Here's a little information on this for now until I have the time to come back and clean this up.
1. Make your layouts original. You can use pictures from other sites just try not to use the same picture as another person's post.
2. If you use color, it would be nice that you only color your dialogue and that it matches the color of the picture. (Same color pallet.) Ex: Let's say the picture is of a girl with long light blue hair and bright green eyes. You can choose to go with a dark blue or a dark green or you can choose a complementary color to one of those. Make sure they can read it. I don't really enjoy highlighting the text just because I can't read it.
3. Don't use just the main colors given. They are so bright and to me that makes me think you're lazy which you're probably not.
4. Put time into your post. No one likes to read a big wall of text. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY! I don't know how to stress this. Quality over quantity. If you put a big wall of awesomeness that would be different from a big wall of nonsense. A good post allows for the other to continue with the story line, if you just put, "She walked in and sat down," that gives really nothing for the other person to work with and it's annoying how little detail you put. 'She scooped up the back of her blue dress and gracefully sat down, waiting for her new boss to tell her what she needed to do.' That gave a little bit for the other person to work with out over doing it. (Those few things I put on the guild home page were just things to be a small guide. In order to really know it's of high quality is to read the text. That's why I ask for a sample.)
5. Don't just center your text and call it a layout. That's not good enough, if the other person doesn't care then feel free but put the text how you would like it. Like the picture to the left and the text to the right but centered (You will need a thin picture for that to work and you will need to click preview and learn what spacing you need.
6. Once you find a particular layout you like for that character then use that same layout for the same character. It's a little annoying to see different layouts on the same character every post. Easy way to do it after you had already found your layout. Copy and paste your layout into your next post box and delete the text. Then write the text you want to put. That will guarantee the same layout every time unless you delete something from the layout rather than from the main text.
7. I'm not saying you have to be very technical but it would be nice to read and look at something that looks good. I get annoyed when I come on here just to find a block of text with many spelling and grammar mistakes. We all passed at least the seventh grade. Learn to use the skills you were hopefully taught.
8. If you just follow the simple rules and make it a habit, you'll get better at it and used to it. If you change it up every time you may become easily annoyed with it.
9. When you role play one X one find out how far you can take the role play with the other person because the other person may not be very comfortable with going very far and it would look bad if you tried to push it where you just *did something* and she/he didn't know how to respond.
10. Know the other persons limits and what they would like to see. If you both know what you want to see then you may make it an enjoyable role play. If one person sits there and spends ten minutes on their post and the other spends two hours trying to make it look great, that isn't fair. Try and come to an agreement. It's a let down if one were to see a great layout and post and then scroll down to see the other person, and all they had was text. It makes the other person look bad. If the other person is okay with it, then go for it.
~I have to stop here but if you would like to be in charge of this particular section please feel free and tell me and you can post your own and I will turn it into a sticky and stuff.
