Welcome to Gaia! ::

cause i have no clue whats going on... sweatdrop

Rak - thanks so much for the tutorial on posting! You're not out of line at all. Thanks for offering some advice to members who may not know exactly how to fill up a post with their character's thoughts and actions.

I don't know if anyone actually read my last little advice post on posting... but if you did, I hope it helped. I've decided to continue writing little advice posts to help improve posting all around. Now, before anyone jumps up and says "Here you are giving people advice when you don't even follow the rules you lay out," I will admit, these are things that I wish I did better for myself as well. I have this tendency to be absolutely retarded and impossibly stubborn, even though the one I'm being stubborn with is myself. So if you notice me talking about something that improves your posts, but find that I don't do it, it's more likely that I'm bad at it rather than the advice being bad.

Today, I hope to explain the benefit of explaining a character's thoughts and behavior in an rp post. In the last advice post, we sort of explained the bare minimums of what goes into an rp post. This is about what you can do to build upon the basics of a simple rp post, and in one motion add to your character's development and clear up things that might cause misunderstandings later. Ideally, writers (especially rp writers) want everything written to be comprehended as the writer imagined. Obviously, some things are left open-ended as the pain-staking detail of every eyelash of a character is generally unwanted. Actually, not generally... always. Writers are then left to decide what needs to be explained, and what needs to be left to the readers to infer. However, as rp posters we have an advantage. We don't need to write about every action, mostly just the ones that directly affect our character. By focusing on only one character, each post is like changing perspectives in a novel. It gives the reader another angle of understanding of a situation being created by several different people. Most novels will never have as many deeply explored characters as a roleplay does. A novel usually has one or two main characters and a large cast of supporting characters. An rp has dozens of main characters, all vying for the spotlight in equal measures. And since everyone is a main character in an rp, everyone gets to have their inner monologues, their thoughts, and their histories revealed as if they were a main character in a book. It's all up to the player to reveal it.

Now, not every post can be a surreal, vision-twisting revelation accompanied by a flashback from their childhood, and a soliloquy of dire import on top of the actions taking place. If they were, the magic would be lost. With every post, a little tidbit of depth and background from your character should sneak out, letting it build and build until the time is right to unleash the appropriate literary device. So for right now, we'll focus on the common post. The everypost, if you will. The sort of post that you make about a hundred of before something good happens.

In the everypost, you are mostly trying to convey simple actions, carry a conversation, or react to normal events (normal meaning anything that would not cause one of the above mentioned devices). So while your character is doing these things, as the writer, you often know what is going on and have an idea of your character's thought process as he/she goes on with their day. However, the readers really only see your character as an amorphous blob until they are given something to work with. In order to portray your character as a person, a reader needs to be able to attach something to him/her that will make it feel more life-like. The easiest way is often outlining a character's thought process. Rather than just state that your character unsheathes his sword, explain the thoughts that led up to that action. There's a million reasons why someone might draw a sword on another person, some of that is explained by the situation, but the most personal information isn't going to come out unless you spell it out.

If you find yourself writing a post that's 95% actions, most likely you're missing out on a lot of opportunity for development. When this happens, start by re-reading your character's profile (if it has one) and see if there's anything about your character's past that you can focus on. Every action made by your character is governed by actions taken in the past. Try to come up with something that expresses who your character is and what his background is like. Every post is an opportunity to reinforce what your character believes in. Don't let it pass you by.

Let's look at an example:


Jason ran away, mission complete. Unfortunately, Turmellos had discovered him and was angry at the intrusion. Jason tried to escape and ran away but the demon was faster and could shoot energy at him. When Jason got hit by the second beam, he turned around and waited for Turmellos to catch up, and then drew his sword.

Turmellos chased down Jason with a fury only a demon would know. Jason knew he was at his end, as another of Turmellos's energy bolts shot through him. It was stupid mission, but a necessary one. Now that he had laid the groundwork, the Knights would be able to catch up with Turmellos and defeat him. Jason saw no chance of escape and finally turned around. The demon closed in on Jason, and he waited to make sure the demon could see the sword as it exited the sheathe. Jason would not die with his back turned. He would not die without a sword in his hand. Such was the true end of a soldier. His ancestors would be waiting for him.


Obviously the second one has a lot more flavor (which will be the focus of another post), but more importantly, we know what Jason is thinking throughout it. We can see Jason as a real person, with a history, an agenda, and wishes to be fulfilled. In both posts the same actions are conveyed, but I would be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks the first one is better. In the response post, where Jason is either saved by his brothers-in-arms, or beaten to death by a demon, the writer would have the chance to really open up and give even more information about the character in the form of a dying speech or a flashback or something. By setting all of this up now, you have a lot more to explore in the next post, whereas it would feel entirely out of place to add so much description to the next post.

Sometimes, to truly understand a character, it takes secondary characters or another player's character to really bring out the best, or worst of them. Start out your post by having your character thinking about another character. In examining someone else's character, you can quickly explain away traits that your character likes or dislikes and add all sorts of information quickly and easily. Since most rps tend to involve multiple people, it's really easy to start something up with another character. After a few posts with that character or if some time passes with the two characters in contact with each other, you have been given plenty of room to write about that other character, and how he/she relates to your own. It's easy, like free experience, and it brings out so much about your character. Here's an example:


Vanessa was stuck working for Rin again. She barely had the strength to push around the cart as she was, so she struggled along, trying to sell things that nobody wanted. When she got back to the main marketplace, Vanessa planned to give Rin an earful.

