Improvement

Assistance in Improving

Members are encouraged to post to the Questions and Help forum to ask for feedback. Feedback can be given for character profiles, individual posts, threads, plots -- you name it! You can also check with a Mentor and request specific help from them -- Mentors will generally thread with members and give live tips to them, which can be extremely helpful. PM exchanges are also common; many Mentors are quite open to being contacted via AIM or other instant message program.

General Improvement Tips

• Re-read your posts! This is ridiculously simple and can help you avoid many errors you may make while writing. It can also help you spot areas where you're less than clear -- if you don't understand what the heck you just wrote, no one else is going to, either!
• Slow down. Sometimes, we just write too fast. You've got a dozen threads to reply to and you've got to do them today, right? Actually, no -- you don't! While it is important to reply to your threads speedily, it's also important to give your fellow roleplayers good posts to reply to. Rushing to get your response in and writing sloppily is definitely more of an insult than delaying a week to write a thorough reply.
• Experiment. People are very much creatures of habit. We get comfortable doing something and forget that there are other possibilities. Write in a style you've never considered. Try using a ton of short sentences instead of a ton of long, complex sentences. Consider the styles of writers like Hemingway or Faulkner or even your fellow roleplayers -- everyone has a different personal style, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from others!
• Strive for 200 words (2 paragraphs) in your posts. One of the most common issues with newer and inexperienced roleplayers is a lack of detail in their posts -- lack of detail can make for rather boring roleplay on your partner's end. For this reason, we encourage members to write at least this amount for their posts. 'Souls does not enforce a hard-line minimum post-acceptance, but we do encourage every roleplayer to write at least this much for their posts.
• Use 'Souls resources. While these resources are here to help you understand 'Souls, they can also be extremely useful for thinking of interesting things to write about, as we provide a ton of detail regarding 'Soulsverse!
  • Check over the RP Guide for information regarding the different types of flora and fauna of the game and incorporate different animals and plants into your posts.
  • Use the Area page for the Weather and incorporate it into your posts -- you don't have to adhere exactly to the weather as it happens, but it can give you ideas.
  • Use the map to plot your character's journey across 'Souls if they're visiting a different pack. If they have to go through Shattered Coast, visit that territory's description you can describe that in your post, either as it happens or in retrospect.
• Imagery. How effective is your imagery? Can a reader visualize the scene? What are you leaving up to their imagination? Emphasize what might be important. Consider metaphors, but don't overuse them.
• Word of the Day can help you expand your vocabulary -- Dictionary.com provides a different word each day, and sometimes it can be rather challenging to fit the word into your posts. Oh, and you can win cool titles and prizes -- that's motivating, right?

Vocabulary

A lot of people consider a diverse vocabulary to be a sign of sophisticated writing, but it's important to remember that vocabulary doesn't mean just wielding a thesaurus. You should understand the meanings and correct usage of the word. Just because words are synonyms doesn't necessarily mean you can simply swap words. Many words have very similar or exactly the same definition while carrying a completely different connotation. Build your vocabulary, but don't get carried away with big words just because you think they're impressive. There are plenty of equally impressive, shorter words. Many dictionaries are available online as a resource, including:

• Dictionary.com is a good reference, and it also contains a thesaurus. Use sparingly, and if you use it, make sure you define the word and it means what you think it means.
• Google.com has become a favorite. Did you know that Google automatically defines words for you if you query "define: word"?

Writing Dialogue

Dialogue is a rather difficult thing to write, especially for roleplay. Myth has a great dialogue guide. When roleplaying, however, there are some “conventions” that you should specifically avoid:

• Avoid stuffing too much dialogue into your posts. One example of this is a character who speaks in a very large chunk all at once. Unless the character is telling a story or making a speech, this can be boring for the other character to sit through and difficult for the other player to reply to! Your eyes would probably glaze if someone spoke for ten or fifteen minutes straight without letting you get a word in edge-wise. That's about how long it would take for a character to speak an entire paragraph -- break up your dialogue between a few posts, and try not to inundate the other player with speech!
• The same goes for multiple conversation subjects at once -- conversation is usually an exchange of similar ideas, flowing naturally from one subject to another. Try to avoid discussing five different things at once. One of the easiest ways to avoid this is to not have your character speak until the other character(s) have finished speaking -- of course, interruptions and breaks are also a natural part of conversation, too.
• If your character speaks in a foreign language and you've chosen to use an online translator or attempted to translate it yourself, include the English translation. You can use <b title="English words here">Foreign words here</b> to give yourself a "hover over" translation -- do note, however, it's easier to read plain old English rather than having to hover over every piece of dialogue!

