Other How do *you* write your posts?

[Nate Of The Living Dead]

Greetings all! I hope you're doing well!

I wanted to ask how you guys format your posts? I'm curious. Everything from paragraphs to the little extras added to make a post look pretty. I'd love to know.

For example, I used to roleplay on Tumblr. I used to make certain text large for emphasis and maybe add a small icon of the character. The first letter of my post would also be a weird character so it was like a fancy book. How about you guys?

How do you create and decorate a post? (if you do.)

 

[nerdy tangents]

I usually write it on Google docs first to catch typos and to have a log in case the site goes down.

The post itself I centerblock and justify to make it easier to read on mobile.

 

[Onmyoji]

Paragraphs are probably a must so I don't count that as additional formatting.

Aside from that, the most I do is putting character's inner thoughts in italics, if they're important and I need to make emphasis. If I need even stronger emphasis, putting them in bold. If it's something showing character's madness/confused thoughts sometimes I use strikethrough. Or different font size. I try to not abuse the formatting too much, my characters are not that mad!
Very rarely, using specific color for character's direct speech. I think I only did that in a couple roleplays and only because rp partner was doing that first XD

 

[Buttercup.]

I mostly stick to vanilla default font (anything smaller gives my shite eyes a hard time), with italics for emphasis or direct quotations of characters' thoughts. Bold for big-ass emphasis, I suppose. The wildest thing I've done was changing the font for a section to make it clear it was a dream.

 

[Nate Of The Living Dead]

I usually write it on Google docs first to catch typos and to have a log in case the site goes down.

The post itself I centerblock and justify to make it easier to read on mobile.

Ah that's a great tactic for mobile. I am not used to roleplay when it comes to mobile devices but I can imagine it's better to keep things simple like you've suggested. Can't imagine how buggy formatting might be.

 

[Nate Of The Living Dead]

Paragraphs are probably a must so I don't count that as additional formatting.

Aside from that, the most I do is putting character's inner thoughts in italics, if they're important and I need to make emphasis. If I need even stronger emphasis, putting them in bold. If it's something showing character's madness/confused thoughts sometimes I use strikethrough. Or different font size. I try to not abuse the formatting too much, my characters are not that mad!
Very rarely, using specific color for character's direct speech. I think I only did that in a couple roleplays and only because rp partner was doing that first XD

Ooh! I tend to do something similar for thoughts but I have to be honest the different colours for speech is actually a great idea.

I know I've gotten confused over speech and thoughts plenty of times when role-playing and reading certain posts.

(Always corrected my post though.) Strike through is also brilliant for sarcasm or muttering. xD

 

[Nate Of The Living Dead]

I mostly stick to vanilla default font (anything smaller gives my shite eyes a hard time), with italics for emphasis or direct quotations of characters' thoughts. Bold for big-ass emphasis, I suppose. The wildest thing I've done was changing the font for a section to make it clear it was a dream.

I'd imagine smaller fonts are troublesome at times. I have a tendency to copy paste a post into word and increase the font size for myself in plenty of cases. My eyes aren't the best.

A different font is would be a really great distinctive way to differentiate.

 

[nerdy tangents]

Ah that's a great tactic for mobile. I am not used to roleplay when it comes to mobile devices but I can imagine it's better to keep things simple like you've suggested. Can't imagine how buggy formatting might be.

If you go to the BBC code center there are plenty of free templates that are more elaborate for roleplay posts. They are a bit difficult to use on mobile just due to how autocorrect works and how hard it can be to edit things from your phone or tablet.

But if you have access to a laptop and want to make sure your posts are readable on all platforms the BBC code center is a great place to find mobile friendly codes.

Here is a good thread : Resource - 𝙙𝙟, 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙜
they aren’t all mobile friendly but a lot of them are.

 

[GojiBean]

Hoyo!