Rin was one of the few people that could be recognized as a true genius, and functionally retarded in the same moment. Vanessa knew very few people who understood the arcane tapestry of the world as well as she did, and on top of that she appeared brilliant with her out of the box thinking. Strangely enough, despite that brilliance, Vanessa truly wondered how someone could be so inane. So foolish. So... simple. Vanessa owed Rin quite a bit, since Rin was the only one willing to put up with her curse, but Vanessa didn't appreciate how Rin treated her like she was her daughter, despite the fact that Rin wasn't even old enough to have a five-year-old. The amount of effort Rin would put into convincing people that Vanessa was her daughter was stunning. Rin could probably be an archmage by now if she had focused her skills on something useful. Instead, Vanessa was stuck pushing around Rin's cart, trying to sell trinkets of no value all because Rin thought that people would buy them simply because they were sold by a cute, helpless little child. What a waste. When the cart hit a bump and spilled some of its contents onto the ground, she thought, You better enjoy your peace now, Rin. I'm gonna chew you out when I get back.


Once again, the second post is obviously much more fleshed out and provides a lot more insight into the character's life-particularly the things she obsesses over, which is good to know. Vanessa seems to be a very focused character, somewhat honor bound by Rin's favors, and interested in magic. All of this was found out in addition to the fact that she was selling cruddy merchandise and wanted, desperately to yell at her employer for the situation. Once again, the bare minimum turns into a wealth of information about the character. All it takes is a little bit of Vanessa's inner thoughts to come out, and all because she was thinking about Rin the whole time.

Finally, we have an action scene. Sometimes an action scene starts to feel bogged down by too much talk, and not much do. Despite that, there's a lot of room to add personal thoughts into the actions and explain what's going on. Let's take a look at an action example:


The room was filled with big guards. Malissa looked around and saw that the only man that was not roughly double her size was Kory himself. The little girl he had taken hostage was petrified, and Malissa wasn't going to stand for it. She punched out the guard that approached her to check for weapons, and the rest of the guards cocked their guns. She ignored them as they told her to stop and when they opened fire she had to act fast. One guy had an SMG which was spaying bullets everywhere, so she got next to the closest guard and launched him with a straight kick straight at the SMG. Then she turned toward Kory ignoring the rest. But just as Malissa was getting close, Kory threw the little girl onto the ground and held her down with his foot. Malissa stopped in her tracks giving the guards enough time to aim at her. The bullets hit her in the side and she fell down. Kory was smiling when she looked back at him, and now she was in real trouble.

Mallissa's mind was a frenzy of thoughts, all centered on how to deal with this.. this despicable cretin in front of her. The very fact that he would consider using a child as bait to control her was disturbing to her very core. She clenched her fist and smashed his nearest henchman, shattering his jaw and sending him to the floor, even though he was twice her size. "Kory!" she shouted angrily, "Let her go, or you'll be next!" The sounds of the guns cocking in the hands of the other guards didn't seem to deter her. If she was in this, she was in all the way. There was no way she was going to let that scum harm the girl. If that meant she was going to have to fight her way though all of them then so be it. When Malissa took her next step toward Kory, the guards opened fire. Her mind cleared as the adrenaline flowed in allowing her to prioritize the situation. To save the girl she needed to survive long enough to get to her. The closest guy had a pistol and in less than a second she had spun him around and launched him with a powerful kick straight into the guy with the SMG. From there, she sprinted straight toward Kory who threw the hostage to the ground and stepped on her throat. Malissa stopped in her tracks at the sight and felt two bullets tear into her side sending her to a knee. She looked back in pain, not so much from the bullets, but from the appalling act of supporting Kory. When she looked up at Kory again, she saw that disgusting smile on his face. He knew he had gotten exactly what he wanted, and now Mallissa knew it too.


In the final example, the second post is once again more detailed and flavorful. The actions in the two posts are almost identical, but you know what's going on in Malissa's head in the second post. And even though there's a lot more added, it doesn't really bog down the action. It's about the same amount of time to read it, and I think the second post is a lot more interesting. Obviously, I'm not the best writer in the world, so there's definitely more room for improvement in these posts, but at the very least, they get the point across, and they reveal a lot about the character in question, making it feel like there's actually a person there that you're reading about.

I hope this might help sort out a few new angles to post with. Every post has opportunity written all over it, and only the poster can take advantage of it. Try using some of these techniques if you feel your posts are getting a little dry, or if you just want to change things up a bit. Or if you're happy with your posting style don't. If there's anything you guys know that might help bring out more character development, shout it out.

Other than that, the next advice post will be on flavor. There was some obvious extra stuff added in to the examples that would better fit into the flavor tutorial, so we might revisit them in my next post. But this is all for now. ^^ Hope you liked it.

They're great help though, even for people like me who have been posting for a while and are just looking to become more advanced in their writings.
Thanks for all of the tips biggrin