Tips, Tricks & Helpful Hints: A Mentor Thread.

[Aurelia Courville]

In an effort to help those that want it, I decided to do a series of blogs that would list certain tips to help you get better at writing. As requested, I'm moving them here so that those newer and older that don't check out blogs (especially those further back) can read them as well.

As always I will state that, none of this is required reading, as long as you're comfortable with your writing, being respectful of others and having fun, that's all that matters n_n

*I don't claim to be the greatest writer in the world, but I've been RPing since 2004 and people tell me I'm decent enough, if that's any consolation.

If you have any questions about the sections, have something you want me to cover, want one-on-one help, please, feel free to PM me.

Pt. I: How to lengthen your posts.
Pt. II: How to create a character you'll love.
Pt. III: Common Courtesy on the boards.
(more may come)

[Aurelia Courville]

So you wanna know how to get away from one-liners, lengthen up your post a bit? Well here are a few tricks I’ve come across in my years of writing for role-plays—and believe me, it’s not as hard as it looks.

Of course, everyone has their own style of writing and some GM’s will specifically state a minimum length for your posts. Sometimes one-liners are welcomed, and sometimes they’ll expect a little bit more. Of course no one expects you to pump out eight paragraph posts every single time; for the most part, two paragraphs will do. But with these tips, I’m sure you’ll do fine.

For reference a normal paragraph is five complete sentences.

All examples will build upon a typical RP, something simple, like, you’re in a bar—“Tavern”—if you will.


Typical one-liner that we will build upon:

“The girl walked into the tavern and then she waited in the corner for someone to talk to her.”

Yes, well.

Who is this girl? What does she look like? How did she walk into the bar? Does she look like someone who would normally be in a tavern? And more questions so on and so forth. (and we aren’t even going to go over grammar and spelling today)

So here are some tips that you can build on to create a wonderful post that’s at least two paragraphs long—or longer if you work it right. (Note: they don’t have to be written in this order, get creative, it is your post after all )

Tips #1-3: Location, Location, Location.

So maybe you aren’t trying to buy or sell real estate, I get that, but the concept still applies here too. In essence it just means describing the setting. You see, when you describe the setting of your posts (and do it right) you’ll knock out at least one paragraph no problem. Even if the poster before you has described the current scene, there are still things you can touch on.

Highlighting spots, like a crack in the wall, a spider web… or something more entertaining like a picture on the wall, can add to character development. Maybe that picture on the wall over the bar is of an English country side, and that English country side is the exact replica of the town your character grew up in—or always hoped of settling down in. In other words; every little detail helps. It’s not only helping others envision where you are, but also what’s important to your character. Whether you’re lingering over that picture of the English country side or commenting on the condition of the place. It’s all helpful to getting to know your character and scene.

New post:

The room was quiet, an odd occurrence for its semi crowdedness. The stale scent of dust, rotten wood and beer filled the air. Dark cloaks hung from nearly every taken seat. Three figures sat on bar stools, hunched over their mugs of varying coloured liquids while the other seats about the room were dimly lit and with sketchy looking figures around. Thunder rumbled as the door swung open to reveal a young woman’s silhouette.

See? Not so hard right?

Next on our list~

Tip #4: Dialogue.

No matter if your character is saying one word, a monologue or in deep debate with another character, it’s easy to turn dialogue into a full paragraph or more.

Characters are real writen people in a real written world. and just like in the real world 95% of all communication is not spoken—okay, so I’ve probably made that percentage up—BUT! I do know that non-verbal communication is essential. Hand gestures, eye movements, facial expressions, dramatic pauses (you know those spaces between the words) tiny details that can take up five sentences in a paragraph to express.

post:

The Bartender came up to her then, paused with a sneer of a predator. “What can I get ya’?” he slurred his words a little, not so much of a drunk slur but close enough to make her feel uncomfortable. She shrunk in her seat a little, trying to put as much distance between her and the balding, fat slob in front of her.

“Just a pint,” She paused, holding back the urge to puke a little when she unknowingly inhaled his odor. She put her hand up in an effort to block her nose from the smell. “Please.” She finished the order and willed him to walk away from her as soon as possible.

Of course when you’re controlling a Non-player character (NPC- someone who isn’t controlled by another Rper) it’s easier to take liberties with actions.

Another hint with Dialogue; combined posts with another Player can also help lengthen posts, instead of leaving off with questions. (That is like the equivalent of putting your life on pause after you ask a question and wait for the other persons answer… only worse because in an RP that leaves your character or the character you are talking to open for an interruption from another player’s character. And sometimes, you may not want that.)