Typically my posting process is as follows:

1) Read what came before
2) Take 2-3 minutes to think about how my characters would genuinely respond to it
3) Post

A bit overly simplistic and probably didn't warrant numerical points. Lol. But yeah. That's as complicated as my posting process gets.

The simpler, the better.

The most important part is number 2. Thinking about how my characters would genuinely respond to whatever happened previously and not how I would want them to respond. I had a really, really bad habit a number of years ago of forcing characters to respond how I wanted them to and it made them very inconsistent and unlikable by both the IC characters and my OOC writing partners as well. So today, with the POWAH OF HINDSIGHT AND LEARNEDNESS, I have broken that habit and can now consistently write from the minds of my characters instead of my own.

Cause yeah. Nobody wants to see what you want on the page. They want to see what your characters want and what they need.

Don't make my mistake, kiddo's!

Cheers!

~ GojiBean

 

[starboob]

I also had a stint on tumblr rp and for that reason I keep my formatting minimal. At most, I play around with font size (I love making under the breath comments tiny) and strikethroughs. I’ve grown to dislike heavily coded posts because they can be difficult to read and, personally, I suck at customizing them.

 

[StrixDesmodus]

I don't tend to use fancy coding, but for each character's entry I put their name, color coded. I also put narrations in bold, and thoughts in both bold and italics. For emphasis, I use italics.

The following is not an excerpt from any of my rps, but is is based on the one I'm hosting.

Finbar Cody

Finbar adjusted his head and blinked a few times, just to make sure that he was seeing things correctly. He was, indeed, seeing things correctly. I better get out of here. She's just as bad as that tank.
"Well, I'm going to go now, I'm just about gut-founded and could certainly use a bite."

Jolene Wildwood

She ceased her banjo playing long enough to acknowledge Finbar's departure. It didn't even occur to her that the herd of deer and the talk of Villain's rights made Finbar uncomfortable, given his own unusual appearance.
"Well don't be a stranger."

 

[Murdergurl]

• Third person, past-tense
• Multi-paragraph: Anywhere from 200-ish words all the way on up to 9k
• Heavy descriptors, I do a lot of scene setting
• Character building, lots of insight through the narrative to build up exactly who a character is
• Simple, easy to read format. No fancy fonts, no flashy pics or BBCode.
  • CS will usually be lightly formatted and even have links within, but not the IC entries

 

[Redfork2000]

Paragraphs are probably a must so I don't count that as additional formatting.

Aside from that, the most I do is putting character's inner thoughts in italics, if they're important and I need to make emphasis. If I need even stronger emphasis, putting them in bold. If it's something showing character's madness/confused thoughts sometimes I use strikethrough. Or different font size. I try to not abuse the formatting too much, my characters are not that mad!
Very rarely, using specific color for character's direct speech. I think I only did that in a couple roleplays and only because rp partner was doing that first XD

Oh, I have a roleplay partner who puts their characters' thoughts in italics. When I first saw her do it I really liked that idea, and soon I was doing the same as well! I guess overall I'd say I unconsciously adapt my writing style to be more similar to that of my roleplay partners. While I haven't done it in any other RPs outside of that one, I really like how it looks.

I remember using different colors for different characters' dialogue in one roleplay. It was a group roleplay and since I had 5 different characters I was RPing, I came up with the idea of assigning a different color to each of my characters, in my mind it was to make every character's part seem to stand out from the others. So one talked in blue text, another in green text, another in purple, another in red, and another in yellow. One thing I did have to make sure beforehand was that the colors were easy to read in both light and dark mode, but once I verified that was the case, it was pretty straightforward from there on! I actually liked that, I don't usually decorate my posts much, I tend to stick to basic paragraphs for the most part, but that one time I had a lot of fun associating each of my characters to a different color.

