goes on and on! With just a little bit of effort, you can think up dozens of words to use instead of "said." There are situations however, where no other word is as accurate as "said". These instances don't occur all that often, though.

Word Choice: A writer's best friend is a dictionary. Not only does it help you with spelling, but it's chock full of fun words! This point goes along with Word Variation. By using a thesaurus, you'll come across many "smart" words that sound nifty. However, the actual meaning of the word varies... for example, several words for "skinny" are gaunt, bony, slim, and slender. Gaunt and bony sound more negative, while slim and slender are more positive sounding. Sometimes, though, you won't be able to tell which is positive and which is negative. Dictionaries will tell you. Plus, if you know a word and want to use it in your writing, but don't know exactly what it means, you can look it up! Trust me, nothing looks sillier than when an author tries to use words where they don't belong. Some nifty online dictionaries: Encarta Dictionary Reference Dictionary One Look

Descriptions let us know where the characters are, how their surroundings make them feel, what's happening, and in general affects how the readers respond. Don't forget details! Nobody wants to read a story that's all dialogue, or just mostly dialogue. The saying "Show us, don't tell us" is true! Which is more interesting to read: Munkustrap walked into an alley. OR... The smell of rapidly decomposing garbage was heavy in the air as the silver tabby cautiously entered the alley, ears forward and listening for any sound that indicated that there was another feline there.

Dialogue: Likewise, no one wants to read a story that's all or mostly description. If you spend too much time describing the rust on a can, people are going to get bored and stop reading. Dialogue is a great way to move things forward, but don't do a good job of letting readers know the setting or the feelings of characters. Maintaining a delicate balance of descriptions and dialogue is tough, but important.

Actions Over Expressions: Don't spend too much time describing someone's facial expression. Posture and actions often do a better job of telling readers how a character is feeling. For instance, a nervous or embarrassed Jellicle may curl their tail about their ankles and fold their ears back, shifting uneasily from paw to paw. I'm not saying don't write facial expressions, but try not to make a big deal about it. If you have more than two sentences describing the face, try shortening it and working on body language.

Tense and Point of View: Two important aspects of writing, period. If you change from past to present tense, it confuses people. No really, it did. See my point? When editing your story, be sure and watch for tense changes. Most people prefer to write fiction and fanfiction in third person (Rose went to the bowling alley and met a friend). Fewer people write in first person, which is like someone is telling you their story (I went to the bowling alley and met a friend). Either works well for writing stories. Point of View is who's telling the story, basically. It means that readers are seeing how that character reacts, where they go, what they do, feel, say, etc. If the point of view changes in your story, you do NOT have to say so. That interrupts the story. Simply beginning a new paragraph with the new person's name at the beginning tells readers that the P.O.V. has changed.

Plot: Plots are hard to define, and I'd likely just confuse you. Go here: Teenwriting for lots of good information on plots and what to do with them.
My little addendum: Regardless of how exciting, revolutionary, or whatever your plot/idea/concept is, you need to focus on your characters and how they develop. If the conflict between characters, or even the characters themselves are unbelievable, then your story is unbelievable, and therefore uninteresting. No matter how ground-breaking, genre defining, outrageously cool your plot is, it's worthless if readers do not have interesting characters to read about. Likewise, boring cliche' type plots can be made interesting and fun to read if the characters are engaging.

Characterization: If you don't have interesting characters, who wants to read about them!? The thing is: your characters don't have to be fantastically beautiful, magical, smart, strong, or be fantastically wonderful at anything. That's because everybody writes those kinds of characters and they're unrealistic! More on this in the next section. In the CATS universe, you want to try and portray the canons (that's the characters that exist in the musical, not made-up ones) as closely as the production/DVD portrayed them. People love CATS because it already has really interesting characters! And notice, that with only a few exceptions, that the characters are completely normal. The audience can relate better to normal characters, and will therefore be more deeply involved in the story. If you plan on having a character ‘become' something different by the end of the story, that character must undergo believable changes, and react in a believable way, to bring about this new personality. Nothing in writing is more important than characters that are fun to read about. This should be your top priority in writing!