Quick, Honey! Get the Exlax!

An interesting question was poised earlier tonight. A guy I know, RAYClovis, was asking for pointers on how to fix his flow problems with his attacks in forum dueling, as well as his writing in general. It was an interesting topic, and got me to thinking about it.

Now, there's a plethora of good advice out there, so I thought I'd chip in my own on the subject.

When writing, you gotta think of the words as, say, Lego bricks. You're going to assemble your story, passage or post from those very bricks. Just reach in and start building away that wall of text. But, you'll soon notice that if you grab the wrong kind of pieces for the job, the whole thing will fall over and it'll leave you scrambling to fix a problem by adding more bricks that don't do shit and you just end up compounding the problem.

But, what if you used all the right kind of bricks, and your wall of text stands up right and pretty? Another problem arises then. You've grabbed a multitude of colored bricks that just scream at you. A gaudy mess of color that few are going to appreciate.

If you want to craft the finest of posts, you have to choose the right kind of pieces, or words, and not only assemble them so that they fit together--as only certain pieces can go together in certain ways--but you have to make sure the colors fit. If it doesn't fit and flow from one color to the next, it'll just hurt you as much as it does anyone who happens to read it. We don't want to inflict that kind of harm on people around us, do we?

Now in the interest of furthering this analogy, we'll consider that you've built a fine wall (of words mind you), and that it conforms to building structure. Everything fits. There's no sudden change of color. In fact, it's all uniform, a single block of color. Now it's boring. There's no shift, no change, and while it all seems to fit, you'd fall asleep before you reached the end. Can't have that. So, go back, fix it. Add some spice, a little color here and there, but if you over-do it, you end up with the gaudy mess again.

This is where a minimalist view comes in. Put in only the necessary parts. You wouldn't bake a cake by throwing in a pound of salt into the mix, would you? Course not, as I don't think anyone I know likes a pound of salt baked into their cakes.

In essense, you want to changes in color to flow, to move with a particular pacing and structure. Where everything fits within a theme that you're trying to set. Pure color is boring. A mash of color (tie-dye shirts, anyone?) is gaudy, messy and just makes it problematic to read. I can't say crafting a piece of writing is something easy. Even building a simple wall with Lego sometimes isn't all that easy. But practice makes perfect, right? Only way to get better is to keep at it.

Anyway, I hope this helps all you aspiring duelists and role players to some extent. As a final, I'd throw in what Lachesis had to say on the subject.

From: lachesis77 | Posted: 10/15/2005 10:42:20 PM

Try varying sentence length to make your posts flow better. If you've just written a short sentence, follow it up with a longer one, and vice versa. Of course, that doesn't mean you should use this throughout your post: if you overuse this technique, it'll probably wind up worse than if you hadn't used it at all. Use it sparingly, though, and it can work wonders.

As suggested before by Haya, Lady M and Wolfie, read your posts aloud. You'll pick up grammar and spelling mistakes as well as rhythm issues that way. It can also help you with things like word choice: while you're reading, you may find that you want to produce a certain "sound" (e.g. something harsh or violent, or maybe something sibilant), and often the only way you'll figure that out is by reading to yourself.

If you can't read aloud because you're in a public place (like a library or school) or you just think it's really weird, then my advice would be to ask another writer/RPer/duelist to proofread your work. Self-editing is good, but because you're reading over something you've written yourself, sometimes you can underestimate just how much more work your post needs. The advantage of having another person read your work is that he/she is reading it for the first time and can have a more objective view of what needs to be done.

If you can't get a friend to read over your work, then (people are going to hate me for this) don't post it just yet. If you let your work rest for a day or two, you may come up with fresh ideas, improvements and the like. By giving yourself the time to clear your head of your post, you can catch onto errors that you hadn't seen the first time around. And don't just read it over once: go over it two, three times if you can. I'm a proofreader by profession, and when I had to edit some text for a game that needed to be ready yesterday, you'd better believe I went over every single line three times over before my supervisor took a look at everything.

And I don't think I need to stress the importance of spelling, grammar and punctuation, do I?

 

- W. Visarett