RP – Being Modern

There are plenty of ways to express writing through RPing on the internet using todays dynamic posting features available on all standard forums and sites. I think it’s not only important to use these modern tools, but also to think modernly and create new, creative, interesting ideas with them… ultimately making the glory that is RPing that little more entertaining.

But how can you do this?

It’s quite simple… just use what you can. Observe what you’re doing and relate it to the tools you have on hand. Mostly, I’ll be giving examples and trying to inspire new, interesting ideas for you to think on in this Blog entry.

Let’s have a look at what you’re most likely going to be presented with, shall we? In any decent forum or site, you’ll have access to basic formatting tools to customize your post to whatever style you want.

Basic Tools

This here is a basic tool bar and it’s the one I am using and have used to create all my previous SStylish posts. I have access to font type, Bold, Italic, Colour

Left Align

Right Align

Centre (the one I always use) and other things, too.

Most of these I access on-hand with easy keyboard shortcuts.

These tools can help enhance the viewers reading experience in a way that traditional books and writing do not use (most of the time). Some people have posting styles all together, where they will use a particular FONT for every post – but you must be creative and SIMPLE. Some users use different colours for dialogue within their RP post, or a colour/font/size change for each character or timeline or whatever!

Emphizing certain words can be a smart thing to do… as long as you know how to apply it smartly.

I’ll give an example for this. In a hentai RP that died pretty fast, I RP’d a female character with a cyber monocole that could gather all the information in front of her and then display it as data code to her eye. It’d gather info like the size of the room she was in, the people around her, their names and info and all sorts of stuff – but I really wanted to show exactly what TEXT she was seeing instead of just saying, ‘Info comes up and she sees the boys name is Jack.’

Then again I also couldn’t just start typing up random code in the middle of paragrahs as that would be unnatractive to the eye (in my humble opinion). So, I did something like this:

//observing…/
/…/
/…/
/data gathered, displaying…
///err.22×4/
/subject, line of sight, ID/
Name: Jack Sweet
Age: 15
Grade: B
Status: Offensive
-WARNING, COMBAT-
/Warning, Danger Ahead >> JACK SWEET//
–… end info.23 LOG

I hoped that this would’ve given a little dept to what was going on with my character. Not only, I was thinking modernly with not only the cyber monocle she was using (futuristic) but in its practical use. It was entertaining but it could also give me the excuse to know all the character’s names without introductions. This was important as it was a Hentai RP so nothing was very deep. It’s important to create aspects that relate to the actual environment and style of the RP you’re posting into, too.

Computer & Internet

Yeah, you heard me. You’re on a computer and have access to all kinda of media to use. You can use IMAGES to enhance the visual stimulus of the RP, too. These can be images of your character (if you have any) or backgrounds or anything you think is relevant. You could even post a plain box of red just to show the impact of a punch on your character! Really try to think outside the box and don’t feel pressured to implement any of these things, especially images. If you want to keep things to the imagination entirely, then avoid images : )

Sounds & Music can be used, too. I haven’t used sound in any of my RP posts for a long time now but I do think it’s good to get a certain mood across. In my RP site STS, a user named Lex once gave her RP post a link to a YouTube video containing rain sounds. She suggested it be played as a certain part of the RP and I must say it worked very well!

Another user, DJ the admin… he gives links to YouTube as well contain in the very text of the RP! These videos are of songs and he implements the links when he’s talking about what his character is listening to in his portable music player. This is a cool idea and very simple. It’s unique of him to put the links in the RP Eg: ‘Davix turned to the next song and continued to travel deeper into the dark city.’

You can also simply EMBED YouTube videos that some forums and sites allow… or you can even provide a raw link to the music file, wherever it is.

Going back to basic tools for a second… in an old RP I was involved in about time travel… I took the initiative to create a very logical character. He appreciated numbers and as such, if there was ever a number mentioned as in 1, 2, 3 then I would make them bolded to show their importance to the character. I could even make it so that all the numbers in the post add up to something significant… although I simply wasn’t REALLY interested in numbers personally to do such a thing.

I like to use Italic mostly for when I’m giving thoughts in a character’s mind. I sometimes do this without warning that the character has gone into a thought process but I enjoy that effect as it doesn’t hand-feed everything to the reader and forces them to realise that Alright this is what the character’s thinking… instead of me repetitively writing out:

‘What the hell’s going on? James thought.’

… and as a general tip, don’t use speech marks for thought even if you mention it is only thought right after it… it just doesn’t look good in my opinion.

And of course, use everything in moderation. Don’t saturate any posts with formatting or ‘features’ A post with lots of different coloured text, different alignments, different fonts, images, music, links and all that stuff splattered around the place will make the post too messy to enjoy. Good ole normal writing should still be your main focus and these entertainment tactics should be highlights and features of the post in a broad sense… not something that should need to be applied to every paragraph (unless the whole post is in a certain colour… or something)

Well that’s all I really have to say, I could go on and on about ideas and stuff but I really just wanted to give you an introduction to the possibilities of RPing online and what you’re capable of if you really expand on the creative ideas you have in your head with the tools we have these days.

