Czardas
02-10-2005, 04:16
I’ve decided to write a somewhat more advanced follow-up to the guide for writing (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=352036), noting that several points dealing with good RP style and writing are not addressed.
~~~~~How to Write Well, and Why~~~~~
Ok, you’ve read the thread above and you know all the basic writing rules, but you feel that your writing could improve. And, of course, you’re right: your writing always can improve, no matter how talented you are. So here are some points all RPers should find useful.
1) Keep your style consistent. If you start out your RP in first-person omniscient present tense (e.g. I run along the passageway, not knowing that at its end lies a horrible monster.), don’t suddenly switch to third-person limited past tense midway (e.g. He ran along the passageway.). It can be very distracting to your readers, and might confuse you as well. In addition, you will do well to keep your prose and names consistent. If you tell us your general’s name is Sam, don’t start calling him Harry, and if your enemy is Czardas don’t declare war on Automagfreek (that is, unless you have suicidal tendencies ;)). If you make a map of your nation, try to stick to it and don’t place Newtown 50 miles west of Oldtown if on your map Newtown is shown to the north. All fairly obvious stuff.
2) Keep things believable. It’s kind of difficult to believe that your heat-guided uber-powerful non-nuclear bomb of D00M makes an all-eradicating explosion covering a radius of 60 miles, or that your human character can shoot long supple poisoned metal webs from their hands that trap their enemies in battle—so unless you have a good, credible explanation for this kind of stuff, don’t do it. Some of it could be mistaken for godmoding (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=367578), which needless to say is not appreciated on these forums.
3) Watch those dangling participles. Yep, this is a mistake many people still make. Leaving the participle at the end of the sentence dangling can be very confusing to your readers. I use this made-up quote for an example:
“Pursued by the Imperial forces, the Chamber of Fire seemed the perfect place for Operative Markos to hide.”
Now, what’s being pursued by the Imperial forces—the Chamber of Fire or Markos? It looks like the Empire’s proud militiamen are running after a roomful of flames rather than the Czardaian Special Operative who is hiding in that roomful. This is, needless to say, a big problem for your readers, and ought to be revised. For example,
“Pursued by the Imperial forces, Operative Markos noticed that the Chamber of Fire seemed the perfect hiding place.
And, thus: a perfect chase sequence, too.
4) Try to avoid an overuse of OOC comments. This one speaks for itself:
OOC: Czardas, what is going on with your troops?
IC: The Middletonian army begins to mobilize as… <insert huge post here> …The guns thundered as five hundred planes prepared for landing.
OOC2: I need somewhere to land my 500 planes. Can you post a map?
IC: Prime Minister Jorgenson released an official statement yesterday stating… <insert long message here>
OOC3: Is this the correct protocol for writing official messages? I am just new to this.
IC: Across the world, in a dark cave, the minions of Lord Astarek prepared for their final march… <insert even more of a huge post here>
OOC4: Oh, and while I’m here, did anyone else just hate Revenge of the Sith? <And so on, and so forth…>
…Not a good idea.
5) Don’t be pretentious and condescending. Let me translate that into RP terms for you: Don’t talk about your new plane, ship, bomb, whatever with no detail, assuming that everyone else obviously knows exactly what you’re talking about. Don’t insert phrases in Latin and French into the middle of your post (and if you must, translate them!). English is fine, unless you’re RPing with some of your friends from <insert name of a backwater unheard of country here>, in which case you’re free to use Italian, or Dutch, or Tagalog, or Sanskrit. Also, we don’t really appreciate grammar Nazis here. That means, if someone misspells “terpsichorean” in the middle of a 700-line post, don’t correct it for them.
Clear now?
Ok, moving on…
6) Don’t use 1337 or chatspeak. This ought to be really obvious. 1337, chatspeak, and smilies in RP posts mark you as a n00b, which you really don’t want to appear as—trust me. Unless you’re actually RPing an instant-message between your national leader and his aide, avoid “WTF”, “LOL”, “ ;) ”, “ :rolleyes: ” … it really works, you know. And definitely DO NOT post anything along the lines of “1 PWNZ T3H J00!!!!11!!11111!1one”. (If you couldn’t read that, consider yourself lucky.)
