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When your writing a story you should'nt involve yourself in the story. If your character cries, it cries.
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I would have to disgree absolutely with this entire point in its entirety.
(No offence intended, Havoc) Unless you can get into a characters skin and FEEL what they would in a situation, there is no way you're going to flesh a character out in such a way that your reader will be able to empathise with them. I'd never claim to be the best writer in the world, but I realise that to get FEELING into your work, you need to BECOME the character, very nearly. I can't write particular characters unless I can get into their skin and see out of their eyes, since it'll just feel false to me, and false to anyone else reading it.
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Well I got close, the publishers thought my writing style was pretty good.
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*interested* Do you have any you could upload? I'm just interested in getting ideas from anyone that publishers haven't outright rejected to try to improve my own stuff.
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As a few general pointers I try to keep to...
DON'T put colloquialisms in UNLESS your characters are supposed to be American/British/Outer Mongolian. For instance, most of my characters are supposed to be aliens, with their own mannerisms and slang and ways of speaking, and for a Kiravai (who are supposed to be rather snooty and precise in their speech) to suddenly come out with "Aw jeeze, man, gimme a break here" would read as... well, wrong. You'd think "why the hell has he just turned {insert nationality}?" If in doubt, don't use slang.
And grammar is your friend, yesindeed! You won't have a hope in hell of getting a story anywhere if you don't know about grammatical structuring. If you want something published but your grammar is a bit wonky, get someone to proof-read it for you (and I don't mean your schoolmate Bob, I mean a professional copy-editor).
And just to come back to one of Havoc's posts... personal fantasies/dreams are a good idea to start with, but try not to go for fanfiction if you do.
If, for instance, it is your dream to star in your favourite television show, then fine - but you run the risk of becoming a Mary-Sue, typically the most loathed character in all fanfiction.
Since naturally you want to be popular, so suddenly the entire cast must all be friends with you, and you want to be good at stuff, so you're good at everything (like you're a part-time nurse, part-time rocket scientist, part-time aeronautics engineer, etc). And of course, you have to be the hero... And what you end uo with it basically a story that's an ego trip. It's good for practice, and I must confess I'm guilty of writing a fair few of them myself (*blush*) but it doesn't make particularly popular reading for anyone else...