So I’ve noticed a lot of English teachers are bursting into tears recently and no one knows why… Oh, wait, it’s the fact they failed as teachers and left a notable quantity of players on here struggling with basic writing.
Let’s fix that!
So why should I care about what some snob thinks is proper writing?
English isn’t actually a particularly vague language, we have a lot of words that serve specific functions or require very specific context or setups to make sense. Understanding of words is a core component of communication actually. When you try to tell someone something it goes through stages.
Inspiration > Encoding > Transmission > Reception > Decoding
What this string is saying is that when we want to communicate something we first get an idea. Then we encode the relevant message by putting it into words for someone else to understand. Once we’ve constructed our message we send it to someone else, say, by talking to them. Once the other person hears our message they decode the message so they can understand what we’ve been trying to tell them.
To understand how this can go wrong let’s bring up the ever hotly contest topic of… baps. I live up north (Of England) and a bap to us is different than what a bap is to someone from down south. This means if two people in the midlands order a bap each from a bakery one of them is going to be confused because they encoded a message to the baker but the baker decoded it wrong. This is because one word can mean two different things! The solution there is to ask first or to order baps by more standard names. (Changing how we encode a message)
Tl;Dr? But how does that all relate to roleplay?
To keep things simple and short? Poor writing impacts your ability to play the game we called Roleplay since it’s our method of control over our characters. We’ll explore how in this guide!
Lets bring in our cast of helpers and look at some basic mistakes, why they’re mistakes, and how to fix them. That way we can do a better job of expressing ourselves and cut down on misunderstandings!
Say hello once again to Toby Exampleface, Terry McBadass, Susie Special, and Clover DeRabbit!
We’ll get the four of 'em to post something for us that contains a critical flaw, then we’ll fix that flaw, and then we’ll try and improve their post so they’re more engaging.
Get to it, guys!
Toby says “i wanted to go to the shop but ill need to go home.”
Terry Terry stands around in the dark corners he smokes a cigarette
Susie ooc says “hey terry r u goin to the shop for toby i want to go too”
Clover goes and grabs Terry by the scruff. “Those things stink, you should be ashamed!” she says whilst crushing his cigarettes underfoot.
So let’s breakdown why our cast should be feeling pretty darn ashamed right now.
Toby is unintelligible because he’s not sending the message he wants to. Susie thinks he can’t go to the shops because he’s ill rather than that he needs to go home first. He also never specified why he needs to go home in the first place.
Terry never capped off his sentence with a full stop which is just sloppy, he’s also not actually giving people a good reason to approach him. Maybe he’s just waiting for someone to request a smoke? Either way he’s damaging his prospects.
Susie is actually breaking a small rule. You’re not supposed to set up immediate scenes by requesting roleplay when you can play out a hook for people instead.
And Clover may be our star pupil from before but here she’s breaking more rules than Susie, bad bunny! You should never mess with and destroy another characters’ belongings unless you’ve both agreed to it, she’s also dictating a win in a confrontation which also requires something being played out or a prior agreement.
So, how can we make things work out better here?
We’ll expand on each character’s post in turn and see how that alters things now they’re not going to make the same mistakes twice.
Toby checks his watch and frowns. “I wanted to go to the shops but I’ll need to go home first, I’ve left a cake in the oven. I hope it’s not over-cooked when I get home.”
Okay, we now know that Toby needs to go shopping and that he’s made a cake, delicious! Not only that but he’s actually giving a sneakier character a hook, they could try to beat Toby home to steal his cake. And oh hey, we have one of those!
Terry perked up a wolfish ear at the mention of unattended cake, blowing out a waft of cigarette smoke. Suddenly it seemed like a good time for a walk.
Terry is essentially still just standing around and smoking but now he’s reacting to things going on and responding to Toby’s hook. He’s used actions to show us what he’s doing rather than telling us and has managed to join up with Toby.
Susie lights up at the mention of shopping. “Oh my gawd! Shopping is such a great idea right now, I need a bestie so we can go have some fun.” she says, visibly excited and antsy.
Susie is now showing us her full diva self and inviting other players to join up and do some shopping. And she didn’t even have to ask or tell because her actions show!
Clover makes a scrunched up face at the smell of smoke. “Goodness, that stinks!” she exclaims, moving over to Susie. “I’m down for shopping, I need to get some new shampoo now anyway.” she claimed.
So since Clover doesn’t feel like just acting on someone else’s character unfairly now she’s not disrupting the scene that’s been implied between Toby and Terry. She’s taken Susie’s hook instead! She still makes her distaste for smoking known but it’s in an In Character way that’s appropriate to the character.
Now, instead of having a dis-coordinated group of rabblers all four players have successfully found a scene and no one has been misunderstood.
Toby and Terry will go on to race for the cake whilst Susie and Clover compete to be best dressed and fragrant. Later on they may even all meet up again for something else!
And this is just a small example of how better writing will not only open up more opportunities for play but also make those plays more engaging. We’re being told more about the world and characters through their actions and that’s giving us more to bounce off of and work with ourselves. And we didn’t even have to go on multi-paragraph sprawls of dreaded purple prose to do it!
So today’s homework is to critique your next few posts and ask "Hey, how can I do better than Toby, Terry, Susie, And Clover?"
Keep building yourselves up and have fun!
If you need more help then post below, I’m happy to answer more in-depth questions.