RP – How I Role

Right, so there’s a lot of people who RP these days and there are many ways to create a RP post. In this post, I’ll explain how I form one and also give tips and glances to other ways.

First of all, I slap on the tunes to keep the blanks in my mind filled. It’s helpful to choose songs that relate to the theme of the RP and goal of your post – or just tunes you fucking love.

Next, I either open notepad or Open Office Writer. I recommend notepad if you’re going to be making a large post.

What do you do here? Write down notes, a plan. You can make a detailed plan if you want. If there’s dialogue and there’s a phrase you don’t want to forget, write it down. If you think there’s anything you might forget or go off topic from, write it down.

This doesn’t have to be detailed and in fact, if you’re just making a short post then I would suggest you skip the whole notepad process all together. I don’t use notepad for my Loli RPs because they’re simply not long enough to need a plan. Remember, these are just notes… you can write anything you want down.

Here’s what I usually type out:

- James awakens in room – hears voices – sweaty

- Takes painkillers

- Goes for walk – Cold night, lights broken

- Conversation with Sue – Explain whats she’s wearing

————————

This is just a plan that helps me stay on track with the post. I take these bullet points as holding points where I use my literary skill and descriptive ability as SWINGS to the next. Mostly, there are no rules and the length of each ’swing’ depends on the size of the post. In my humble opinion, each length between the points should be around the same size unless something significant is happening. Most of the works is going on in your head, though.

If you want a REAL example, download this .txt file. These are ACTUAL notes I used to make a post on me and DJ’s RP site, STS. (ftw, lol, wtf) Here is the finished post, guided by the above notes.

Once I’m happy with my plan, I travel into OPEN OFFICE WRITER.

I use this not because it’s a good programme or it has L33T skills or anything… but for one, sole purpose.

It never crashes.

That’s right, I highly recommend you don’t write out your posts in the actual forum/site you’re submitting it to. Browsers can crash… sometimes you can hit a key that makes your browser navigate home, or BACK… and for some browsers/settings, that can lose all your data. Word also is shit and crashes all the time. There’s nothing more frustrating than loosing a butt load of writing. You don’t feel up to writing it out again and if you do… it’s half ass’d.

GET OPEN OFFICE WRITER

It never crashes.

Downside? The spell & grammar check is not as good as Microsoft Word. But that’s okay… I get to that later.

Once I’ve written out a(n) RP post, I copy the whole thing and paste it into Microsoft Word.

I use the spell & grammar check to go over things. Don’t take its word as law, though. If you’re a modern writer – styles of writing will seem out of grammar to MC Word. Fuck it.

I often write moments of random words… like:

“Horror, Death, Screams – Oh how they are so satisfying to a demon!”

That would appear wrong to Word but there’s nothing wrong with it in terms of modern entertainment writing. NOTHING AT ALL! So fuck Word, just use it for where you’ve ACTUALLY messed up.

When everything looks fine, I copy the whole thing from Word and paste it back into Open Office Writer (in case Word crashes). If you’re spell/grammar correcting a very long RP in Word, save it as you go. To be honest, you can correct the grammar through some other programmes, or something on the Internet if you like – Whatever.

PASTE PASTE PASTE

Into the forum/site you’re submitting it to. I usually press PREVIEW for my post, just to see it looks nice on the site. If it doesn’t… like maybe I’ve broken it up into too many small paragraphs, then I edit it there on the spot… Like, bringing paragraphs together or even apart if I’ve bunched everything together. It’s important than your post looks nice :)

At this time, you can also add style to your text via forum/site tools. Like maybe you want some text italic or bolded. This sort of formatting often doesn’t cross over from programmes to Internet but will almost always work the other way. If you copy bolded, large pink text from a site and paste it into Open Office Writer or Word then it’s usually always like that, too. I just write out the code in my programmes like [i]italic text[/i] because I’m fast at it… though Word will fucking HATE things like that and give you about 2-4 grammar errors. So if that pisses you off, just save your formatting for when you paste it into the site/forum.

I sometimes copy dialogue people have posted to or around my RP characters and paste it instead of writing it out again. To avoid any styles being copied into my programmes (which just annoys me) I paste it into Notepad, copy it from there and THEN paste it into Word or Writer. Notepad erases all kinds of formats.

When you’re happy with how your post is and looks, you’re done – post it and thy kingdom come!

—

This is just one way to create RP posts… and it’s more so for advanced RPers. I wouldn’t listen to most of the bullshit above if you’re a very casual RPer – I don’t like you if you are :P

Ultimately I hope this helps you create RP posts… even if you don’t use any of the ways I’ve mentioned it could still give you an idea of how some (or just me) make them… and how much sun we (or just me) don’t get.