On Writing Well

[Rosencrat]

On Writing Well

A Brief Guide to Proper Emotes

I stress the word ‘brief'. This guide is intended as an introduction, to offer all new role-players to this server some tips on how to tune up their writing, strengthen their emoting 'muscles' and foray out into the verbose field of Role-playing on this server.

Read at your leisure and attach questions, comments and thoughtful tid-bits below. The guide will be modified and edited as time goes on.

Below are some suggested points to follow on how to polish up your writing.

+--Passion for the Written Word--+

This is the simplest of points: Love what you write. Treat your words with respect and care.

Far too many role-players slap together emotes and pump them out like impersonal license plates. They don't capitalize their letters. They jumble the spelling. They put enough commas in a sentence to fill a Bible. An emote is meant to convey emotions without disrupting the ‘picture' of the Role-play. People read your emotes as one would read a book; taking it in holistically to create a mental image. Nothing breaks up that image like a reader stopping at every other word because another's choice of spelling includes numbers and parenthesis.

Protip:A good way to write a good emote is to go the extra mile. Write your emotes up in a word software, such as Notepad or Word perfect. Any glaring spelling errors will be underlined for ease of correction. Copy the emote and put it up and for the cost of three more seconds of work you've just improved your writing by leaps and bounds.


+--Patience is a Virtue--+

This ties neatly in with the above tip: Take your time!

You don't need to knock out posts every four seconds. Write at a speed that you are comfortable with that you know will allow you to get across all information in a well-written and pleasant manner. If it takes you a little longer then so be it: Quality over quantity.

Protip: Decided if you want to be a Package Role-player or Fracture Role-player. A lump role-player will write out their entire emote and put it up in a single lump of text. A fractured role-player will spread out their emote in two or three ‘say' and ‘/e' lines.

+--The Devil is in the Details--+

Sometimes less is more: Know when to go into heavy detail and when to go for a broader picture.

A lot of people believe that adjective-heavy emotes, thick in detail and movement, are the best move. Not always. An emote is all about conveying the necessary detail of your character's actions and thoughts. This can be accomplished without writing out every single detail and ever single thought.

A verbose example:

Valira groaned, rubbing her forehead. She watched the leader of the guild with an evil eye. She was bored out of her mind, the meeting having been dragging on for far too long. She leaned back in her chair and folded her leg, closing her eyes to catch a few precious minutes of sleep.

A condensed example:

Valira let out a low, pained sigh. She spread herself out in her seat as she watched the rest of the meeting unfold. The dark look in her gaze faded silently as she drifted off to sleep.

The feeling of annoyance and boredom are conveyed in both posts. The difference? The first details everything out, putting out all the little details while the second shows only the barest of actions, favoring body language to detail the emotions.

Protip: Never shy away from the power of body language. A scratch of the nose, a tap of the shoe, a slouch…All are powerful indicators of emotions and emotions are key in any role-play.



Any thoughts, criticisms and thoughts are greatly appreciated! We'll be updating the guide with more tips over time.

[Abishua]

Very well written with a lot of good advice for jumping into role-playing! Emoting can be very strange and sometimes hard to get a hang of, although watching or reading other player's emotes can often go a long way to becoming a good emoter yourself.

A few comments on your guide:

Protip:A good way to write a good emote is to go the extra mile. Write your emotes up in a word software, such as Open Office or Word perfect. Any glaring spelling errors will be underlined for ease of correction. Copy the emote and put it up and for the cost of three more seconds of work you've just improved your writing by leaps and bounds.

It is also possible to google the word to check spelling (the 'did you mean x?') for something that uses less performance.

Also, getting the addon misspelled will turn your misspelled words bright blue for you to easily spot. It won't catch incorrectly used words like their/there/they're, but it'll get you through the rougher ones.

The part I quoted, I've changed notepad to Open Office because Notepad doesn't have an innate spell check built in. Word pad also works. Also, glairing has the extra 'i' in there in your second sentence, I quickly changed that if you just want to copy paste over the paragraph.

Great post though, I wish I had this when I jumped into role-playing about a month ago. ^.^

Edit: Misspelled is, as my friends would put it, much more 'boss' than I expected. You can even right click misspelled words to get the correct spellings of the words it thinks you are trying to spell. Very cool

[MrBubbles]

Moved to the Guides section, but a shadow topic has been left in the Frostbrand Marines subforum to hold down the fort there.


A highly recommended read for newcomers and veterans alike! MrBubbles approves.

[Aphetoros]

Necroapproval.