Is good grammar needed in writing? SURE!! What would you expect a former English teacher to say? BUT, don't let trying to figure out where your commas are, or if you need  a semi-colon or an em dash, or whether you have a dangling participle stop you from getting the story down. Plenty of writers need someone else (a good editor) to pretty up their prose. If you do have a grasp of the grammar and mechanics, great. It does help, there is no denying the cleaner your draft is, the easier your editor's job is. The job of writing in general will become easier if you watch subject verb agreement, misplaced modifiers, and other glaring grammar issues.

Remember you aren't trying to please your English teacher. What you are trying to do is get your particular story across. Grammar helps you do this by making sure the words and sentences make sense. It all adds to the larger picture. Now you may have a narrator's voice who doesn't use proper grammar. Use it to your advantage. Remember Mark Twain's Huck Finn? OR more recently, Kathryn Stockett's The Help? Both stories use imperfect grammar to create narrator voices that engage and charm the reader. One caution, if it's your narrator's voice, it's good, but if it's the author's narration in poor grammar, not so good.

When in doubt, ask an expert, someone you respect who has the knowledge of good grammar, and if you are still confused, don't forget there are plenty of grammar books out there to assist you polish up your diamond in the rough.

If done well, flashbacks add depth of character and shine a light on character motivation.Flashbacks need to be handled deftly. If you find you're spending too much time flashing back, then perhaps you started your story too late and need to move the timeline of your overall plot.

Placement of flashbacks is important. Don't put them in an action or fight scene as it will slow things down for your reader, and you risk the reader skimming ahead to where the action picks up steam again. On the converse, a flashback can liven up a static scene where you have the character alone and she has time to think. The place for flashbacks in a story is mostly likely nearer the beginning or middle and not the end.

Be sure you have a natural trigger into a flashback and you'll be less likely to create an information dump for your reader. Pay attention to where the flashback ends and the character is returned to the present. Make sure you delineate both the entrance and exit points of the flashback.

Some say no flashbacks at all, yet sometimes they can offer motivation to your character if you write them well and it illuminates where the character faced a similar situation. They need to be justifiable and not just a flight of fancy for the writer.

As with all elements of writing, there is an art to what will work for your story.

Readers look to identify with characters. One of the best ways we identify with other people--and our characters are people--is through an emotional connection. We want to feel the anger, disappointment, frustration, grief, and happiness (in small doses).

If we empathize with the character we have a stake in reading more, to find out what happens to this person.

In revising your writing, see where you can add in emotion, or where you haven't taken the opportunity to express it fully, to give the reader a picture of the situation.

Showing vs. telling
You can tell: Sally was sad.
OR You can show it by writing: Hot tears sprang to her eyes.

Think about new ways to show that emotion in a visceral way. What happens when we're angry? How do you know someone else is disappointed? Show it and your reader will keep reading.

We talk all the time, so should dialogue be one of the easiest things to write? You'd think so, but sometimes writers struggle with making their characters' dialogue authentic.

Dialogue is an ideal place for showing in your story. When reading, the dialogue bits pop off the page and readers tend to enjoy them because they move quickly.

Some ideas to improve your dialogue:

Avoid idle chit chat: For the most part, though in real life we may do the: how are you, fine, can't believe how hot it's been, how're the kids...in writing, it becomes tedious and downright boring for the reader.

Streamline: Each line needs to add to your story somehow. The primary purpose of dialogue is to illuminate character. We see them in action by what they're saying and how they react to others. Of course, plot points are revealed through dialogue, too.

Avoid giving speeches: Or having your characters give speeches. Think about how fast you tune out when someone pontificates without you having a chance to respond. That's what your reader will do if you have a long block of speech-giving. While sometimes you need to have long stretches of speech, consider inserting interruptions, questions in order to bring that same speech to life and show your characters' traits.

Leave the grammar police behind: People don't speak in grammatically correct sentences all the time. Use contractions, fragments, and appropriate slang to bring your piece to life. Be careful with the slang though, unless you want to date your piece in the here and now (or some other era) don't overdo it.

