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Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:35 am

Foreword and T.O.C

Hey there, young and old. This is going to be my contribution to the guild. I have only just joined, but I'll jump right in and do this. It'll be a constant work in progress and I'm hoping to build a faq and basically make this the most complete guide for anybody to reference. Wish me luck.

Table of Contents

- Introduction
- The Basics
- The Holy Grail of Creative Writing

Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:46 am

Introduction

So your posts aren't as great as they could be, huh?
Struggling to make more than a sentence out of what you have to say?
These are very common problems, and even I suffer from the great writer's block every now and then. There is no real cure-all for it, but this guide will help to minimise that and improve your posting through using techniques, drills and practice, along with helpful advice from my own teachers in a creative writing course I am presently enrolled in.

As this is still very early on in the writing stage, I am open to feedback and suggestions, however, could you please not post them here. I would very much prefer them to be delivered to my inbox, or even better, straight to my private e-mail account that will be linked solely to my writing. That is yet to come, but will be available in my first post when it's up.

For now, I hope you enjoy these exercises and links I offer up as I come across them myself. I will also offer Role Playing general reference information on a separate post to help you keep up with what other people are writing and just fun stuff that's all related.

Good luck, and enjoy!

There are nice people

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There are nice people

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Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 7:23 am

The Basics

This post is all about getting you started with your Role Playing. Consider this as laying a solid foundation for your time here on Gaia and hopefully will help improve your writing in general. This is fairly universal information and can be applied to a range of different things; books, short stories, role playing, etc.

To get you off the ground, I'm going to start with the single most common problem new role players encounter. There's a name for this, and if anybody knows it, please let me know.

It goes as such:

Quote:

*walks along the road* *sees Bob Sinclair* Hey Bob, what's happening?

To more seasoned role players like myself, this is something that can cause a lot of abusive tangent posting, known as flaming. Most forums have rules in place against this, but it won't always save your skin. It's a whole lot easier to just alter how you post slightly right here, right now...
When you're role playing, try to imagine you're writing a book. Any fictional novel written properly will have a very different format to the above post.

They'll look more like this:

Quote:

As our character walked along the road, he saw Bob Sinclair. He stopped and shook his hand like an old friend, although they were only acquaintances. 'Hey Bob, what's happening?' He asked.

Take a moment to look at the second quote. It's still short, but it has a lot more readability to it. This is because of several key factors:

arrow It is written as a story
arrow It is written from a third-person perspective
arrow There is some extra description involved

Remember these three features when you're writing out your posts. You will notice an improvement as to how well your writings and interactions are perceived.

Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 8:06 am

The Holy Grail of Writing Creatively

There is only one rule that can be considered the holy grail of writing, and I'm letting it out now because it's very important to get it right. If you can squeeze this in, you'll instantly be elevated to levels among the elite role players on this site.

The rule is this: Show, don't Tell.

It's all about how you describe your character in an initial post or during your writing, and it's somewhat complicated to explain, so I'm going to use two examples here.

E.g 1 - Telling:

Quote:

The wolf entered the clearing. It bared it's teeth and was quite tall, about 5 feet on all fours. It had grey fur and one eye was missing. It leapt at the group of campers.

E.g 2 - Showing

Quote:

The eyes reflected the firelight like glass marbles with a yellow glow. As it entered the clearing, it's knife-blade teeth were exposed in a malicious grin so wide, it almost covered the animal's entire face. It's matted fur coat was the colour of cement.

The wolf was definitely a fighter. It had scars that aged it a thousand years, and a limp that was noticeable by the campers, who immediately took a less defensive stance. The creature was hungry, and was not capable to fend for itself...

I actually enjoyed writing that description so much that I had to cut myself short before going right into writing a short story about the creature. Does that stir something inside you? An emotion or a memory of a time past or present?
It should, because that's the aim of giving such a description.

I used metaphors and similes in this description, to give the reader something to compare it with to create a mental image. The human mind works in images and at any point where you can generate one with your character, you should do so. Especially during description.

Notice that the second description is somewhat longer. Using this technique will help flesh out a post so that you can help make up for lost ground in forums that have minimum size posts.

Exercise 1A

Okay! It's time for some homework. Don't worry, it's not going to be graded. This is just an opportunity to challenge yourself if you decide to.

I am attaching a link to a writing challenge that has since closed. It's about description and relates to this section. Take it upon yourself to try and write a (roughly) 600 word description of one of the available choices. Unfortunately, they won't take any new submissions, so just keep these once you've done them so that you can reflect upon them, and maybe even keep working on them for as long as you like.

Here is the link, I'm not hiding it inside any tags so that if it doesn't work you can highlight and copy/paste into you address bar:

http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/writingexercises/tp/may2010writingchallenge.htm

There are nice people

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There are nice people

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Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 7:53 pm

Playing with P.O.V (Points of View)

This section talks about different points of view in which to tell a story. In creative writing, and particularly in fictional novels, have you ever noticed how some stories are written with the main character being the narrator, while others seem to have a narrator telling the story of the main character?

These are two different points of view, known as First-person and Third person points of view respectively. I won't focus on the Second-person point of view as it is not relevant to role playing.

So here are a few examples of the different points of view:

First-Person POV:

Quote:

I was in a hurry to get to the scene of the crime. So much so, in fact, that I took a corner too hard and lost control of the car. The tires squealed in the wet and the blood started to force it's way through my body like Johnny in The Shining. The car eventually came to a stop and I took off again, hurtling down the road...

Second-Person POV: [NOTE: Not relevant to role playing. Usually used for choose your own adventure books.]

Quote:

You walk down the dark hallway the old lady warned you against. There was a dangerous man hiding in there somewhere, and the police were going to be along shortly, however, you saw that girl he dragged back there with him...

Third-Person POV:

Quote:

Old Mrs.Falmer barely managed to get out of the way of the drunkard as he made his way down the back of the diner. A young waitress wasn't quite so lucky. There was a clatter of trays and plates as she was pulled to the ground by her hair and dragged, screaming like she'd just witnessed a murder. A young man stood up near Mrs.Falmer and made a move to follow, but she placed a hand on his arm. 'Don't go down there.' She said. 'The police are already on their way and you'll only get yourself hurt.'

When Role Playing, either First-Person or Third-person points of view are good. Just pick the one you're most comfortable with, but be prepared to use the other one if it's outlined in the rules of the Role Play.

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