The Training Lodge (Training Discussion topic)

[KC11]

A young dragon, with blue/purple scales, walks in. Her wings brush against the walls of the lodge.

"I do hope this place is still open." she says as she grabs some hot chocolate.

[TheBlackSoul]

A ghostly, empty-eyed dragon comes in after the purple dragon.
"Yesssss, I hope sssssssso too." He says.

[Iman al-Rashid ibn Aali]

After regaining consciousness in this strange new land, Iman had spent many weeks waiting for the wounds from the battle to heal, eating the fruit and being sure to remain hidden in his vulnerable state.

When he was confident that he was strong enough, he began to explore the forest. It wasn't long before he stumbled upon a small building made of wood built upon the rocks.

At last, thought Iman, maybe I can ask who lives there where I am.

Walking to the buildings entrance, Iman opened the door only to find what Iman could only describe as a demon. Mostly human in appearance, but with a pair of dark, foreboding wings.

He wanted to run, but he found himself froze in place against his wishes... then the fear overwhelmed him to such an extent that he simply muttered, "Wha-wha-what...?" before passing out in a heap.

[Danikat]

((Stop reading my mind! You can't post what I was going to tell you to post until I've told you to do it!

Annoying theft of my brilliant ideas aside I'm going to go ahead and copy that post into a new topic as an intro to your very own training topic.))

[Arthur McCorth]

I am most terribly sorry if this is not the correct place to post this but I was wondering if anyone would be willing to teach me how your style of RP works.

I have read many of the RP threads as well as some training threads but in my experience the best way to learn anything, especially RP, is to do it and until I have I would not be at all confident that I am ready to enter a real RP.

My thanks in advance,

Arthur.

[Danikat]

Apologies for not seeing this earlier.

If no one else has volunteered yet I would be more than happy to teach you.

(And yes this is the correct place to post things like that.)

[Arthur McCorth]

Please disregard the previous version of this message.

It seems an earlier offer of assistance has fallen through due to personal reasons so in the interests of getting some real role-playing done soon I would be most grateful to accept your offer.

How exactly do we go about doing this?

[Danikat]

I didn't see the previous version so disregarding it is easy enough.

I suppose the first step would be to establish what exactly you want training for. Would I be right in assuming you're just looking for a sort of general crash couse in free-form RP?

[Arthur McCorth]

Yes I suppose that would be the best term for it.

I am looking to practice the style of role-play used here, with the assistance of a guide to correct any mistakes I may make. At present I believe I understand the technique but I should like confirmation before I attempt to participate in an actual story arc.

It may be worth noting however that I doubt combat training will be necessary as it is not in my characters nature to fight if there is any way to avoid it.

[Danikat]

You're lucky, you just caught me online.

I'll go ahead and set up a topic then.

[Zukoron]

Wow lots of posts to try and read. And I did. O_o

In any case, I am here mainly wondering how do you make more than one paragraph? I never seem to know when to break them into different paragraphs.

[Danikat]

To some extent that's up to you.

Literary convention as I understand it states that you start a new line whenever a new character speaks or acts and leave a line free when denoting a break in the narrative, such as switching to a new group of characters or events that occured after a period of time has passed. If all the events in your post are continuous then it could in theory be presented as all one paragraph.

eg.

"Hello," said Danikat, "As this is all me talking it can all go on one line, along with my actions." She demonstrated by waving her arms in the air, for lack of anything better to do.
"But when I start speaking," continued Arian, "It has to go onto a new line."

Later that evening the lecture continued. "Since there was a period of time sliced out of this narrative a gap was left, so you know it's later."

Alternatively the creative writing site I'm on says that the literary rules were invented to save space in books and that the ideal system is to leave a blank line between each characters speech and actions and to start a new chapter or use some sort of symbol, with a free space before and after it (see below) to denote a change to a new group/place/time.

~*~

However on the basis that we're Role-Playing and that rules created for a story written by just one person aren't always practical I've invented my own system:

As with books each time a new character speaks or acts I start a new line. However I end a paragraph and start a new one whenever I consider my post to be shifting from one 'section' of actions to another, for example if a character finishes a conversation with one person and then goes immediately into another conversation with another person I'll put a break between the two, because it's a logical pause in the narrative and stops my post from becoming one solid block of text. (See this post for an example.)

Ultimately as long as there appears to be some sort of system to it we're not overly strict here. Just be realistic - if you've got a huge block of solid text with no breaks of any kind it'll be hard to read, so you'll want to find a logical point or two to break it up. If your post looks like more empty space than text then you've probably gone too far the other way and some of it could probably be condensed down into a single paragraph.

(Incidentally it's also worth using the preview function, each line in the box you write in is about half the length it'll be in the final post so paragraphs can look a lot longer when you're writing them than they will to anyone reading them.)

[Zukoron]

Thank you for the info. I am glad I asked...I have been wondering since I started writing O_o

[Zerrer]

My style of paragraph writing is where it's the focus of my character. Each time Zerrer goes onto a new train of thought, the focus changes, and so the paragraph begins anew.

These are short paragraphs, but I hope they get my point across.

[Zukoron]

I know what you mean and I thank you for the advice as well.