Insert appropriate body language: Within your dialogue remember you're painting a picture for  your reader. You don't need to do a lot of action during dialogue, and you don't want to direct the scene, but you do want to give color to the scene and your characters by giving them some action while speaking.

Use speech tags: He said, she said are the best. You may have heard, they are invisible, and they are, but they give the reader a point of reference so they can keep track of the speaker. If your conversation is between two people, you don't have to put a tag after every piece of dialogue. If the reader knows who is talking from your situation and how you've crafted your characters, then you can leave the tags off.

Avoid names: Have you ever noticed we rarely use someone's name when we're talking with them directly unless we're trying to make a point or get their attention. The same should be true in your dialogue.

Avoid those adverbs: In most cases including such things like, he said ferociously is telling rather than showing. If he's being ferocious, show it. He bared his teeth. "You have no idea what you just did." - shows us, while "You have no idea what you just did," he said ferociously, tells us.

Change the topic: Keep your reader guessing by having an unexpected twist in the conversation.

Avoid the "As you know, Bob," trap. One of the characters in the conversation needs to not know the story. If they both know what's happening, then it becomes dialogue for the purpose of giving the reader information and it reads fake. Consider Sally speaking with her husband, Bob. "You know, Bob, last year when we moved from the city, everything was great for a while. Then we started farming and the storm hit and we lost the crops and the bank took the farm." (If Sally and Bob are talking to one another and went through the experience together, this is 

Battles, fights, struggles, whatever you call it, conflict is one of the single most important elements in a story. When I taught literature to sixth graders we identified the types of conflict in a story. When analyzing any length of story, most people will point out the conflict. Without conflict you have no interest and nothing needs resolution.

It's one of those basic ingredients we teach and learn in the classroom, and yet it's surprising how many beginning writers forget to mention this. They may have an overarching problem their main character has, but they get lost in mundane details when they write the story and forget the struggle the character needs to face in the moment.

Writers often love their characters, sometimes to the point of distraction. They don't want bad things to happen to them, but if the character isn't embroiled in some dilemma, what reason does a reader have to go on reading?

Does this mean the character must be in constant peril? No. Conflict can be subtle, it doesn't have to mean the antagonist is pointing the gun at him for the whole story. This can be just as dangerous to a story than having no conflict. If the character goes from one high conflict moment to the next, it can exhaust the reader because there is no down time or reflection allowed before the next intensity happens. It's like a roller coaster. The ups and downs of a story give it balance and pace a reader wants.

Remember there are many types of conflict. In some scenes it will be overt, a life or death situation. In others it will be understated, an internal question the character must decide.

Conflict involves characters not getting what they want or desire and facing some impediment to achieving their objective.

Bad Bad Bad = Back story. That's what many would like you to believe, and they're correct to a point. Threads weaved into the story with skill add layers and meaning to your primary storyline. Dipping and diving into the past to illuminate characters motives and history can be just what you need to make the story fly.

Be wary of filling the first chapter(s) with back story. If you've not established your characters so the reader can relate to them from the outset, you risk losing them. If you feel you must fill in the back story, consider starting your story earlier.

Some advisers caution against having any back story at all. In reality unless your character appeared fully formed out of thin air, they have had a life before the story begins. Even for a baby, something brought her parents together to create her. So there is always a back story of some kind. But, is it important to the current story and situation? If not, leave it out.

One technique for beginning authors is to write your story where you think the beginning starts and then judge whether you can skip that chapter(s) to where the action really starts. This depends on the kind of book you're writing, of course.

If you determine your backstory is justified, don't tell it, show it in a complete scene. You'd be surprised how few sentences can construct a scene.

Even if you aren't writing an action story, using vivid action verbs helps your writing pop off the page. You can add color and punch to your scene by choosing smart verbs that do double duty. If you use the correct verb, you'll rarely need one of those dreaded adverbs. You could write: Bob ate my spaghetti. (An ordinary sentence tells what happened.) As a first draft it's OK. When revising, see if you find passages where you can use words to sculpt something extraordinary.

Bob gobbled my spaghetti.
Bob inhaled my spaghetti.
Bob nibbled my spaghetti.
Bob slurped my spaghetti.

Do you get an altered picture of Bob with each verb? This little technique tints the painting of your characterization.