Your RP sucks - here are some tips to make it better

[Corile]

how to make your RP better according to Corile

no

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I compiled this list from a number of tips from a number of people who I know and who helped me develop writing style. This is not just my fancy but actually it is advice from a number of really good authors. Some of it I got personally (which is mentioned in the very beginning of this guide, that these are tips which helped me specifically develop my style), but some are general and apply to everyone.

I merely curated the ones which are relevant to disco. The only one which is my personal observation that happens on Discovery a lot is the first one - that there are a lot of ESLs here who inject their own language rules into English writing. This is not a subjective opinion. Capitalising common nouns in English is wrong. Putting spaces in front of sentence-terminating punctuation marks is wrong. Whether you agree with this or not doesn't concern me because those are the rules of the English language. Some are up to preference (like whether to put a double space after a full stop) but the ones enumerated in the first tip are not.

Also I should point out that these are tips not rules. Another way to think of them is as heuristics. They have a very big chance of improving your writing, but once you get them and internalise them, you might find that you would rather break them for artistic benefit.

While I agree that writing RP is a good way to improve your English, I don't think it should be the reason why you would improve it. I don't mind when the English is creaky, especially if the writer is not a native speaker, as long as whatever is written is comprehensible. What matters is the story, language is only a medium that conveys it.

I don't think that's right. RP is not just storytelling, or rather storytelling is not just storytelling. Everything in life competes for everyone's attention and if your RP is poor quality then it does not invite others to engage with it. The fact is that language, grammar and style (especially style) is the first sieve through which one might decide whether to engage in RP with you or whether to just /1 /2 you in game because you're a lolwut. Sometimes you might get through that sieve with poor grammar/style but on a wider scale you are just limiting your audience and that shouldn't be your goal. (If it is your goal then the most limited audience possible is your drawer.)

I want to emphasise though that I don't mean that you shouldn't write if your English is poor. Strive to improve it in general because it's useful beyond Discovery Freelancer dot com.

Also, I think that "show, don't tell" is more of a film technique rather than one desirable in literature. I myself prefer the opposite in books, but I agree that it works better in motion pictures.

The point is rather that you should convey information as it relates to your characters rather than how it is relevant. This is a heuristic, it is not always desirable or true, but it is a great rule of thumb in RP because it helps you stay relevant (and also because oftentimes exposition is unnecessary because we all RP in the same universe).

Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

I suck at roleplay in writing but I try to improve.

Many such cases!

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