Tip #5: Of course, describing your character is important. And it’s up to you how much you want to disclose.

If your one of those people that can pump out a character sheet that’s eight paragraphs in length… well then you probably don’t need these hints anyways. But leaving some things out of your character sheet could insure that you have something to input into your IC posts. Flashbacks, and memories, things that are happening to your character now can remind them of something that happened to them in the past. What they look like, their personality, pretty much anything about your character could be built upon with in your posts. But be careful that you don’t do too many flashbacks; the story isn’t just about your character and his/her past.

Also bringing back details from the begining of your post might help. Remember it was raining before? how's she dealing with being wet still? or is she now magically dry all of a sudden.



Final post:

The room was quiet, an odd occurrence for its semi crowdedness. The stale scent of dust, rotten wood and beer filled the air. Dark cloaks hung from nearly every taken seat. Three figures sat on bar stools, hunched over their mugs of varying coloured liquids while the other seats about the room were dimly lit and with sketchy looking figures around. Thunder rumbled as the door swung open to reveal a young woman’s silhouette.

She walked into the bar all long legs and curves, long blonde hair still blowing and wet from the rain outside. Her deep blue eyes scanned the room for anything suspicious. She felt like she shouldn’t be here. In fact, she knew she shouldn’t be here. But, here she was, sitting alone in a darkened corner of this rundown tavern waiting for someone to talk to her.

The Bartender came up to her then, paused with a sneer of a predator. “What can I get ya’?” he slurred his words a little, not so much of a drunk slur but close enough to make her feel uncomfortable. She shrunk in her seat a little, trying to put as much distance between her and the balding, fat slob in front of her.

“Just a pint,” She paused, holding back the urge to puke a little when she unknowingly inhaled his odor. She put her hand up to in an effort to block her nose from the smell. “Please.” She finished the order and willed him to walk away from her as soon as possible. The bartender walked away after another nasty look over her.

Jill, as she was called by most people—the ones she liked—pulled her jacket tighter around her, still feeling the chill from the dampness of outside. She tried hard to keep her hair from dripping down her back and making her shiver again. She’d come to this town on a whim, feeling drawn to it. And now? Now she was almost regretting it. Somehow, she felt like she was about to die.

See, that’s more than two paragraphs, and I had absolutely not plot to go off of. Of course throughout the stent of your role-play, post lengths will fluctuate between two paragraphs and eight (or more). And that is perfectly natural, not everyone can pump out a steady eight paragraphs and be good every single time. It’s also something you shouldn’t feel bad about. A personal rule of mine with role-playing is: Write for fun. If you aren’t having fun, then you shouldn’t be writing. Especially with role-playing, you aren’t getting paid, so you should at least be happy doing it. Heck, even if you were getting paid, shouldn’t you want to be having fun with it?

Also, paragraph structure, as I've noticed, differs between people depending on what you learned in English classes. Some people will start a new paragraph when a separate character speaks, sometimes I will have a sentence off on it's own to 'emphasize'. It's all open to your artistic expression, so don't worry too much about that.

Other ways to lengthen your posts, Play with people that are better than you. Swallow your pride, and don’t be intimidated. Most people on RPA I find are always so willing to help you out.

[Aurelia Courville]

So there you go. You can now write a spectacular post of a decent length.

What’s that?

You don’t know where to start?

Well that’s a little bit harder.

You see, after you’ve picked a nice role-play that looks interesting enough to catch your eye, now you’ve got to fill out that sheet for a character. OH NO!

So here’s a little bit about Character Creation.

Making a character that’s not only going to be interesting enough for you to play, but that will add something to the role-play and be entertaining for others is the first step you need to take. Of course everyone has their own way of doing it. But there are still certain things that everyone thinks about.

Most RP’s will give you a general skeleton of what your character should be. And what I mean by this is; whether or not you’re a vampire, werewolf, scientist, hobo—whatever it is, depends on the role-play you join. But that of course isn’t the only thing that makes a character.

Now you’ve got to ask yourself: What does he look like? How does he handle a stressful situation? And more questions.

Don’t be hasty about it, once you’ve made this character and put up a sheet, it’s there; you can’t change it… well you could, but still, try not to make it a habit of changing a whole character sheet just because you’ve written yourself into a wall. Get creative, give your character flaws; it makes for a good read that way.

