Roleplaying 101 [How to be a better roleplayer]
 

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DRIP, DRIP, DRIP.

Describe, Respond, Instigate, Proofread.

These are the four basic things a roleplayer must do in every post.

-Describing involves talking about what your character is seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling, or touching.
-Responding involves reacting to the events going on around your character.
-Instigating involves starting new events in the roleplay.
-Proofreading involves reading your post over again before you submit it, checking and correcting any mistakes.

It seems simple enough to do these four things and submit. However, when you look at each component individually, there is much more to it.

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First, you need to think about what you're describing. There are many things you can describe that pertain to all the senses of the body. Just check out the table below for some examples~

Sense: What you can describe that has to do with this sense
Seeing: Surroundings, another character, your own character, the weather, events happening in front of your character
Feeling: Temperature, pain, pleasure, emotions, pressure
Tasting: Food, air, another character's flesh
Touching: Weapons, another character, an animal, nature
Smelling: Air, another character, animals, nature
Hearing: Nature, another character's speech, animals, explosions, battle

Etc.

Then, you need to think about word choice.

In order to accurately convey to your fellow roleplayers exactly what your character is experiencing, you've got to know the exact word you want to use. Now I'm not saying to abuse a dictionary or thesaurus, but it's definitely a good idea to look up new words to use when you're not sure which one you want.

For example, Miyuki could describe Agrabah as "hot," but doesn't it sound much more dramatic and interesting for her to describe it as "a place of ungodly, blistering heat"? Adjectives and adverbs are your friends; they help you describe everything.

People say "less is more," but when it comes to describing, it's not really "less" that you want nor is it "more." Rather, it's somewhere in between. You don't want to bore your fellow roleplayers with a bland post that doesn't describe anything in an exciting way. At the same time, you don't want to bore your fellow roleplayers with 90% description and 10% action. Posts should generally be 40% description and 60% action, sometimes 50%-50%. A simple rule to always remember is that the amount of description should almost never exceed the amount of action that a fellow roleplayer can respond to. The only exception I can think of is if you're describing something in detail because the other roleplayer doesn't know anything about it, and therefore you're just trying to educate them on the matter.

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Think, feel, react.

That's the order in which the body responds to events. When you're slapped, first your brain recognizes the pain nerves going off (think), then you feel the pain (feel), then you yelp in pain (react).

Of course, things would get rather tedious in a roleplay if you always described the neuron's synapses to and from the brain. You don't have to go that much into detail, but the point is that this is how characters should generally respond: think, feel, react.

For example, if Miyuki is in a heated argument with Rena and Rena slaps her in retaliation, Miyuki will probably be thinking about what a jerk Rena is being before the slap happens, or thinking about why Rena is wrong and Miyuki is right. So, I can describe her thought process. Then Miyuki will feel the pain of the slap, and I can write about what it makes her feel physically (taking a step back from the force of it, for example) or emotionally (being hurt or angry at Rena for slapping her, for example). Finally, Miyuki may want to yell at her, cry, or slap her back in reaction. So, I can describe her yelling, crying, or slapping Rena back.

Describing and responding can be paired together to make the post even better. For example, I can have Miyuki describe Rena's angry expression as she thinks about how wrong Rena is. Then I can describe the pain and force of the slap as she reacts to it physically and emotionally. Finally, I can describe the tone of her voice and how her own expression looks when she is yelling, crying, or slapping Rena back.

Response doesn't have to be only for dramatic situations, of course. During a conversation, don't you think about what the other person is saying, feel some sort of emotion towards it, and then react by responding with something to say? More than that, your expression and tone change as the conversation goes on, and sometimes you might laugh in mirth or "huh" in confusion. With almost anything you want your character to do, you can write about how they think, feel, and react.

So as you can see, responding is one of the most crucial elements of roleplay because it brings together what the other roleplayer wrote and what you write back.

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Instigating is just as important as responding. You can't just leave it up to the other roleplayers in a board to decide what happens. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands and instigate action for everyone to respond to, including your character.

For example, Rena just slapped Miyuki and they're mad at each other.

If Miyuki simply reacted with expressions, there wouldn't be much more for Rena to reply to. There are many options for instigation. Miyuki could start a fight with Rena, or the Minutes could show up and they forget their differences and fight together, or a number of other things.

Basically, instigating is just a matter of bringing up new things for the characters to deal with; it keeps the action going. Of course, there always comes a time when no more instigation is needed. Use it wisely; after all, you wouldn't want one roleplay going on for too long.

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This one is pretty self-explanatory. Read over your post carefully at least once. Most of us don't remember to do this, but do try to when we do remember. At the very least, copy and paste your post into WORD and check for grammar or spelling errors.

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01. When a new speaker enters in, you have to start a new paragraph.

02. There = a place
-ex: "It's over there."
Their = plural possessive (translation: several people own the thing that comes after it)
-ex: "Their cloaks are a symbol that they belong to the Organization."
They're = They+are
-ex: "They're getting away!" = "They are getting away!"

03. A semicolon (";") is for listing items that involve a comma already, and for linking two related clauses.

^In this case, you're overusing the comma. If you REALLY want to list the items, you'll need to rewrite it one of these ways:
In any case, semicolons are not there to save the sentence when it's commas are being overused. Here is what they ARE there for:

RUN-ONS ARE BAD, MMKAAAY?
^this = you will be murdered. Brutally.
Redundancy is redundant. Don't do it. [/irony]
Capitalize the beginning letter of every sentence, as well as proper nouns, names of people, names of animals, and names of places.
Commas are read as pauses. For example, reading this sentence you would say, "For example (pause) reading this sentence..." etc. Therefore, an excess of commas is super annoying and incorrect usage of the comma.
There are two ways to fix this. Rewrite the sentences entirely, or throw in some ellipses and a colon.