this sucks.

[size=200:3jqybuc8]The 3 role playing essentials:

Role-playing is structured story-telling. To be good at it you need to master three difficult skills.

[size=150:3jqybuc8]Clarity
Writing clearly is the first step to become a good RPer and the main barrier most people have to get into it. The simple truth is that all your amazing ideas will go to waste if people can't understand you. Make your posts easy to read and people will play with you. Make your posts hard to read and people would find something else to do. I personally find it disrespectful when people expect me to read stuff they haven't taken the time to think or write properly. Treat others like you would like to be treated. You don't like reading shit, do you? Neither do I.

Pro Tips!

1- Use a spell checker. Every single device that connects to the interwebs has them. There is simply no excuse.

2- Try to use proper grammar, capitalization and punctuation. If I need to read your posts three times to understand what you are saying I am going to get tired of you pretty quickly.

3- Chose a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense:3jqybuc8]grammatical tense[/url:3jqybuc8] and stick to it. Don't write half in past, half in present. In the same venue, chose a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_person:3jqybuc8]grammatical person[/url:3jqybuc8] and stick to it. It is really hard to follow you through time and multiple personalities.

4- Be sure it is completely clear who "she" or "he" actually is when you use the pronouns on a sentence. Otherwise following the action gets really complicated, specially when bodies are tangled all over the place.

5- Avoid walls of text. Use paragraphs.

6- Hit Preview BEFORE hitting Submit. Re-read what you wrote before hitting that Submit button. Re-write until it conveys the message you want to send. If you don't read what you write why should I?

7- Make sure it is obvious when someone is talking. Use "" or colors or -- or whatever you like, but make a distinction. If I cannot tell when your character is talking and when you are describing the action, things get confusing. Reading confusing posts is annoying and one of the main causes for thread abandonment in America...and the rest of the world.

8- Make it clear WHO is talking. When you are playing two or more characters at the time you have to make sure that everybody can tell who is talking when. You may have pictured the dialog perfectly inside your head but the people reading you have to picture it based on what you actually wrote, not what you imagined.

9- The best to improve your writing is reading. Read real books not this shit.


[size=150:3jqybuc8]Substance
Once your writing is good enough so that people can actually understand you, it is time to go up another level: make your posts entertaining. People role-play because it is fun. If you aren't fun they won't play with you. To have fun role-playing with someone you need to understand what they want and somehow make it fit into what you want. Even in the so called "competitive" role-plays you have to work with your partner not against them.

Pro tips!

1-Write your posts like you would wear a skirt: Long enough to cover the essentials, short enough to keep it interesting.

2- Re-read your post and ask yourself if it has all the information your opponent/partner needs to know what is happening.

3- Re-read your post and ask yourself if you added information that isn't relevant and it is actually making it more confusing. This is A LOT harder than the previous point.

4- Every post should have a goal and an outcome. Decide what the goal and outcome of your post are going to be BEFORE you start writing.

5- Every post should AT LEAST do one of these three things:

- Reveal information about a character or situation.
- Advance the plot.
- Be fun.

Try to do all three. It isn't that hard.

6- Everybody wants something. Be sure you understand your characters motivations. There is a weird tendency in role-playing to create apathetic characters that doesn't seem to be interested in anyone or anything. Those characters never last long because it is very difficult to move a plot with them...you usually have to move it around them.

7- Role plays have plots. Mostly they are silly simple plots. Still it is very helpful to know what the plot is so that you know in what direction you have to push the story. If you don't know where you are going, it doesn't matters what road you take. You'll never get there.

8- Suspense doesn't works in role-playing. Give as much information as you can. You have little time to gather people's attention...and people have horribly short memory spans when it comes to role-playing.

9- Find what makes your role-playing partner click and use it against them.

10- Be expressive. Don't write dull sentences. Feel the moment and the emotions in the actions of your characters. Wrestling is all about agony, so is role-playing. If something is worth doing it is worth doing passionately and with fury. If you write "Alice throws a rock at Bob." I get the impression that she is throwing a rock without giving a fuck, a blank robotic expression and her face and barely any muscle moving.

11- Every action has a reaction. Before writing your post acknowledge and think a reaction for all of your opponent's actions. In wrestling this is called selling. Sell well and people will love you.

12- Be mean. Specially with YOUR characters. Master the art of going down in flames.

13- Keep it simple. This is porn fan-fiction after all. But...

14- When inspiration hits you be as poetic as you want. If you don't do it here you won't do it anywhere...and sometimes your prose will be kind of okayish.

[size=150:3jqybuc8]Manners
Nobody will want to play with you if you are a jerk. Don't be a jerk. [size=50:3jqybuc8](I can do it because I am a kitten, but you are not!)

Pro tips!

1- Write to please one person. You can't please everybody, so focus on pleasing your audience...and the sad true is that, most of the time, the only person that will actually read you is your playmate. Write for them.

2- Everybody is a protagonist. In a normal story you have the protagonist, the secondary characters, the antagonists, support characters, etc. In a role-play (unless agreed) everybody is someone's else protagonist. Keep that in mind at all times.

3- Don't power play.

4- Even when people say they want to improvise and see where a thread goes, they have an idea of what the possible routes and destinations are. You should always be aware of this.

5- When in doubt, PM.

6- Learn to say 'no'.

7- Don't be an idiot when someone says 'no'.

8- Have fun... but not at other people's expenses.

9- Resist the urge to humiliate noobs. I know. It is real hard.