2. Bigger, Longer, Wordier Posts
While more geared towards the role players, story writers can also benefit from this since it also goes into readability. The biggest issue I see is people just doing the basic action and that’s it. There’s no detail on anything else. For this reason, I want you to keep the acronym FART in mind.
Feeling: what are the character’s emotions? Are they angry, scared, anxious?
Action: how are they moving? If they’re walking is it a quick, fast stride? Are they lumbering along?
Reason: why do feel the way they do? What caused them to react the way they did?
Thoughts: what are they thinking? What’s their thought process concerning something?
FART basically is something I think of when I write a character. It helps create something organic. So, let’s build a post! The setting is a space ship and we’re going to be following Clayton around. He’s not a morning person, doesn’t sleep all that well, and has an upcoming bounty hunt. He’s also half alien.
Clayton got out of bed and walked to the window.
Okay, basic idea of what I want him to do, but it’s…Bland. It’s the bare bones of anything. So, let’s apply ‘Feeling’.
Clayton got out of bed and walked to the window, feeling anxious.
Still kinda bare bones. He’s already doing an Action, but we can add more!
Clayton got out of bed and walked to the window, feeling anxious. Behind him, his tail twisted up.
Already, we have something that’s twice as long as when we started. Let’s add ‘Reason’.
Clayton got out of bed and walked to the window, feeling anxious. Behind him, his tail twisted up as he went over his plans for his upcoming bounty hunt.
This leads into an excellent place to sprinkle in some of his Thoughts.
Clayton got out of bed and walked to the window, feeling anxious. Behind him, his tail twisted up as he went over his plans for his upcoming bounty hunt. He knew the place would be heavily guarded, but hadn’t found a good entry point yet.
Look at that. We turned a basic 10 word post into 45. Now, something I want to point out before I continue. Read the paragraph out loud, notice how it flows? Flow is good. It means better readability and it’s just nice and smooth. I often see people doing the following:
Clayton got out of bed. He walked to the window. His tail twisted behind him and he went over the plans for his bounty hunt. He knew the place would be guarded. He hadn’t found an entry point yet.
Read that out loud. It’s jarring, isn’t it? It has a lot of hard stops and isn’t very readable. Commas and semicolons are your friends. Join short sentences together, make them all cozy with each other. Your readers and role play partners will thank you. Now, we have a decent post, but you’re here for something impressive, yeah? You’re not limited to doing one or two actions per post. The more material you give your partner, the better grasp they have of your character and the better their character can react. Let’s keep applying FART, and remember: you don’t have to use it in order, or the entire acronym. It’s just something to help build up your writing.
Clayton got out of bed and walked to the window, feeling anxious. Behind him, his tail twisted up as he went over his plans for his upcoming bounty hunt. He knew the place would be heavily guarded, but hadn’t found a good entry point yet. Without a good entry point, he’d encounter heavy opposition and potentially spook his target. He rubbed his face with his hands to try and wake up, but it didn’t do much good. Finally, Clayton simply sighed, then trudged out of the bedroom and into the living room-kitchen area to make himself a cup of coffee.
Better, yeah? But we’re still missing a lot of things. Description, being the chief thing. So, let’s add that in with some more FART.
Clayton got out of the bed that’d been covered in a mountain of blanket and walked to the window that overlooked a gas giant surrounded by glittering ice rings. He hated feeling anxious first thing in the morning, knowing it’d set the mood for the rest of the day. Behind him, his tail twisted up as he went over his plans for his upcoming bounty hunt, still feeling unsatisfied with what he had so far. He knew the place would be heavily guarded, but hadn’t found a good entry point yet. Without a good entry point, he’d encounter heavy opposition and potentially spook his target. After pushing up the sleeves of his oversized, dark blue sweat shirt, he rubbed his face with his hands to try and wake up, but it didn’t do much good.
Finally, Clayton simply sighed, then trudged out of the bedroom and into the living room-kitchen area to make himself a cup of coffee. The whole area had been designed for someone with a tail, from the backless stools around the table to the couch with the lower part of the back removed. Unfortunately, the rest of the galaxy usually didn’t accommodate him so well. Automatically, he worked on making his coffee and sleepily shoved the grey mug under the coffee machine’s spout; no sugar, just black coffee. Faintly, he smiled when he finally smelled the fresh coffee.
And 10 words goes to two paragraphs. I could make it even longer by going into Clayton’s physical appearance or the descriptions of the rooms, but I think you get the gist at this point. Description, adjectives, and FART will go a long way in making lengthy posts. It can be hard to do, at first, but writing is much like exercising: the more you do it, the better you’ll get.
This leads me to the actual grammar. I’ve already covered flow, but spelling and grammar is just as important. Spellcheck your work. Make sure you understand the difference between they’re/their/there. It’s/Its is trickier and I’m pretty sure only grammar professors are going to know the difference. Use ‘an’ in front of words with vowels. Last, but not least, try to keep the same tense.
Meaning, if you’re using third person past, don’t suddenly switch to third person present. I.e “She was scared” and “She is scared”. Exception being, dialogue. Which causes me to jump into, you guessed it, dialogue! Dialogue is how the characters communicate and how one characters tells another that they’re being dumb and need to stop pining over someone. Don’t make your characters talk the same. Everyone has their own little verbal quirks.
Some characters might be verbose and use fancy words. Others might talk in short, clipped sentences. It can help to sit down and watch some show you’ve watched a thousand times before and pay attention to how differently the characters speak. This can also be useful for figuring out how to write facial expressions or body language in posts.
Essentially, there’s a lot of little things you can do to beef up your posts, but most of it is gong to be in the description of what your character is doing and feeling. However, don’t add in fancy, flowery words. That’s called Purple Prose, i.e calling “eyes” something silly like “oculars”. If your reader has to google or use a thesaurus to read your post/writing, or you’re doing the same to write it? You’re very likely doing Purple Prose and it significantly reduces the readability of your writing.
Sunny