Also along the same lines is “Don’t feed the n00bs”. So if someone does break this rule, don’t laugh at them, tease them, bait them, etc. Just report the thread to the moderators, who will in all due course deal with the offender themselves.
7) Don’t pay too much attention to detail. If your six hundred bombers are preparing an airstrike on Dead City, don’t go into minute detail describing every single building in the city, and what each of its inhabitants is doing at the moment, and their entire lives and thoughts. However, the opposite is just as bad: don’t just post a 6-word message stating that you have bombed the city. Take everything in moderation.
BAD: “Tom opened the rickety door and walked in.”
STILL BAD: “Tom, full name Thomas Beddington Samuels, aged sixty-one, stepped towards the ancient, rickety door of the old abandoned house. Tom was a widower whose wife had died six years ago. He had short grey hair with a windswept air, blue eyes, a small nose, and a sad mouth, clean-shaven, clad in a grey coat as protection against the biting wind. He had lived in the village for fifty years; his family had arrived back in the days of the Theramian war, when Theramia had declared war upon Mynation and brought 60,000 troops in to the village area. A massive battle had ensued, and thousands were slain… <this goes on for hours and hours>”
GOOD: “Tom walked up the driveway of the abandoned house and began to pull open the rickety door. A shower of dust particles fell on his grey hair and he brushed them away. The equally grey coat he wore as protection against the wind was covered with dust; he ignored that and stepped over the threshold, entering the building.”
And finally…
8) Be original. Keep your writing as uniquely yours as you can. Unless you want your RP to be about one of them, don’t steal the dialogue from Lord of the Rings, your character from Star Wars, or your plot twists from Harry Potter. Also, don’t take lines or whole characters from other NSers without their permission. While it’s true that there are only so many types of plot, don’t do exactly the same thing with your type as everyone else has done before you. Originality earns you respect, and makes the RPs more fun to play (and read, if you’re an avid reader like me).
I hope these tips have helped the NS RPing community in some way or another.
~The Libertarian Concordance of Czardas~
Second Official NationStates Writing Coach
----------------------------------------
Suggestions welcome.
~~~~~How to Write Well, and Why~~~~~
Ok, you’ve read the thread above and you know all the basic writing rules, but you feel that your writing could improve. And, of course, you’re right: your writing always can improve, no matter how talented you are. So here are some points all RPers should find useful.
1) Keep your style consistent. If you start out your RP in first-person omniscient present tense (e.g. I run along the passageway, not knowing that at its end lies a horrible monster.), don’t suddenly switch to third-person limited past tense midway (e.g. He ran along the passageway.). It can be very distracting to your readers, and might confuse you as well. In addition, you will do well to keep your prose and names consistent. If you tell us your general’s name is Sam, don’t start calling him Harry, and if your enemy is Czardas don’t declare war on Automagfreek (that is, unless you have suicidal tendencies ;)). If you make a map of your nation, try to stick to it and don’t place Newtown 50 miles west of Oldtown if on your map Newtown is shown to the north. All fairly obvious stuff.
2) Keep things believable. It’s kind of difficult to believe that your heat-guided uber-powerful non-nuclear bomb of D00M makes an all-eradicating explosion covering a radius of 60 miles, or that your human character can shoot long supple poisoned metal webs from their hands that trap their enemies in battle—so unless you have a good, credible explanation for this kind of stuff, don’t do it. Some of it could be mistaken for godmoding (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=367578), which needless to say is not appreciated on these forums.
3) Watch those dangling participles. Yep, this is a mistake many people still make. Leaving the participle at the end of the sentence dangling can be very confusing to your readers. I use this made-up quote for an example:
“Pursued by the Imperial forces, the Chamber of Fire seemed the perfect place for Operative Markos to hide.”
Now, what’s being pursued by the Imperial forces—the Chamber of Fire or Markos? It looks like the Empire’s proud militiamen are running after a roomful of flames rather than the Czardaian Special Operative who is hiding in that roomful. This is, needless to say, a big problem for your readers, and ought to be revised. For example,
“Pursued by the Imperial forces, Operative Markos noticed that the Chamber of Fire seemed the perfect hiding place.
