A Preliminary Guide to Composing Top-notch Roleplay Posts

Everyone has different methods, and they all can work.  So this post is not meant to be the gospel on roleplay; in fact, far from it.  If you write and roleplay well (the two are not the same, but the latter depends on the former) then read no further.  Skedaddle.  Shoo!  Go off and do that roleplay thing! But if you struggle from time to time, or think you might benefit from some pointers, what follows may help, just perhaps.  The focus of Into the Night is multi-character group roleplay, but the suggestions herein also apply, in large part, to one-on-one roleplay.  Because we may not get everything right, we encourage you the reader to chime in below with your comments, criticisms, and suggestions for improving this writing/role play guide.

So you have decided to engage one or more role players in a story.  A starter has been sent to you, or one has been posted on a blog or forum.  The first question for you should be, is it my turn to post?  If it's one-on-one, the answer is easy.  If several role players are involved, then not so much.  Did that first post mention others in the scene?  Or could others be lurking in the shadows, unseen and unspoken?  Unless that first post directed a question to your character, or explicitly said no one else is present in the scene, you might want to coordinate via messages with the other involved role players to decide who goes next.  Or, give it a couple of days, and if no one else posts, go for it. 

Next, what goes into your post?  A variety of things need to be considered. For example, how bold should you be in moving the story along or initiating dramatic events?  How long should your post be?  How much description should you include?

Let's start with your character, because in roleplay the character you play is your instrument panel in the story.  It empowers you to influence and change events.  You know who you are better than anyone, so first and foremost, be true to your character.  We here at Into the Night usually have story leads that have some concept of where they want to take the story.  They likely have a plot, or the ravelings of one in mind.  But friends, the best stories are situational - in other words you start with a situation: like the protagonist finds out the world is ending in 16 hours, or while perusing a newspaper in a diner, Sam Winchester learns of a series of gruesome murders with uncanny and likely supernatural causes.  The characters then respond to that situation based on their personalities, weaknesses, and strengths.  To do otherwise creates inconsistencies that will bite you in the butt later. You can tell your story lead that, too, if he or she wants your character to act in a way that is out of character. 

Next, think about context. Read that first post (or the previous several posts if you're well into a story) to tease out location, is it day or night, is it the present or some time in the past or future, is the moon shining or is it a cloudy day, yada, yada.  Pay attention to the other characters as well.  Are they dressed or acting in a way that is insightful (e.g. they are bloodied and exhausted or look as fresh as daisies).  You should carry forward all those contextual details into your post, and please, elaborate on them, if you wish.  Your writing should include enough description so the reader can visualize the scene, but not so much that all the details are provided.  Letting the reader fill in the unwritten details for him or herself draws them in, zones them into the story, and that's exactly where you want them to be.  They become a participant when they paint in the details of the mind picture that is the stage for the story. And remember, for you to describe that stage - the context within which the characters act out the story - first you have to visualize it for yourself, and then put that vision to words. 

As a part of that putting-to-words process, tickle the senses a little.  Describing the context of a scene can and often should include sights, smells, touch, sounds, and/or taste.  Songs playing on a jukebox, the smell of wood smoke, what it feels like to swing a broadsword - all of those sorts of things can provide texture to your post.   Mentioning brand names of everyday items (Dos Eques, Coca Cola, Crisco, whatever), stores we're all familiar with (e.g. Walgreens, Safeway, Ace Hardware), the names of songs, etc. also help to anchor the story in reality. We all can visualize those things, and they help paint that mind picture for the reader.  Use of metaphors is another fun and very productive way to set a mood.  If used properly, metaphor can also thinly veil a theme or underlying message that becomes important down the road in the story.  Finally, the setting - the temporal and spatial context - should complement what's happening in the story, and help set a concordant if not synergistic mood.  No need to go overboard with description, but don't underplay it either. 

Every post should move the story forward.  But "forward" motion can be in terms of plot, character development (including relations between or among characters), and or description.  The best posts do at least a little of all three.  In multi-character stories, particularly ones with a bunch of characters in a scene, having your character post every now and then just to remind the others that you're still there can be a good thing, and such posts can be relatively short with maybe just a little forward motion.  Alternatively, if a few characters are dominating a scene, those doing the talking should probably mention the other silent characters, so the reader doesn't forget they're there (it becomes a contextual thing).  If you really want to draw someone out, have your character ask the silent partner a question, and then message that character's role player to kick 'em in the butt and get them to post.

And what about a dramatic step forward in plot or character development?  For instance, you might post that suddenly a horde of demons comes smashing through the windows and attacks.  Maybe in said attack a role-played character gets killed off.  Or, in a gentle and romantic moment, out of the blue, one character expresses his or her love for another.  Should you be that bold in a story?  Absobloodylutely!  What makes stories interesting are unexpected events, high drama, and particularly, how characters interact with one another.  But... don't act so boldly without either knowing that your one-on-one partner won't mind, or in the case of group roleplay, you have coordinated with your story lead and fellow role players in the scene.  Killing someone off without asking their permission first is the height of bad roleplay etiquette.  Which brings us to "god-modding" - animating someone else's character in your post.  In other words, speaking for another role-played character or having them act.  A little god-modding is usually tolerated, such as saying someone looked your way, or perhaps you're all doing battle with those demons that crashed through the window - it's ok to say someone else is kicking ass or helped you or something.  Just don't go into the specifics.  An exception to the no god-modding rule is if you have talked with that other role player and they're ok with you god-modding them.

