Writing A Descriptive Post | Font Colour Chart

[~THE OWNERS-BE AFRAID~]

Introduction

Improving Your Posts

>>Thanks to Micah, Sandy, Feather and Spotted for this information<<

This thread will help teach you how to make longer, more interesting and more descriptive posts, along with a few tips on formatting your posts, including using fancy colours. You can also receive help from other members and staff, but this is a very good place to start. Enjoy posting!

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>>CLICK TO JUMP TO POSTS<<

What Is Roleplaying

Roleplaying Lingo

Post Developement

Tips & Tricks?

Colour Chart

[~THE OWNERS-BE AFRAID~]

What Is Roleplaying?

For those of you who haven't ever roleplayed before - roleplaying is sort of like a game. It's fun, you play it with other people, and of course, you can make new friends through its integration.

Roleplaying is often shortened to RPing, and it represents your character (of which you usually only write about one per post), doing actions and speaking, except usually in a prolonged manner. Often it is described as a story that more than one person writes, and you only control one character. This is because if you write a 'roleplay' by yourself, it would end up being a short story or novel about that character.

This website is primarily based on roleplaying - although some people here do not roleplay - so learning how to roleplay is a plus on websites like these. As you learn to write longer and longer posts, more roleplaying websites will open up to you as you learn to write with more description. Plus, it's a lot of fun.

[~THE OWNERS-BE AFRAID~]

Roleplaying Lingo

Here is a short list of words and phrases you will come across on our roleplaying warriors website. This is not a complete list, however this should explain most of the commonly used terms for you.

Roleplay: The art of unfolding your characters' actions through words.

Beginner (Newbie): Someone who writes posts with little or no description. May often spell things wrong or have bad grammar.

Intermediate: Someone who is average in the world of roleplaying, often writes 100-200 words per post. May make a few grammar or spelling mistakes.

Advanced: A person who writes top notch in the world of roleplaying, often has little or no grammer and spelling errors. Description is top notch.

God-Modding: Making your character invincible, unbeatable. All realistic characters have flaws.

Powerplaying: Taking control of another person's character without their written permission.

Auto-Hitting Hitting a person's character without their consent. This often leads to powerplaying and is a form of powerplaying itself.

Out Of Character (OOC): A discussion not meant to be integrated into the roleplay.

Back In Character (BIC): After writing an OOC remark, BIC is for when you are ready to continue roleplaying. Your post follows this.

Game Master/Owner: The person who created the RPG. Often has complete control over what happens in the plot and knows the most about the website.

Non Participating Character (NPC): An NPC is a character that has been made up simply to perform a pre-designed task or job in a roleplay. They are often simply in the background, so no need to worry about them.

One-Liner: A reply that is one sentence long. In roleplay, you can barely move along the plot because one line doesn't give much detail.

A Reply/Line/Post: Your side of the story, i.e your contribution. People praise replies on their length, quality, and inclusion of the/a plot.

Writer's Block: The excuse to use when your roleplay isn't good, but can be a genuine source of "being unable to write". Incapacity to think in which direction the roleplay should be taken.

Typo: Spelling mistake. Get a spellcheck.

Mary Sue/Gary Stu: Frowned upon even more than auto-hitting, god-modding, and powerplaying. A Mary Sue/Gary Stu (female/male), is a character that is often perfect in every way, shape and form. They are often flawless and perfect, and they are often hated by everyone as a result. Real, beloved characters have flaws.

Intro Post: The start of a roleplay; the very first post in a thread. Usually, it should be longer than a regular post, because you have to integrate the plot, set the scene, and kick the stone rolling. Many people dislike writing intros, others adore it, but it all boils down to the one person who makes the first post.

Thread: A section of an RP, the beginning of interactions between their characters.

Chatspeak: Should never be used when roleplaying. NEVER. Spell out your words, folks, it makes everyone love you more.

[~THE OWNERS-BE AFRAID~]

Post Developement

Why Write Long Posts?

First of all, why not? I can tell you from experience that the longer posts are the posts that help you improve your ability to write. It is amazing how many comments I have received from teachers and my peers about my ability to write creative stories and I give complete credit to the point that I have been roleplaying for years. Second and more site-related, the longer your post is, the easier your RPing partner will find something that THEY can post in response about. Remember that your post will undoubtedly give another person muse to write more in their post and then the line of long, wonderfully written posts can continue.
~Sandy

We will show you in short, simple steps how to change a tiny beginner's post into the middle stages of an intermediate post.

ORIGINAL POST

"Shallowpaw walked out of the medicine cat's den. She was in love. She sat down and groomed her pelt."

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Adding Description

Description: Description is an important part of roleplaying. It often describes the character so the next person can be able to describe your character once their character sees them. Also, the setting should be described.

Things to Describe: Your character (fur, eyes, build, personality), the weather (time of day by sun, color of sky), and actions (how they did things).

"The dark gray female waltzed out of the den, a spring in her step as her tail darted back and forth through the air. Her sparkling chartreuse eyes flicked around camp merrily as she tried to spot something that could be telltale to the sickness or disease that had been spreading around camp. Seeing none, she sighed, for she had been in love. After another quick sweep around camp, she sat upon her haunches and looked at her grungy pelt, sweeping her small pink tongue through the strands, swiping out all the dirt and other things, cringing at the disgusting taste."

