a few notes (feel free to add more, leave signatures) : including details similar or the same as other popular pastas is a major turn off to the reader. try to use your own creative details. Wadster97 01:45, July 26, 2011 (UTC)

moderate your writing schedual. if it's fairly long, wait a bit before you go rambling and realize none of your ideas make sense - give it time. Wadster97 01:45, July 26, 2011 (UTC)

Avoid cliches. They dampen the power of your story Use cliches carefully. If used correctly, it can further add to the immersion of your story. But if used incorrectly it can greatly dampen the power of your story. As I tend to read a lot of Video Game pastas, here's some of the cliches from that genre:

"Ultra-realistic graphics"

"Better graphics/sound than should have been possible at the time"

Obviously possessed or supernatural cartridge. While there are some good stories based on this idea, it's a hard one to pull off without sounding stupid.

Games that couldn't possibly exist for basic technical reasons ("uncopyable" or "un-undeleteable autodeleting" games, games that exist only on one website and you were the only person to find them, etc.)

"Hidden secrets" in very popular games.

Pointlessly gory additions to nostalgic childhood games (Realistic death animations for Mario, Link screaming in pain, etc.) (Again, possible to do well, but tough.)

A good hint is to try to make your pasta about either a rom hack (as blank NES/SNES/GB/GBC/GBA carts that you can flash roms on to are actually fairly common), or some odd fangame that some messed-up person made. This leaves in the reader's mind the possibility that this thing actually exists. Neito 20:39, July 26, 2011 (UTC)

Also, avoid all the Creepy Cliches. Neito 04:06, July 27, 2011 (UTC)

Writing everything as one long paragraph is a great way to get somebody to close the window without even reading your story. Dark Link is a great example of this. It just feels hard to read. There's so much text with no waypoints for your brain, so it gets lost and gives up. Go see how other authors (especially published ones) use paragraphs, then strive for that. Neito 04:35, July 27, 2011 (UTC)

Rules can always be broken. If the story is ment to be a blog post, make it have a few minnor errors. It makes it seem real. If it's a diary entry, put in translations to the errors made."THe thing is this blog is ment to make me fel safer. But its not." is more realistic than "What I must ponder here is how the said blog in question was originated to create a releave in stress that has been formed from the strage occurances of late, yet somhow it does not serve this purpose, but rather does the opposite." Don't try being a grammar nazi, don't try being a formal guy from the 1800's unless your story is ment to make it feel like that. Better still is to have your character be a grammar nazi then the grammar goes to hell, just don't over do it. OX and Amen 5:19, July 2, 2011

Don't go and make a pasta halfway through and have the character say I'll update when something else happens, it's just plain lazy. Chucklesx123 9:39, August 21, 2011

Always use proper grammar. No exceptions. When the reader sees an error, they consciously become aware of it, which takes them out of the story and makes them realise it's not real; thus, the scariness and creepiness dissipates. Any good blog writer would proof-read their blog post before posting it. Even if bad grammar would be more realistic, don't use bad grammar. Do you see movies set in a foreign country so the characters don't speak English? Nobody wants to watch a movie like that. OX's grammar is very poor, which makes me wonder about whether he should be giving advice on how good the grammar should be. He also seems to personally associate proper grammar with talking like an aristocrat from centuries ago, which is, although not wrong, is a bad assocation to make. LemmiwinksWasHere 22:16, September 27, 2011 (UTC) Please use proper title capitalization, spaces after punctation and do not Capitalize Every Word Of The Sentence. No, it's not High School, but if you want your writing to be taken seriously... ClericofMadness 03:01, September 29, 2011 (UTC)

If you want to write a genuine story about an .exe or .bat file, Windows 95-2000 usually helps to contribute to the ambience of what you want to write rather than the homely, Windows XP, Vista or 7. This is successfully used in Unbranded Laptop --Retro Man 404 23:18, December 24, 2011 (UTC)

Posting your Pasta

Do not forget to add your Pasta to the category listing.

If you do not know how to do this, then here are some tips

1. Go to the Article listings page

2. Create a Hyper link of your Pasta (The page should give you this option right off the bat Its the Picture of a chain) Alternately, you can se [[Title]] to create a link. 3. Type in the name of your pasta in the "Text to display" area.

4. Find where your Pasta belongs in the wide alphabetically orginized list.

5. Then done!

Remember to make sure your page is properly capitalized and formatted. For questions on capitalizations, try http://grammartips.homestead.com/caps.html