- - -

Also in group roleplays, since I tend to roleplay multiple characters at once, I assimilated something I learned from one of the first group roleplays from this site I've been on, and it's to add a heading to each section of my reply, depending on which are the characters in that scene. So for example, It could look something like:

Gregory Smith​

Place: The Local Library
With: Alice Miller (roleplayer username), Alfred Parker (roleplayer name)
Mood: Nervous

​

And then I'd add the section of my reply that's dedicated to that character. If I have more than one of my characters in the same scene, then I list all my present characters, and add the "mood" for each character. I learned it from one of the first group roleplays from this site I've been on. Since having multiple characters was common there, and it wasn't unusual to be playing multiple scenes at once, we used this kind of headings for each section that's dedicated to a different scene, so that we can notify the roleplayers that have characters in the scene, as well as give a quick context for the scene that's playing in that moment. I actually liked it a lot, and it's one of the things I actually kept using in other group roleplays afterwards. I don't use it in 1x1 roleplays though, since usually those don't have as many things going on at once, so it's not as necessary.

In 1x1 roleplays I tend to stick pretty much to only basic paragraphs without any additional formatting. I'm not a very visual person by nature, so for the most part, just basic text is good enough for me. I don't even like using faceclaims, which I've seen is pretty rare among the users on this site, since most people I've encountered use them by default.

 

[Jannah]

I just write. No special formatting. In RP I will also always write in third person, past-tense. Any RP's in first person just reek of self-insertion to me. My writing style also tends to focus heavily on internal thought and monologue.

 

[Redfork2000]

I just write. No special formatting. In RP I will also always write in third person, past-tense. Any RP's in first person just reek of self-insertion to me. My writing style also tends to focus heavily on internal thought and monologue.

This is something I agree with as well. I've never really been comfortable with first person for those same reasons, so third person is always my go-to. In my earlier years of roleplaying and storywriting, my posts were heavily focused on dialogue and narrating actions, but as I acquired more experience my posts started reflecting much more internal thought and monologue as well. Nowadays most of my lengthier posts tend to contain a lot of it as a focus, and a way to showcase my character's personality, thought process, and serve as a window into my character's internal self, their motivations and why they do x thing or say y thing, which I really enjoy since I like the sense of character depth it provides. The only part that I tend to struggle with nowadays is description, mostly when it comes to describing places and how they look. It's something I'm still working on improving.

 

[Jannah]

This is something I agree with as well. I've never really been comfortable with first person for those same reasons, so third person is always my go-to. In my earlier years of roleplaying and storywriting, my posts were heavily focused on dialogue and narrating actions, but as I acquired more experience my posts started reflecting much more internal thought and monologue as well. Nowadays most of my lengthier posts tend to contain a lot of it as a focus, and a way to showcase my character's personality, thought process, and serve as a window into my character's internal self, their motivations and why they do x thing or say y thing, which I really enjoy since I like the sense of character depth it provides. The only part that I tend to struggle with nowadays is description, mostly when it comes to describing places and how they look. It's something I'm still working on improving.

Yep, precisely. I'm a very character driven writer anyway. I like to have the characters drive the story rather than a pre-determined outcome dictating how the characters act.

Also, I swear I'll respond to our RP soon. I've just been so busy this week. Thankfully I have Thursday and Friday off.

 

[Redfork2000]

Yep, precisely. I'm a very character driven writer anyway. I like to have the characters drive the story rather than a pre-determined outcome dictating how the characters act.

Also, I swear I'll respond to our RP soon. I've just been so busy this week. Thankfully I have Thursday and Friday off.

Same here, I've always considered myself heavily character driven. Most of the time what really makes or breaks a story for me is the characters themselves, they're always the heart of every roleplay I make, and usually what makes me really enjoy a roleplay comes down to the characters, exploring how they interact with each other and how their different personalities can cause things to develop naturally.

Don't worry about that, it's all good. I've been kind of busy as well lately. Real life responsibilities always come first, and then you can reply when you have free time. I'm still excited to see the roleplay continue, but I'm pretty laid-back when it comes to how long I'm willing to wait for a reply. I usually tend to only hold myself to stricter post schedules, because that's kind of how I am. Just take your time, and don't worry about anything.