How long should your post be?  Don't worry about matching the length of someone else's post.  It isn't about the number of words, it's about saying what needs to be said to move the story forward with adequate attention to context, plot, and character development.  So if you've followed the advice above, your post will be long enough.  Remember, the longest post doesn't win, it's the one that moves the story forward in a way the leaves the reader begging for more.  That said, if your posts are consistently way longer or shorter than other posts in a story, it's a clue that maybe you should give some further thought to the content of your posts. 

Ok, so maybe you're capable of weaving a storyline with other role players, and you're down with context, description, and character development.  But can you write? 

We see a lot of people on rp.me who have trouble putting a sentence together, let alone a paragraph or a story.  If you've graduated from high school and you still can't write, chances are you'll never be a good writer.  Sorry, that's the hard truth.  In some ways writing is an innate skill.  You either have the talent or you don't.  If you don't, it's hard to get much better.  But everyone can improve, and here are a few tips for you.

1. We see a lot of people on rp.me who write god-awful run-on sentences.  If your character is prone to long monologues sans a period (Winifred Burkle in the Angelverse does that quite eloquently) then go for it.  If not, don't do it.  If you don't know what makes a sentence a sentence, look it up. 

2. Following up on item 1, most word processing programs detect spelling and grammatical errors.  Assuming you compose your posts in one of these programs (you should, see below), then don't ignore what the program is telling you.  Fix those errors.  We also recommend Grammarly - an editing program.  There's a free version - https://www.roleplayer.me/view_blog.php?id=0000280443.  Now, in creative writing, it's ok to violate grammatical rules from time to time or even invent words (as long as the reader will know what you mean) - it's a way of being playful with the language.  You can also play with sentence structure provocatively.  For instance, Ray Bradbury (and William Shakespeare before him) titled his 1962 fantasy/horror novel 'Something Wicked This Way Comes', instead of 'Something Wicked Comes This Way'.  But be careful.  We don't recommend engaging in this sort of playfulness unless your writing is otherwise pretty much flawless.  If your writing is not very good, these playful departures will just look like more mistakes. 

3. Write in 3^rd person past tense, unless everyone in your story agrees to do otherwise.

4. Please don't post in a story as if you're texting your friends.  Capitalize the first letter of a sentence, proper nouns, and adjectives derived from proper nouns.  Don't use 'i' for 'I'.

5. We prefer for role players to use double quotation marks to surround the dialogue of their character.  If your character is quoting someone else, that quote should be surrounded by single quotation marks.

6. The first sentence of your post should catch your reader's attention.  A way to do that is to begin with the unusual, the unexpected, an action, or a conflict.  It's good, but not always possible or appropriate, to start off with tension and immediacy.

7. Paragraphs should describe a single topic.  The first one or two sentences should state a premise or concept with the remainder of the paragraph backing that up with facts, or elaborating in some way.  A paragraph may also be dialogue from a single character.  If you look back at your writing and most paragraphs start with 'Angelus (or whatever the name of your character is) does...', 'Angelus says...', 'Angelus kicked...' or whatever, you're doing it incorrectly or at least in an excruciatingly boring manner.

8. Suppress adverbs but indulge your inner adjectives and adjective clauses. 

9. "Smirk" is one of the most overused/misused verbs/nouns of all time in roleplay, and with few exceptions, is a sign of poor writing ability, especially if it occurs more than once in a post.  Just sayin, folks.  Unless you are a superb writer, ditch it.

10. Use commas sparingly.

11. If you can't find the right word, make generous use of a thesaurus (e.g. www.thesaurus.com).  In fact, a good thing to do during editing is to find better descriptive words, and a thesaurus is a good place to search for them.  Editing may also reveal that you're repeating words a lot.  You don't want to do that if possible, and a thesaurus can help you find replacements with the same or similar meanings.

12.  End your post in a way that provides a lead-in for the next role player.  Give them something into which they can sink their teeth. 

13. READ.  That's right, to be a good writer you have to read a whole bunch.  And read some of those novels/short stories/essays analytically, noting how the author constructs a paragraph, how they write dialogue, and describe a scene.  Pick out what you like and emulate it.  On the flip side, make note of what you don't like and shun it.  You can learn from both good writing and bad writing.

Finally, never, never, never just compose and write in the comment/blog/message box on this site and then post it.  No one, not even a professional writer, is good enough to do that and have the post be top-notch.  Write your post out in Word or whatever program you use, or even write it out long hand.  But before you do that, you may benefit from jotting down a few notes or even scribbling out a short outline.  Then write.  A nice way to start is the stream-of-consciousness/Jack Kerouac method in which you just write as fast as you can, spilling out onto the page until you're done.  What results will probably be a mess from the perspective of technique, but the basic elements of what you need to say will be there (hopefully).  Then go back and really do the writing, working on sentence and paragraph structure, spelling, and grammar, and fleshing out description and context.  After that, edit your writing.  Once it looks pretty good to you, set it aside for an hour and come back and edit it again.  After letting it sit you will see errors and nonsensical elements you didn't notice the first time around.  You don't have to Jack Kerouac it, but in any case, write, edit, edit again, (and maybe again) and then post it.  Dean Koontz, one of the best horror/suspense writers around, edits each page of a manuscript 30-40 times.

Volumes more could be included here about writing, but that's probably enough for now.  Friends, we certainly don't want to bore you to tears (sometimes a problem with novella or super-novella posts).  In closing, and we've said it before, but Stephen King's 'On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft' is a swell reference.  If you yearn for more on how to improve your writing, definitely check it out.

Now, in the comments below, you all can add your own two cents.  Insert your own tips, tell us we're full of crap, point out grammatical errors in this post, whatever.  Go for it.