There are all kinds of post styles you'll run into throughout your times of role-playing; romantic, dramatic, satirical, angry, and even violent sometime, but there are few as common and yet so under-appreciated as the battle scenes.
What do you think of when you think 'fight scene' when you watch a movie? In a movie a fight scene seems almost like a dance, it flows and grabs your attention by the throat as you watch two or maybe even more people battle each-other, but in a role-play you don't often get that, you don't get that adrenaline rush you get while watching the movie either because of a bad use of language, poor sentence structure, or because the person just didn't know the right words to use to convey what it was they saw in their mind. We'll that's what I'm going to try and correct with this critique thread, simply post the post you plan to post and I'll try and help teach you haw to make your battles flow better and make people anxious to see the next post in an epic battle, but first, a few tips of mine that always seem to work regardless of the situation.
1. Use Dynamic Language: When I say that I mean 'crunched', 'shattered', 'snapped' and any kind of language that can effectively convey the force, power, or speed with which your character is attacking. For example, here we have a basic sentence. 'Daniel ran up and quickly kicked the thief'. That's a mind numbingly boring sentence, but you see this kind of thing all the time in semi-lit and even some lit role-plays. This time lets add some dynamic language. 'Daniel rushed forward and kicked the thief with bone crushing speed'. Does't that sound so much more exciting then the original sentence? Those dynamic words add flavor and power to the sentence, making it much more interesting to read, which brings me to my next tip.
2. Sentence structure: One of the most important things in writing is how you structure your sentences, and the best tip I can give you with sentences for battles, and even writing in general, is put the most exciting part of your sentence last. If that doesn't make sense, let me use the example from earlier and show you what I mean. 'Daniel ran up and quickly kicked the thief'. In this sentence in particular, the thief is not the most exciting part of it, that would be the kick, so all we need to do is reword the sentence a bit and structure it so that the kick is at the very end. 'Daniel ran up to the thief and quickly kicked him'. Better, but once again a boring sentence, so let's add some dynamic language and see if we can't spice it up a bit. 'Daniel charged toward the thief and lashed out with a powerful kick'. Now that's a pretty bad a** sentence compared to what we started with, but there's still one tip I have, and you'll notice I used it in my example.
3. Never use the same dynamic language in the same post: Okay, as you noticed, the dynamic language I used in the second example was different then the one in the first. Why did I do that? Because, if you use the same word over, and over, and over, it gets boring. If you need help finding different words to convey a similar meaning, go to dictionary.com, go to the thesaurus, and find a new word to use. This will also widen your vocabulary, making you an all around better writer and it'll make you look smart.
Okay, those are the three major tips I have, now if you want my critique, feel free to post your post in here and I'll see what I can do to help.
What do you think of when you think 'fight scene' when you watch a movie? In a movie a fight scene seems almost like a dance, it flows and grabs your attention by the throat as you watch two or maybe even more people battle each-other, but in a role-play you don't often get that, you don't get that adrenaline rush you get while watching the movie either because of a bad use of language, poor sentence structure, or because the person just didn't know the right words to use to convey what it was they saw in their mind. We'll that's what I'm going to try and correct with this critique thread, simply post the post you plan to post and I'll try and help teach you haw to make your battles flow better and make people anxious to see the next post in an epic battle, but first, a few tips of mine that always seem to work regardless of the situation.
1. Use Dynamic Language: When I say that I mean 'crunched', 'shattered', 'snapped' and any kind of language that can effectively convey the force, power, or speed with which your character is attacking. For example, here we have a basic sentence. 'Daniel ran up and quickly kicked the thief'. That's a mind numbingly boring sentence, but you see this kind of thing all the time in semi-lit and even some lit role-plays. This time lets add some dynamic language. 'Daniel rushed forward and kicked the thief with bone crushing speed'. Does't that sound so much more exciting then the original sentence? Those dynamic words add flavor and power to the sentence, making it much more interesting to read, which brings me to my next tip.
2. Sentence structure: One of the most important things in writing is how you structure your sentences, and the best tip I can give you with sentences for battles, and even writing in general, is put the most exciting part of your sentence last. If that doesn't make sense, let me use the example from earlier and show you what I mean. 'Daniel ran up and quickly kicked the thief'. In this sentence in particular, the thief is not the most exciting part of it, that would be the kick, so all we need to do is reword the sentence a bit and structure it so that the kick is at the very end. 'Daniel ran up to the thief and quickly kicked him'. Better, but once again a boring sentence, so let's add some dynamic language and see if we can't spice it up a bit. 'Daniel charged toward the thief and lashed out with a powerful kick'. Now that's a pretty bad a** sentence compared to what we started with, but there's still one tip I have, and you'll notice I used it in my example.
3. Never use the same dynamic language in the same post: Okay, as you noticed, the dynamic language I used in the second example was different then the one in the first. Why did I do that? Because, if you use the same word over, and over, and over, it gets boring. If you need help finding different words to convey a similar meaning, go to dictionary.com, go to the thesaurus, and find a new word to use. This will also widen your vocabulary, making you an all around better writer and it'll make you look smart.
Okay, those are the three major tips I have, now if you want my critique, feel free to post your post in here and I'll see what I can do to help.
