The Guide to Writing Longer Roleplay Posts

by **Jennzia** Sat Jul 21, 2012 3:34 pm

Do NOT use these examples in your posts, as all areas of Kyrow don't relate to them.

Roleplay is to be considered just like writing a story. At each moment in your writing, you want to keep he reader hanging. You want them to engulf your post like a good book. Seeing some member use one-sentence posts as an excuse for roleplay (when, most likely they are just Intentional Post Count Raising), I am creating a guide on a better post. Follow along and you will do just fine!

....Identifying Inappropriate Posts

An inappropriate post in this case does not mean it breaks a rule. Instead, it means you're looking for incredibly short posts. While writing your post, you should have two things in mind.

....1.) Does the reader really care about this?
....2.) What can I do to make this post more interesting?

Spoiler:

Okay, so Sourava sat down. That's all we know. We don't know anything else. A million questions could be asked about this particular post. When did she sit down? Why did she sit down? Where did she sit down? Was she talking to anyone while sitting down? Basically, we don't know anything. The reader probably doesn't care and is at a loss for words at what to post next. This message leaves me with absolutely no repose because it is so bare.

A good technique for forming impressive posts is the Location, Sight, Reaction strategy. This way, you can sum everything up in a nice descriptive post. Remember, these are brainstorming ideas. You do not need to write in full sentences.

Location } The dessert.

Fabulous. Now we know that Sourava is sitting down in the dessert. That gives us some information that may or may not be important. Now that you have the dessert in mind, you have access to a bunch of descriptive terms I will describe later on.

Sights } Small trees. Sand dunes. A sunset. Wolves.

Let's face facts. There are many many sights anywhere you go, but only a few major sights are listed. Despite the fact that we are trying to write longer posts and be more descriptive, we still want to keep everything simple. The reader wants a visualization, not three paragraphs describing what your character sees.

Reactions } Sourava sat down.

And there's our sitting down. All we have to do now is add some details. As you can probably tell, we're shooting for a three paragraph post.

"This is what we have so far":

....Adding the Details

You can tell that the roleplay post we have now is better than what we started off with, but still a lot more can be described. Keep in mind that the limit for sentences in a paragraph is five. I mentioned earlier that I was aiming for a three paragraph post. So, in order to do that I have to add a bit more to each of my main ideas.

Location } The dessert.

I need to describe the dessert location to a further extent. The reader knows we are in a dessert; not where the dessert is or anything like that. So I'm going to turn this main idea into a paragraph.

"Paragraph One":

Notice the phrases in bold text. Those are descriptive phrases that don't necessarily have to be there, but yet make the paragraph more interesting. Comma usage also indicates descriptive phrases.

Sights } Small trees. Sand dunes. A sunset. Wolves.

"Paragraph Two":

This is a nice, quick description of the things Sourava sees. I used a lot of description to describe her sights in the most acute manner possible. You never want to leave things to general, or the visualizations you get from the roleplay post won't be as interesting.

Reactions } Sourava sat down.

"Paragraph Three":

This is a lot more descriptive than the sentence we started out with. I've done a good job in stretching out my paragraph as much as I can.

....The Final Outcome

Sourava the lass was inside a large dessert known as the Sahara. It was located at the northern tip of Africa, near Egypt and the Nile River. The Sahara was the largest dessert in the world, complete with golden sands and blue skies. Despite the obscene heat, Sourava got along quite well in the dessert.
Around the dessert, Sourava saw many things of wildlife. She able to locate mountainous sand dunes and saw a few small trees struggling to grow with the lack of water. Sourava realized an explosion of orange, magenta, and purple dawned in the sky. This was a sunset, she knew, and it meant night was coming. Scanning around the area in which she stood once more, Sourava spotted a pack of wolves of whom she hadn't seen before.
Because night was coming, Sourava decided she'd better go to sleep. The lass gave a large yawn and sat down. Maybe tomorrow she'd investigate the pack. Maybe then the wolf would make some friends and start a good life. But for now, she was just going to rest her legs, for there was a long emotional journey ahead of her.