 

[StrixDesmodus]

I used to use first person, chiefly for comedic purposes, but now I use third person for the sake of exposition.

 

[Murdergurl]

I used to use first person, chiefly for comedic purposes, but now I use third person for the sake of exposition.

For some of my more tongue-in-cheek characters, I have done their character profiles in first person exposition.

 

[StrixDesmodus]

For some of my more tongue-in-cheek characters, I have done their character profiles in first person exposition.

I swear, the most fun I've had with a character profile was one done in interview form. I'd use the idea for my own rps, but I stink at asking questions, so I stick with the form type character profile.

 

[Murdergurl]

I swear, the most fun I've had with a character profile was one done in interview form. I'd use the idea for my own rps, but I stink at asking questions, so I stick with the form type character profile.

This is a more serious character, but her background is basically explained through an interrogation done in narrative form. So it's sort of like an interview. lol

Adrielle Vais, Adepta Sororita/Inquisition

Adrielle Vais Adepta Sororita, Inquisitorial Acolyte • 566.972.M41 Adrielle Celyne Vais is born of Kysith Magda Vais and her husband, Bathor Claudian Vais on an Imperialist industrial planet in the Segmentus Obsurum, Ioline. • 283.978.M41 Kysith Magda Vais is killed in an uprising of a geneste...

docs.google.com

Skip past the timeline BS. Unless you're familiar with the WH40K universe, it doesnt mean a lot.

 

[SandraDeelightful]

I usually write it out in a separate document first. It’s just the easiest way for me to look over what I wrote. I usually start off with a basic response, nothing too detailed, just enough that I know what I’m saying before I fill in all the details. As for decorating my posts, I don’t really do much. It’s usually just:

Character Name
(Insert gif of faceclaim here)​

I like to keep it fairly simple. Maybe another gif here or there if I feel like it fits with fleshing out the setting.

 

[JustHereToHide]

symbols to express emotion are fun

" /why/ would you do that ! "

Otherwise, I just have a writing quirk, and someone thought i was purposefully writing weird to make my response look longer which kinda upset me lol

 

[Purr]

Greetings all! I hope you're doing well!

How do you create and decorate a post? (if you do.)

Nate Of The Living Dead You too! Hello there! =)

I am a longtime tabletop role-player. In RP Nation (my favorite website!), I tend to post in first person because when playing face to face, "you enter the dark demense," sounds better to me than "you entered the dark demense."

When I'm running a game, I would rather ask my Players, "what do you do now?" not "what did you do then?" Know what I mean? =)

I feel that part of being a skilled Player is knowing your stuff. Part of knowing my stuff means keeping my act together regardless of what kind of day I'm having!

I like to use statblocks in tabletop and Play-by-Post games when the moment seems to call for. So since I work well with lists, my in-Character posts prior or during combat tend to look like this.

Honor and fun,
Dannigan =)

P.S. The gaming system the post links to is Rifts by Palladium!

 

[Idea]

Post Formatting

I like formatting. I like making these designs for posts, adding that decoration and especially like seeing the final product. Sometimes a good deal of time later I come to find I don't like it anymore- but some special ones have stuck to me. I tend to basically just re-use the same coded formatting for my D&D character's CSes because I really liked how it turned out. Sometimes I copy and make minor alternation to my past post formatting. Others, while I don't use them, I have not forgotten such as the time I made a CS that was semi-transparent and would appear as you hovered over it, this CS being intended for a ghost character. I edited some images to make them sepia and seem like old photographs and in general worked a lot on making a thematic atmosphere.

But yeah, point is I don't mind even if I go a bit overboard. I'm not trying to make it appealing I'm doing it because I enjoy it. Though I do understand some people don't.

