Gilzar
Bear With Me Here ?
So what I'm going to be talking about today is the use of writing tone inside and outside of Roleplaying. I have to say Tone is often something that is forgotten about when getting into the scheme of roleplaying, and I can understand why. Things such as just general detail, dialogue, and just general plot seem to just be more important. Tone however is something you should never look over, especially if you are a GM!
To put this simply, writing tone is basically as it sounds; The way your writing sounds. There are various ways to manipulate how writing sounds, but the main one I'm going to stress is choice of wording. You see, word choice makes the difference between sounding smart and nice or sounding abrupt and like an ass. Right now, my tone is pretty personal and informative, because I'm teaching you something, while using words such as 'I', 'You', 'My', and using things such as exclamation points (!) and the occasional question mark (?).
I'll put us in the shoes of our common day Game Master, who has to reject someone for whatever reason. Our GM could just simply state something like...
'CS is not up to the standards of this roleplay. Read the rules. Rejected.'
But that just makes you sound like some kind of robot-ass due to how short and to the point it is. Notice that it's straight to the point, and doesn't really put any personal tone to it. Truth be told, it just looks demanding and. makes this GM look like an asshole. Now look at the same type of statement, but rearranged with some extra wording and phrases...
'I'm sorry, but I just don't feel that you thoroughly read through the rules as I would have liked so I have to reject it. Can you please read through them again, and adjust your CS?'
In my opinion that is a hell of a lot better, and the player is a lot less likely to get offended. That's because this just looks more personal, considerate, and definitely more polite due to the choice of wording such as: 'I'm sorry', 'I', 'you', and 'please' . Right now I'm hoping you're getting the general gist of things, because I'm going to throw another example at you if not!
Just to let this sink in just a little more, I'm going to put us in the shoes of the common roleplayer now, asking permission to make a special character before he joins for the first time by personally messaging the GM. He/she could just flat out state...
'Can I have a robot that shoots lazers out of it's eye? Also can he be the Thane of Whiterun?'
As you can imagine, a GM really wouldn't like seeing that statement just because of how flat out abrupt it is. Notice how there's no lead up to the statement explaining his intentions, rather it was just an out of the blue question. While this certainly isn't the worse kind of message he could send, let's improve it...
'Hey there, I was reading over your roleplay and I think it's great! I'm really interested in joining but I have just a quick character question. May I make a robot that shoots lazers out of it's eye, and also happens to be Thane of Whiterun?'
Better, and hopefully you found some humor in that as well. This is just better because it's not so abrupt. The player compliments the roleplay, then states his intention of possibly joining, rather than just flat out asking the question. Just a side note as well, saying 'May I?' rather than 'Can I?' just makes you look a hell of a lot more professional. I can tell you right now this will be a hell of a lot less awkward for the GM to read.
So by now hopefully I've given you some helpful insight into the general concept of tone in this rather brief tutorial. My hope is that it not only helps you in roleplaying, but also in just everyday life! We live in an age of information where we send messages compiled of just texts everyday, so it's important that you add some tone in!
This will be updated later as well for other topics of tone, such as the topic of sounding neutral on everything!
To put this simply, writing tone is basically as it sounds; The way your writing sounds. There are various ways to manipulate how writing sounds, but the main one I'm going to stress is choice of wording. You see, word choice makes the difference between sounding smart and nice or sounding abrupt and like an ass. Right now, my tone is pretty personal and informative, because I'm teaching you something, while using words such as 'I', 'You', 'My', and using things such as exclamation points (!) and the occasional question mark (?).
I'll put us in the shoes of our common day Game Master, who has to reject someone for whatever reason. Our GM could just simply state something like...
'CS is not up to the standards of this roleplay. Read the rules. Rejected.'
But that just makes you sound like some kind of robot-ass due to how short and to the point it is. Notice that it's straight to the point, and doesn't really put any personal tone to it. Truth be told, it just looks demanding and. makes this GM look like an asshole. Now look at the same type of statement, but rearranged with some extra wording and phrases...
'I'm sorry, but I just don't feel that you thoroughly read through the rules as I would have liked so I have to reject it. Can you please read through them again, and adjust your CS?'
In my opinion that is a hell of a lot better, and the player is a lot less likely to get offended. That's because this just looks more personal, considerate, and definitely more polite due to the choice of wording such as: 'I'm sorry', 'I', 'you', and 'please' . Right now I'm hoping you're getting the general gist of things, because I'm going to throw another example at you if not!
Just to let this sink in just a little more, I'm going to put us in the shoes of the common roleplayer now, asking permission to make a special character before he joins for the first time by personally messaging the GM. He/she could just flat out state...
'Can I have a robot that shoots lazers out of it's eye? Also can he be the Thane of Whiterun?'
As you can imagine, a GM really wouldn't like seeing that statement just because of how flat out abrupt it is. Notice how there's no lead up to the statement explaining his intentions, rather it was just an out of the blue question. While this certainly isn't the worse kind of message he could send, let's improve it...
'Hey there, I was reading over your roleplay and I think it's great! I'm really interested in joining but I have just a quick character question. May I make a robot that shoots lazers out of it's eye, and also happens to be Thane of Whiterun?'
Better, and hopefully you found some humor in that as well. This is just better because it's not so abrupt. The player compliments the roleplay, then states his intention of possibly joining, rather than just flat out asking the question. Just a side note as well, saying 'May I?' rather than 'Can I?' just makes you look a hell of a lot more professional. I can tell you right now this will be a hell of a lot less awkward for the GM to read.
So by now hopefully I've given you some helpful insight into the general concept of tone in this rather brief tutorial. My hope is that it not only helps you in roleplaying, but also in just everyday life! We live in an age of information where we send messages compiled of just texts everyday, so it's important that you add some tone in!
This will be updated later as well for other topics of tone, such as the topic of sounding neutral on everything!