Again, take all the information that’s been given to you by the GM and use your imagination to come up with something awesome. Of course most of the awesomeness will be in how you use it, but think of it this way: the character outline you make now is like a doorway in a long hallway full of other doors. What you write now determines which door you pick and which room you are lead into. Some rooms will have some of the same options, like, a tv and a window or a fan. But then there are rooms that you may lead your self into that won’t lead you to the same kind of stuff, like a bathroom.

I know that may be kind of confusing, but think about it. You shouldn’t be able to take the exact character from one RP and stick it in another. Sure you can take certain aspects of a character like their attitude or name (back to the room analogy—a window) and bring that over to a new character, but over all each character should be new and unique. Let the GM know that you actually tried and weren’t too lazy to come up with an awesome character.

Now I’m going to show you a step-by-step character creation that I do. Remember, your thought process will be different, and that‘s a GOOD thing, and make it something that you will enjoy playing. Also, make sure you give your character room to grow.


So here we are a new role-play and time to think of a character. Let’s read the GM’s posts to see what this RP is about shall we?

Simplified: We are in an area, the only place that has survived the third World War. A utopia, if you will. But things aren’t as they seem, the government is killing people with a drug that’s supposed to make them feel better about the situation that they’re in. So now, you’ve got this group of people who somehow find out what’s happening and refuse to take this drug, and run away into the inhabitable terrain to find some uncontaminated water, and to stabilize and figure out their next action. Will they go back and fight to free those who did not run before? Or will they do something else? The year is 2027, the war started in 2012 and lasted 2 and a half years or so.

So there’s your RP. Now what kind of Character would you play?

Let’s start with a name. Now, it’s my belief that you should stick with names that are era friendly, and location friendly. Don’t put in a Japanese name to some girl in the Victorian era unless you’re living in Japan… or give a good reason for there to be a Japanese girl in Victorian England. You also have to take into account your character’s means. Lower class citizens and upper class kids don’t usually dive into the same name pool. You wouldn’t see a black kid from Brooklyn rolling around with a name like Sedgwick Uppercrust the third~

This particular rp takes place in a futuristic time setting, so we can assume there would be all different kinds of ethnicities and back grounds.

But I’m going to go ahead and name my character Alexandria Tarasov, and as a nick name (I have a fondness for those~) Lex.

From there, obviously she’s a girl, so we can go ahead and cross those two positions off of the Character sheet.

So then you should find a sweet spot for an age. If other people have already put up character sheets, you can either go with the average, or if you feel up to it, go older or younger. Hells, if the GM will let you, make your character 92! Of course, don’t expect to be running away from the Cops at that age unless you come up with a creative way to do so.

I’m going to go a head and make her twenty three because I’ve got an idea of what I want to say for her bio, and the age before the war works.

Occupation: check with the GM to see if there are certain jobs still available in this age, since it’s a utopia, some things may not be needed/available. Even if the character sheet doesn’t ask for one, it’s good to have that in the back of your mind. Remember you’re creating a person, and people work, change clothes, use the bathroom >.> it may not be written in but behind the scenes, they’re doing it.

Let’s go ahead and make her a teacher. It’s an important job, but it’ll also give her something to work on when they go of into the wilderness~

What’s next on our list? What should our girl look like? Now some people would just stick in a picture and be fine, but I think you should learn how to do a bit of a written thing.

So we’ll give her short brown hair, skinny, pale, big brown eyes and… will put her at average height (5’5”) and dimples~

Some people would be fine with just that, others would require it to be embellished a little, but for right now we’ll just leave it like that since this is just our thought process and not the actual character sheet.

Hmm, what else? Personality. How would she take situations as they come? Is she nice? Is she sarcastic? Does she act like a child or is she more mature?

Well, I want her to act like a little sister when she’s around her brother, but when she gets around others she should be more assertive and head strong. She can be a little stubborn sometimes, but only for your own good.

Now we should come up with a back story for her; Note that not everything that you write here will need to be put into the character sheet, but just as a reference for you, you should write it down somewhere to be used later.

Let’s say we start with family. We’ll give her an older brother named Augustus, because I wanna call him Aus for short (pronounced like Oz). :3 Her father would have been in the war and is dead now, we could give him a name like Sedgwick, he was courageous, honorable and say Augustus is the spiting image of him—of course then we’d have to explain what Augustus looks like eventually, but we can do that later. Their mother will be a blonde, loving and a teacher like Lex. Yeah, sure it’s kinda Mary/Gary sue-ish but they aren’t that important at the moment and you can embellish it later.