And, thus: a perfect chase sequence, too.
4) Try to avoid an overuse of OOC comments. This one speaks for itself:
OOC: Czardas, what is going on with your troops?
IC: The Middletonian army begins to mobilize as… <insert huge post here> …The guns thundered as five hundred planes prepared for landing.
OOC2: I need somewhere to land my 500 planes. Can you post a map?
IC: Prime Minister Jorgenson released an official statement yesterday stating… <insert long message here>
OOC3: Is this the correct protocol for writing official messages? I am just new to this.
IC: Across the world, in a dark cave, the minions of Lord Astarek prepared for their final march… <insert even more of a huge post here>
OOC4: Oh, and while I’m here, did anyone else just hate Revenge of the Sith? <And so on, and so forth…>
…Not a good idea.
5) Don’t be pretentious and condescending. Let me translate that into RP terms for you: Don’t talk about your new plane, ship, bomb, whatever with no detail, assuming that everyone else obviously knows exactly what you’re talking about. Don’t insert phrases in Latin and French into the middle of your post (and if you must, translate them!). English is fine, unless you’re RPing with some of your friends from <insert name of a backwater unheard of country here>, in which case you’re free to use Italian, or Dutch, or Tagalog, or Sanskrit. Also, we don’t really appreciate grammar Nazis here. That means, if someone misspells “terpsichorean” in the middle of a 700-line post, don’t correct it for them.
Clear now?
Ok, moving on…
6) Don’t use 1337 or chatspeak. This ought to be really obvious. 1337, chatspeak, and smilies in RP posts mark you as a n00b, which you really don’t want to appear as—trust me. Unless you’re actually RPing an instant-message between your national leader and his aide, avoid “WTF”, “LOL”, “ ;) ”, “ :rolleyes: ” … it really works, you know. And definitely DO NOT post anything along the lines of “1 PWNZ T3H J00!!!!11!!11111!1one”. (If you couldn’t read that, consider yourself lucky.)
Also along the same lines is “Don’t feed the n00bs”. So if someone does break this rule, don’t laugh at them, tease them, bait them, etc. Just report the thread to the moderators, who will in all due course deal with the offender themselves.
7) Don’t pay too much attention to detail. If your six hundred bombers are preparing an airstrike on Dead City, don’t go into minute detail describing every single building in the city, and what each of its inhabitants is doing at the moment, and their entire lives and thoughts. However, the opposite is just as bad: don’t just post a 6-word message stating that you have bombed the city. Take everything in moderation.
BAD: “Tom opened the rickety door and walked in.”
STILL BAD: “Tom, full name Thomas Beddington Samuels, aged sixty-one, stepped towards the ancient, rickety door of the old abandoned house. Tom was a widower whose wife had died six years ago. He had short grey hair with a windswept air, blue eyes, a small nose, and a sad mouth, clean-shaven, clad in a grey coat as protection against the biting wind. He had lived in the village for fifty years; his family had arrived back in the days of the Theramian war, when Theramia had declared war upon Mynation and brought 60,000 troops in to the village area. A massive battle had ensued, and thousands were slain… <this goes on for hours and hours>”
GOOD: “Tom walked up the driveway of the abandoned house and began to pull open the rickety door. A shower of dust particles fell on his grey hair and he brushed them away. The equally grey coat he wore as protection against the wind was covered with dust; he ignored that and stepped over the threshold, entering the building.”
And finally…
8) Be original. Keep your writing as uniquely yours as you can. Unless you want your RP to be about one of them, don’t steal the dialogue from Lord of the Rings, your character from Star Wars, or your plot twists from Harry Potter. Also, don’t take lines or whole characters from other NSers without their permission. While it’s true that there are only so many types of plot, don’t do exactly the same thing with your type as everyone else has done before you. Originality earns you respect, and makes the RPs more fun to play (and read, if you’re an avid reader like me).
I hope these tips have helped the NS RPing community in some way or another.
~The Libertarian Concordance of Czardas~
Second Official NationStates Writing Coach
----------------------------------------
Suggestions welcome.