As such my formatting tends to be somewhat elaborate, but one thing I always try to do is make sure there are at least two tabs: Coded (with the main portion of code) and Semi-Coded (which has only the bare minimal functional code). Both have the same text, just in different formatting. If I have the time to, I may also make a phone version, but these can be very annoying to try to test to see if they work because code is a lot harder to edit on phone yet if I'm not on phone I can't see whether the code is working for it or not.

So about those two types of formatting....

The semi-coded will likely not even have borders, it'll just have colored text for dialogue, the image on a side or on top of the text, and perhaps a colored name in a bigger size at the top of the post.

The coded tab though will have a CS usually consisting of:
-An outer layer usually in the form of a background image or a color.
-A top inner layer containing the name the character with a color background. It may also contain a small image of them, just the face.
-A box beneath the top inner layer, containing the text.
-An image. It may be on the side, on top or inside the text box.

Beyond this the details depend on what I find thematically appropriate for the character. Sometimes I like to leave little metaphors or clues in the formatting about aspects of the character I haven't said explicitly yet.

I generally try to focus on darker colors for the CS because many people complain about the effect bright colors has on their eyes, so I keep bright colors to when there is too strong a thematic connection to not use them, to very small parts of the formatting or dialogue, or if I'm running out of colors for some reason.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beyond the coding stuff though, there are some rules I use that I notice not everyone does:

-Dialogue ("text") is always at the start and/or end of paragraphs. No dialogue in the middle of a paragraph.
-Quotes regardless of their position in the text are always "quote"; direct surface thoughts are <thought>.



Post Writing Process

Like anyone else (I would hope) the first step is to properly read the other person/ other people's posts. In the best case scenario this alone will get the gears turning in my brain about the possibilities for my next post, about what my character would do. If the other post ends up feeling bland to me though, it may not only fail to get me any ideas it may actively hurt my motivation for coming up with them. After all as a matter of principle I try to make the best posts I can, so it's always demotivating if one expects that effort may bring something bland in response again, throwing it to waste.

Still, even if I do come up with ideas odds are they are vague and loosely connected. Sometimes the ideas that are generated at first may even be incompatible. So the next stage is a more analytical planning one. I may consult CSes (mainly my own if the character is still new and I wanna make sure I'm keeping consistent to their personality), re-read old posts, perhaps even do some research to try to determine what the character would, both in reaction -thoughts, feelings, immediate actions...- and their next actions that further the narrative. I try to structure these in keys points/events that I want to see in my post and then try to find how to correctly order and connect them to make the post organically flow from one part to the next.

After the planning of the post is made, it's writing time, and boy is this the hard part. It's one thing to know where things are supposed to go but putting it to specific words can be surprisingly daunting. Still, the plan most definitely helps. I am faster writing after I already have a plan because I just need to fill the gaps, and even if I don't feel inspired or as motivated as I would like I still feel I can deliver a quality post by shifting to a more systematic approach.



Roleplay Style

I like long, good quality posts. I don't like being rushed or greatly pressured either, so all of this generally gives me a preference for slower-paced RPs and in fact when it comes to 1x1s I just tell my partners they don't have to worry about any time limit. So long as we stay in touch, I am fine waiting for a few months if that's what it takes to get the kind of juicy posts I love. Of course, I myself do try to respond within a couple weeks at most, if nothing else because I already keep too many tabs open...

I write in 1st person past tense. Past tense just makes sense to me story-wise and works better with "fluid time" than present tense (for those unfamiliar, this is when different parts of a post are happening in different points in time progressed in parallel over the posts. For example, if a character starts a conversation and goes to do something after the conversation, the next few posts could both be following the conversation and the events happening after the conversation. This is a staple of group RPs and RPs with longer posts alike, though the former moreso than the latter), and I've come to like using first person because my posts are always written -or almost always written, and when they are not I indicate it- from the character's own perspective. Plus it can somewhat lessen the pronoun matter of two male characters in a room both being referred to as "he" can sometimes become confusing, for example.