Improving dialogue can be difficult, but it can also be fun and rewarding. There are some things you can do to improve your character's dialogue and speech:

• Take the time to think about your character's particular style of dictation. For example, an educated character might use bigger words and more complex sentences than a character intended to be a simpleton -- most young children won't address their mother with, "Yes, Mother; I do so agree" if they're particularly excited.
• Listen to the way people around you speak in conversation -- find videos of real conversations (not movies -- people rarely speak in a truly realistic manner in the movies!) and transcribe them exactly as they are, with every interruption, pause, break, and interjection.
• There are usually pauses, interruptions, interjections, breaks in conversation. Real people interrupt each other and sometimes interject small words and phrases to the conversation -- people rarely sit and wait for one another to finish speaking if they have something important to say, after all.
• Speech disfluencies ("um," "uh," "er," "hm,") are rather useful and can convey an added layer to your dialogue -- for example, "hmm" coupled with a troubled look can convey a lot more than "I don't like that idea" in your speech. Note that these can vary by language and even culture within the same language -- for example, Americans are more likely to say "um" and the English are more likely to say "er."
• If your character is intended to have an accent or a particular impediment to their speech, search some for some videos and listen to how these people actually speak, and try to emulate it. Wikipedia provides various templates for English accents and other languages to start your research.

Stress & Recuperation

Occasionally, if we write a ton all the time, we get burned out and our brains shut off. This is most noticeable as an immediate and short-term side-effect of writing say, six or seven posts in a night. After a while, you just can't really think straight and it's hard to put words together. This is obviously because your brain is tired, stressed, and doesn't want to write anymore. But like any stress, when this kind of stress happens over a long period of time, it has some bad effects on the brain. It can induce writer's block or a complete burn-out, a period which may stretch over months where you just don't feel up to writing at all. It's pretty lame. When you get into these hard-to-escape periods where you just can't write, here some techniques to relax yourself back into it include:

• Read a book. Sometimes, reading another perspective, different from the typical roleplaying one, can work wonders. Read something completely different, like Harry Potter or a non-fiction work, or if you think reading something wolf-themed will help, these are some good books: Julie's Wolf Pack, Julie, and Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George ; Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause; The Wolf King, Night of the Wolf, or The Silver Wolf by Alice Borchardt; Bitten, Stolen, or Haunted by Kelley Armstrong; and Call of the Wild or White Fang by Jack London. If you need a break from wolves, you can find excellent inspiration in Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series, as well as Erin Hunter's Warriors series.
• Go outside! Real life! Highest resolution graphics! Pay attention to your surroundings and try and find some interesting stuff to do. Since 'Souls has territories that can be found almost everywhere, including heavy urban areas and suburbia, you'll probably be able to find places that you can go back and describe from your posts!
• Read old posts, either your old posts or someone else's old posts. Don't pay attention to how "bad" your old posts seem, just try to capture some of your old energy back from your writing. Additionally, re-reading your characters' past may inspire plans for his or her future.
• Read an article or a book about writing. Try going through this list on Your Writing Sucks for some ideas. You can always google "improve my writing" or "improve grammar" if you want a wider selection!

Those are some suggestions for inspiration, but the key thing is rest. Try and write, but don't try to push yourself into it... it's really tough when you lose inspiration, but the entire world is full of things from which you can draw inspiration. Don't freak out over activity either -- you're allowed breaks. Your character is allowed breaks. Maybe you'll be dropped from the ranks a while, but we'll always be here when you feel up to coming back. :)