Guten Tag, meine Freunde! or Avast, Me hearties!

Anyhoo...

I'm not, by the stretch of ANYONE's imagination, the World's Most Awesomest Writer, but I thought I'd toss out a few helpful little hints that I've learned through my years of writing and role-playing. I hope it helps...or at least amuses. (I'll add to this as I think of 'em)

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Needful Links

Spellchecker.com: ya know, if you don't trust the one your browser uses or want a second opinion or just, you know, want it.

Dictionary.com: Need to know the definition for "orchidaceous" (*snicker!*)? Here ya go!

Thesaurus.com: Waxing poetic about my cuteness and already wore out the phrase "indigo velvet heaven"? I know how it can happen. Go here!



#1. Post Length:

Ja, I know sometimes you don't have time or don't know what to write, but one-liners make the Baby Jesus (and your fellow posters) cry. The other people in the thread need something to work off of, if you're just posting a few sentences at a time, expect to be ignored. It's just not fun or satisfying to make a good-sized post and have people reply with a one-liner of dialog. It's a waste of time. Ideally, your post should be at the very very least as long as your avatar is tall. Even if your guy has nothing say, he probably has something to think...have him think about what's going on, what he's doing later in the day, how much he hates Scott's training sessions, anything! Give us something to work with.

A good rule of thumb is: Give as good as you get. If you're in a thread where everyone else is posting action heavy four-five paragraph posts, try and match them. If you can't keep up or give the other players something to work with, excuse you character from the scene and write them out.

#2: Grammar and spelling:
InvisionFree does not currently have a built in spellcheker. We suggest this for IE users or this one for Mozilla & Firebird. Firefox 2.0 has a spellchecker built in. Firefox 1.5 (the one us Linux users are stuck with) uses Aspell (found in the Extensions section of Firefox's website). Seriously, it's your friend.

And here's a few peeves of mine:

1. Commas: Alas, the lonely comma...so underused, so unloved. It's used to indicate pause and a bunch of other grammarishly things. But my Big Peeve is this: "Hot damn Kurt that tie is groovy." No! Nein! It's "Hot damn, Kurt, that tie is groovy." See?

2. "It's" is a contraction of "It is", "Its" is the possessive. "They're" is a contraction of "They" and "are", "Their" is the possessive, and "There" is, well, "There".

3. To steal a phrase from another role-player, if you play a character with an accent (like I do), please don't phoneti-shit all over the page. Write DIALECT, not the phonetic accent. "My name iz Kurt Vagner and I vant to go to ze Hollyvood Video."...just looks stupid. Very stupid. And goofy. Did I mention stupid? Don't write, "Mah name is Rogue an' Ah want t' go t' thah store, Sugah."...use the dialect, "My name's Rogue, could ya'll give me a lift to the Piggly Wiggly? I'm fixin' to make a cake in a spell and need a lil' more icin'. Thanks a bunch, Sugar." Got it? Good.

It's ok to use phonetic spelling of accent if you're pointing out that -- for some reason -- your character's accent has thickened. (Anger, being drunk), but it's not to be abused.

4. In a similar vein, when writing dialog, write how your character would talk. If playing Jubilee; use slang, Buffy-speak, lots of contractions, all those nifty California colloquialisms...have a ball. Use italics and ellipses and hyphens to get pauses and trailing and emphasis in there. Remember, we can't hear your character as you hear him in your head, we need those commas, ellipses and contractions. Sometimes, it's hard for a writer to "hear" their character. Never be afraid of constructive criticism, heck, ask for it. Talk to someone here who's writing you like and ask them for help. Get them to proof-read your posts and offer suggestions.

5. Write out numbers. Don't write "Kurt is 22 kinds of sexy.", it's "Kurt is twenty-two kinds of sexy." Only numbers over one hundred, I believe, are written as numbers. Danke.

#3: The Four R's of RP: Read, Reflect, React, and Reply

1. Read: Read the thread you're replying to. All of it. Every post. Understand what's going on, who's talking, who's doing what and why (and where!). Figure out the location and position of the other characters in relationship to yours. Understand who the other characters are. If you're Bob Schmirkle, sixteen year old student who just got there, and you're in a room with Cyclops and Gambit, understand that sassing and interrupting Cyke will get you ignored and possibly sent from the room. Use common sense.

2. Reflect: When you write your post, what's going on in your character's head. What's he feeling? What's he seeing? What's he smelling, tasting, hearing? How are the events of the room affecting him? What's he doing? What are his inner thoughts? Here's where you can wax expositional if that's what you need to do, to catch the reader up.

3. React: A big one that gets missed by inexperienced role-players. If something happens in the room, react to it! If someone asks a question, does something, looks especially weird, etc and so forth. If Bobby makes an ice sculpture of the new Pope, have your character react, either passively (in thought) or actively (vocally or physically)! Even if it's just to criticize Bobby's artistic skills. Something. Anything. I can't say it enough: react, react, REACT!

4. Reply: Now comes the fun part, replying! Some people like to Cut-n-Paste the dialog they're replying to. Groovy! Don't forget to bold it or put it in italics to separate it from what you've written. Some people just reply and that's fine, too. Just as long as you do reply, and your reply makes sense. But don't get crazy now, you don't have to reply to EVERYTHING under heaven, especially if it's a large thread with lots of people. And keep things in perspective, if you've been missing from a thread and got skipped, try to not post a novel detailing and recapping every single thing that happened. We know what happened. We read it. Thanks so much. AND, when it comes time to post your own actions, please keep it reasonable, no Giant Super Posts jammed with a billion actions without giving others a chance to react (ya know, get in their own 4 R's).

And No God Modding. You can't make someone else blush, or laugh, or yell "ow" or be allergic to fish. You just can't. No inventing history of other characters without checking with the player of said character first. Also, this is an AU...which means some things are different than what you have seen in canon. If you don't know...ask.

More on "god-modding": Be careful what you assume about another player's character, just because *you* might think that Jono loves the Flogging Mollys and hates training with Wolverine doesn't mean that his player does...and his player decides those traits about Jono, not you. So, always check with a character's player before you assume some detail about them that might contradict what the player has in mind for their character. Savvy?

Picture the thread as a scene from a movie or TV show, and describe what you see and hear. If you need help or clarification...ask. Talk to a mod, talk to the other players, talk to somebody. Communication is your best friend. Honestly.

#4: ICA = ICC: In-Character Actions equal In-Character Consequences.

#5: OOC =/= IC. Period. If you are having an issue with another player, bring it to us, don't let it reflect ICly. Also, what *you* know isn't what your character knows. If JP enters a scene and -- OOCly -- you know that it's really Mystique, your character doesn't get to be immediately suspicious. Even if you're playing a telepath. Unless your character would know for some reason (say...Wolverine smells her and knows something's up), do NOT allow your OOC knowledge to influence your character's actions.

#6: Don't bring OOC drama into your IC life. If you're mad at Storm's player, don't take out on Storm, talk it over with the staff or try and resolve your conflict. Or just cowboy up and stay IC.

Similar note, don't complain to the other players about how so-and-so doesn't write their character according to your desires. This will spread around and get you a rep as two-faced. And you might hurt some feelings. And that will open you up to a verbal beat down from me. If you have an issue with someone else's characterization, talk to me, if they are going way OOC, I can do something. Thanks.