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Adding Thoughts

Thoughts: Thoughts are often good when trying to make others see your character's feelings and inner reasoning.

Thoughts To Add: Feelings (feelings about weather, situation, what they see, etc), previous events (what happened the day before, etc.), reasoning and logic on current and past issues.

"The dark gray female waltzed out of the den, a spring in her step as her tail darted back and forth through the air. Her sparkling chartreuse eyes flicked around camp merrily as she tried to spot something that could be telltale to the sickness or disease that had been spreading around camp. For a moment, she thought with concern, if that disease's cause isn't found, there could be trouble! Seeing none, she sighed, not just for the disappointment, but because of the redemption of bittersweet love. After another quick sweep around camp, she sat upon her haunches and looked at her grungy pelt, sweeping her small pink tongue through the strands, swiping out all the dirt and other things, cringing at the disgusting taste. Yuck! I can see why the elders don't ever groom themselves!"

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Adding A Setting

Setting: Identify where your character is, along with the weather in that area. Set the mood and tone for your post.

Settings To Add: Weather, time of day, scents in the air, undergrowth or nearby terrain, possible nearby other characters or objects.

"The morning was rather fine, considering the storm that had passed just a few days ago. The weak beams of light shot through the air, passing a few misty clouds. The gleaming first beams shattered through the sky onto the WindClan camp, where everything was calm and peaceful, since it was so early in the morning. Scents of moor heather carried on the fresh dawn breeze as life began stirring in the camp.

"The dark gray female waltzed out of the den, a spring in her step as her tail darted back and forth through the air. Her sparkling chartreuse eyes flicked around camp merrily as she tried to spot something that could be telltale to the sickness or disease that had been spreading around camp. For a moment, she thought with concern, if that disease's cause isn't found, there could be trouble! Seeing none, she sighed, not just for the disappointment, but because of the redemption of bittersweet love. After another quick sweep around camp, she sat upon her haunches and looked at her grungy pelt, sweeping her small pink tongue through the strands, swiping out all the dirt and other things, cringing at the disgusting taste. Yuck! I can see why the elders don't ever groom themselves!"

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Adding A Reason

Reason: Reasons for their emotions, actions, and directions of their thoughts.

Reasons To Add: Personal emotions, memories, life experiences, reactions and actions of other characters around them, logical thought processes.

"The morning was rather fine, considering the storm that had passed just a few days ago. The weak beams of light shot through the air, passing a few misty clouds. The gleaming first beams shattered through the sky onto the WindClan camp, where everything was calm and peaceful, since it was so early in the morning. Scents of moor heather carried on the fresh dawn breeze as life began stirring in the camp.

"The dark gray female waltzed out of the den, a spring in her step as her tail darted back and forth through the air. Her sparkling chartreuse eyes flicked around camp merrily as she tried to spot something that could be telltale to the sickness or disease that had been spreading around camp. For a moment, she thought with concern, if that disease's cause isn't found, there could be trouble! Seeing none, she sighed, not just for the disappointment, but because of the redemption of bittersweet love. The object of her love had never realized her feelings for him and had accepted another mate instead. After another quick sweep around camp, she sat upon her haunches and looked at her grungy pelt, sweeping her small pink tongue through the strands, swiping out all the dirt and other things, cringing at the disgusting taste. Yuck! I can see why the elders don't ever groom themselves!"

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Adding Structure

Meat: The main part of the writing piece: the actions and speech. This was covered in the first small part, and can easily be expanded by roleplaying further action. Events should follow logical sequence in the post.

"The morning was rather fine, considering the storm that had passed just a few days ago. The weak beams of light shot through the air, passing a few misty clouds. The gleaming first beams shattered through the sky onto the WindClan camp, where everything was calm and peaceful, since it was so early in the morning. Scents of moor heather carried on the fresh dawn breeze as life began stirring in the camp.

"The dark gray female waltzed out of the den, a spring in her step as her tail darted back and forth through the air. Her sparkling chartreuse eyes flicked around camp merrily as she tried to spot something that could be telltale to the sickness or disease that had been spreading around camp. For a moment, she thought with concern, if that disease's cause isn't found, there could be trouble! Seeing none, she sighed, not just for the disappointment, but because of the redemption of bittersweet love. The object of her love had never realized her feelings for him and had accepted another mate instead. After another quick sweep around camp, she sat upon her haunches and looked at her grungy pelt, sweeping her small pink tongue through the strands, swiping out all the dirt and other things, cringing at the disgusting taste. Yuck! I can see why the elders don't ever groom themselves!

"It took a few moments to clean her dark grey fur to her satisfaction, long enough to realise she was growing hungry. There was not much left on the fresh-kill pile from the night before, yet a small mouse looked tempting enough to her. Rising smoothly to her paws Shallowpaw wandered over, selected the small yet appetising morsel, and retreated to a growing patch of sunshine to enjoy her meal."

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Results

See? We have made this post much more appealing, engaging and interesting to read and respond too. Something that started out with nineteen words now has a total of two hundred and ninety-seven. That's roughly twenty words to three hundred just from following these simple steps. Keep practising as you post, and as your creations get more engaging and interesting to follow, you will move up the ranks to the more advanced levels of roleplaying.