Some of our best writing tips

We’ve got new members joining OngoingWorlds all the time, and new people discovering the blog, and subscribing. But there’s a lot of old articles that new people might have missed, so here’s a list of some good stuff we’ve already posted.

Characters

The main course of our roleplaying meal! We all have a character (some more than one) but a character has to be well rounded, and balanced. Here’s some tips we’ve already posted:

• Impressing the moderators – Character creation 101
• Give your characters flaws
• Building a dynamic character
• Matching your character up for a game
• 5 ways to make your audience empathise with your character
• Hidden secrets about your character

Villains

Every good story needs a villain, but the villain should have clear motivations and not aggrovate other players in your game (or aggrovate them just the right amount!). Here’s some villain tips:

• Secrets for an effective villain
• Dark Mary Sues
• How to write a credible villain
• Pyramids of power

Worldbuilding

It’s likely that the world is what enticed your players to join in the first place, to explore your world, or maybe they’re familiar with it already (if it’s based on a TV show). Here’s some of our best articles about worldbuilding:

• Why worldbuild?
• Worldbuilding ideas to use for the setting of your game
• Origins – In the beginning
• Culture & civilization

Coming up with story ideas

Sometimes it flows easily, but sometimes it can be hard to come up with new ideas and you feel the writer’s block. There’s ways you can encourage yourself to become more creative, here’s some articles with advice:

• Finding inspiration
• Giving yourself ideas (and remembering them) 
• Using a random generator to invent new alien ideas

Dealing with Mary Sue characters

Every roleplay has to deal with some sort of Mary Sue character at some stage. There’s many ways you can deal with it, but here’s some links of advice that perhaps you could show to the problemmatic player so that you’re all on the same page:

• Make sure your character acts their age
• The origins of the Mary Sue character

…and here’s some advice for game owners to deal with Mary Sue characters:

• How to tell a Mary Sue to stop Mary Suing
• Mary Sue: Defeating the beast
• Mary Sue deconstructed

Dealing with godmodders

Whether you think godmodding is okay or not (it’s less bad in open roleplaying games)

• What is godmodding and why is it annoying? 
• When does godmodding become godmodding? 

…and here’s some articles of tips that perhaps you could employ?

• How do you stop people from godmodding? 
• 12 tips for dealing with a godmodder 

The art of writing

Some more general tips for writing:

• Break chunks of text into easy to read paragraphs
• Why setting a scene is important
• Avoid using “very” because it’s lazy
• A simple tip – read your post out loud

If you enjoy these sort of articles, why don’t you subscribe to our blog and you’ll get an email whenever a new one is published.