Now, for Lex’s childhood, maybe Lex would have been a Girl Scout, but didn’t like the out doors, she just liked the cookies~ it would have been a pretty normal childhood before the war, a teenager when it started. Since her father was declared MIA and presumed dead, her mother died soon after when the war was brought to the home front. The kids survived and now years later their living in the same apartment they grew up in, which just happens to be the area this utopia was built on.

We’ll make Aus this bioengineer so he works with the same people that would have made the drug, but he works with maintaining the cities food and water supply.

For some reason I’m thinking I want her to break her leg or sprain her ankle while they’re running away, don’t know why, just figured it’d be interesting. It might even bring in a love interest because… hell I like a bit of romance in my stories.

And there you go~ you’ve created a nice rounded character that should be interesting enough to play with just the right amount of flaws to make for a good read. Sure there are some Mary sue kind of themes in there but over all, her actions through out the IC portion should help smooth those over. Plus, I’ve given her room to grow. She’ll be stubborn at first but eventually she may have to get over that and learn to depend on people other than her brother in order to survive out there in the wild. I just might decide to kill off her brother, or some how take him out of her life so that she’ll learn how to depend on someone else who will ultimately change her view and toughen her up to the point where she IS able to fight back and survive in the wild.

So yes, key points:
[1] give your character flaws.
[2] start thinking about things that you'd want to do later on and build on her personality.
[3] give her interesting things to build on in her bio.
[4]Make him/her a character you'll enjoy playing.


I might have skipped over details, but that's pretty much it.

As always, if you have any questions PM me or comment here~

[Aurelia Courville]

So, you’ve now joined a thread, made a character, started posting at a descent length. But wait a second; you’re still doing something wrong?

You’ve been getting complaints from your fellow role-players, OH NO!

But it’s not your writing is bad; it’s something about you being inconsiderate to your fellow posters. That’s the thing about Role-playing; it’s a group effort, you have to rely on other people in order to succeed and have fun.

So here’s a blog about Common Courtesy on the boards.

• [1] The GM’s word is law—reading what they post in both OOC and IC.
• [2] Communication—if you are interested in joining, or interested in leaving.
• [3] Making plans—if you have an idea, make sure it’s ok with the GM BEFORE executing.

Point #1: The GM’s word is law.

It is a rule of the site, but sometimes you forget when you’re on another RP-ing site or even here.

Make sure BEFORE you join a role-play, you read ALL the rules the GM has written, ALL the site rules, and ALL of the information given to you by the GM in the OOC. (I know that may seem like A LOT of reading, but it's better for all of you in the long run; besides, reading a lot makes you a better writer~) If there is something you don’t get, or something the GM may have forgotten/needs to elaborate on (because it happens), ASK. The GM should be happy to explain so that they don’t come over bigger problems later in the RP. Also; make sure you read others posts in the OOC not just the first post, there may be questions that have already been asked/answered, parts that have already been taken or other important information you need within those posts.

As well as reading the OOC it is important that you read ALL posts of the IC. Certain things may have already been covered, certain actions may have been taken and if you come along doing something that contradicts that; YOU are in the wrong. Of course common courtesy goes both ways. If you do make a mistake, the GM or other poster should calmly and nicely explain what you did wrong and ask that you correct it before taking any harsher actions. But, that being said you should all listen to each other. (See communication).

Point #2: Communication.

Talk to one another.

Once you make the decision to join an RP, you should post in the OOC or PM the GM to make sure that it is ok; sometimes there are limited places or specifics that the GM will need you to do in order to be accepted into the role-play.

Once you are in and have read all the information, posted your character sheet and begin to play, you need to communicate with your fellow players. If and when you decide to leave the RP, make sure you TELL THE GM. There is nothing worse than trying to keep an RP going when someone who has made themselves an integral part of the RP, leaves and doesn’t tell you whether it’s temporary or permanent. As well, if you tell them it isn't permanent and you never come back it is just as bad. Be truthful. GM’s would rather you tell them the truth than leave them hanging.

Point #3: Making Plans.

Of course sometimes, some people like to keep some of their actions to themselves because they like the idea of keeping surprises, and that’s fine, but when you have something you’d like to accomplish in your post(s) let at the very least the GM know about it, and as a bonus, any role-player whose character might need to be included in your action. Otherwise they might pull the Godmoding card, or you might take it into a direction the GM didn’t plan for.

Over all, communication is the key to role-playing.

There may be other points to cover in this blog, but at the moment that’s all I could think of.

And as always; if you have any questions, comments, concerns, feel free to PM me