The Guide to Writing More Descriptive Posts

Subject: The Guide to Writing More Descriptive Posts Sun Apr 07, 2013 1:17 am

After reading this guide, you may be under the impression that long posts are all that matters. That message is entirely wrong. Roleplay is about writing a story that others can laugh at or relate to. It's about having fun, not about who can make the most impressive posts. But in order to allow other roleplayers something to relate or laugh to, you must write a post that is descriptive enough. This can be done through the process described in this guide.

....Beginning With An Idea

In order to write a post to begin with, you have to come up with an initial action or reaction. In other words, your character is either reacting to another character or making an action itself. For example, I could use one of these two ideas:

Action (One) wrote:: Sourava sat down.

Reaction (Two) wrote:: Sourava laughed.

I'm going to use the reaction because I used an action in my last guide. Anyway, let's think of some details that could describe a laugh. A laugh could be deep, loud, quiet, or forced. That's one step down. Thus, we can describe Sourava's laughter to make her experience easier to add on to.

Quote :: Sourava let out a forced laugh.

Notice how I had to reword my statement. If I had said 'Sourava laughed forcefully" it would mean that her laugh carried force, therefore saying that it was a strong laugh. When writing a post, you not only want to make your outcome descriptive, but easy to understand. If you use the wrong word, it defies that concept.

....Prefixes and Suffixes

As I touched on briefly in the previous chapter, some words can mean different things even though they share the same root. To know what is means, you simply have to use prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are beginnings to a word and suffixes are an ending to a word. For example, you use the words 'pretest' and 'tested'.

Pre- simply means before. There are pretests, precautions, and previews. There are also prefixes!
Post- means afterward. You could have a postapocalyptic struggle, a postadolescent, or a postaccident.

-fully indicates that something contains a lot of the root word. For example, you can run blissfully or full of bliss. You can laugh forcefully or with a lot of force.
-ed indicates that the action was done in the past. This is a basic suffix, to begin with. You can say that the dog barked, or let out a bark in the past.

I honestly don't have enough time to name all of the prefixes and suffixes that exist, so I bid you one last bit of advice on these: context clues. By reading the passage that the word is used in, it will become easier to sleuth out the meaning behind the word. Say you didn't know what forcefully meant. By saying that 'The large bodybuilder laughed forcefully', you can easily tell that the laugh was 'full of force'. This is another reason that detail is vital to all roleplay posts.

....Purposeful Detail and Unnecessary Detail; The Difference.

I'm probably perplexing you beyond your mental limits at this point, but there is a very legible difference in types of detail.

Wrong wrote:: Sonic was a big, scary blue wolf. Were all big blue wolves scary? Aaron was scared of Sonic because he was a big blue wolf.

This post might contain detail, but is it getting the reader anywhere? No. It does not. By repeating the same exact thing over and over again, you end up boring the reader. That is not what you want to do. You want to make the reader keep reading!

Right wrote:: Sonic was a big, scary blue wolf. His size indicated that he was a fighter. The fact that he was a warrior increased his fear factor.

This post contains good, juicy detail that makes sense and is not nearly as repetitive. I'm saying what I want and describing my reasoning to the reader. This is absolutely what you want to do.

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