Lit Team Tips!

Hello and welcome back to Lit Team Tips, the monthly blog on how to improve your literate roleplays or your writing skills!

This month's is a little different; as each member chose their strongsuit to give tips on.

Enjoy!

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Ayumi is going to start us off with adding comedy, or silly moments into your writing!

When writing a scene for a story, sometimes you just need to add that little something special to it. When it's a water balloon fight or a mishap during a school play. There is always something to write about. Even if there is other things to write about, always adding a funny scene is important in most stories.

The first thing to do is setting your location for the scene. You just can't have it in the middle of no where or an endless void of nothing. So for example we will take the park, everyone knows what goes in the park. You have the usual playground with swings, a pond and maybe a few benches here and there.

The second thing is your character. Who is at the park? Is it an alien? It is a old man walking his dog? Your character really can be described as easily like this. There was a woman walking her dog, she had dark black hair, black eyes and often wore a red scarf. Does that character sound familiar? It's Misaka Ackerman. Now time for the final part once we got our character.

Final part, what is happening. Now it's important to tell what is happening in your scene whether it's a birthday party gone wrong or eating a bad piece of fruit. Writing your scene is very important during a silly story or you won't tell what is going on. So from our first example with the park, then our character now it's time for something to happen. Anything can happen at the park, you get hit in the face with a rubber ball, fall into a lake/pond or you just happen to trip while running to the slide. All of these things happen, now you just need to make them funny for your readers. Luckily I have an example right here for you below. Please read and enjoy.

"There once was a woman walking her dog at the park, her name was Misaka Ackerman. She was a beauty with black hair and black eyes, oh and the scarf she wore was bright red. Misaka walked her dog Eren down to the park for exercise, until Misaka wanted a break. She sat down on the bench, paying no mind there was fresh paint on it. "Ah!! My Coat! It's ruined!" Misaka yelled putting both hands on her coat, as the leash slips from her fingers. In a panic, Misaka leaps up and ran after Eren. "Eren get back here!" Misaka shouted towards the dog. Eren ran towards the duck pond jumping in, Misaka jumped in after him. The pond was covered in duck poo, littered with wrappers and smelled like hot garbage. "Ugh!!! Eren!! Bad dog!!" Misaka yelled as Eren then licks her face not caring at all."

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We seem to be having some mixed emotions, we were just happy, but now we're going to be sad when we see Wild Horizon's tips.

"Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

One of my favorite professors once told me that the best writing comes from those who have bled. It is my belief that good writing comes with practice, experience, outlook, and choice.

Writing tragedy is a very emotional thing to undertake. It usually centers around or has an overall dark theme.

To write tragedy well, let the darker, sadder side of your emotions flow into the plot, and think of how your character(s) will react. What is good about writing in this way is 1). If you're struggling with something hard in life and need an outlet, you can go as dark as you want to in order to get it on paper. 2). It allows a chance to go deeper into emotions of characters and how they might overcome pain is a healthy way to explore that.

Tragic writing is mostly about the characters either being catalysts for something tragic that is occuring or reacting to something that is happening or has already happened. It is also very much dependant on the morals/ personal beliefs of the character, which can sometimes shift in this kind of writing.

Empathize with each character you have in the story. What are they going through and how does the situation affect them? If you can do this with each character in the story, the reader is more apt to also connect with them too.

Tragedy is darker... So this means that the emotions or statuses of certain characters who were maybe once completely confident or strong changes so that a different side is shown. There is a certain beauty in weakness, or in breaking, when it comes to this style of writing.

And of course, reading tragedies is also a good way to learn about the writing style. I recommend reading a few of Shakespeare's tragedies. Pay attention to what is happening to each character while reading and think of how you feel while reading it as well.

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Former Lit Team Manager Sage is going to teach you how to be unique and creative!

First off, try to make it transition in a way, and descriptive instead of just plain!

Let's start with a simple roleplay line,

“Mikasa Ackerman stared at Eren.”

How dull and boring! This puts out a lot of questions like, where are they? What is Mikasa wearing? How far or close are they to each other? Now let's answer all those questions, by fixing that line up!

Let's change “Mikasa Ackerman” to something descriptive like,

“The raven haired [woman/girl/young woman]” Now that describes her, now how do we describe her appearance and the scene and time? That can be fixed by transitioning them such as,

“The [woman's/young woman's/girl's] crimson scarf flowed in the wind as the sun began to set on the water's horizon. She stared at a brunette male, Eren from the distance.”

Now that's better, it answered by our questions of the boring roleplay line! Now let's piece that together, to get a nice roleplay paragraph! However, if you're a literate roleplayer, you'll need to make a second paragraph! So let's add movement to the roleplay! Depending on where you'd like to take the roleplay, you can change it! However, for this instance, we'll just move the roleplay to Mikasa acting motherly, and telling Eren to button up his shirt, since it also answeres the question of what he's wearing. Now let's start off.

“Mikasa paced towards Eren and tugged on his sleeve to get him to turn around. She quickly began to button up the top of his white button up shirt. “You're shirt is unbuttoned.” The raven haired [woman/girl/young woman] softly scolded him. Her dull eyes narrowing at such actions from her childhood friend.” Now, that makes our Second Paragraph complete! Let's piece it all up!

“The raven haired [woman/girl/young woman. The [woman's/young woman's/girl's] crimson scarf flowed in the wind as the sun began to set on the water's horizon. She star

stared at a brunette male, Eren from the distance.”

Mikasa paced towards Eren and tugged on his sleeve to get him to turn around. She quickly began to button up the top of his white button up shirt. “You're shirt is unbuttoned.” The raven haired [woman/girl/young woman] softly scolded him. Her dull eyes narrowing at such actions from her childhood friend.”

Sage, out!

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New Lit Team Manager Armin has some great tips on romance, wink wink.

When including romance into writing be sure to describe the character’s feelings and have the relationship start off as a simple crush. Do not jump straight into an “I love you, let’s go out” situation because it will seem fast paced and it will not grab the audience’s attention as well. Instead, have the character develop an innocent love interest in another character and slowly build it up by including little actions such as having the character ire the other’s qualities or have them act nervous whenever they are around who they have interest in. Having the two characters be friends is also a great way to start a romance between them due to the fact that they will already be close to each other and it would be simpler to show the developing affection if they were close beforehand.

In addition, explaining how the characters feel is another thing that is needed when writing romance. Describing how the other makes them feel is a great way to catch the reader’s attention because it shows deeper meaning to the relationship. You can do this by using adjectives to help explain affection and what the character is experiencing overall. Also, keep in mind that different characters will show love differently depending on their personality, so if you are not familiar with a character’s personality it is wise to research it a bit before including them in a romantic situation.

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I'm more of a lover than a fighter, but I learned conflict with Jean

The tone of whatever you are writing can really change a bunch about your story or roleplays. Tone is the attitude or feelings of the narrator or other character towards another person. If your character is in a bad mood, it may be another character that had made them in that mood. A different character could say something that your character doesn't approve of, which could lead to conflict between the two. Those are two examples of how tone could occur in a story.

There are good tones, and bad ones. If your character is angry, then there is an angry tone. If your character is in a good mood, then it's a happy and nice tone. Generally other characters can cause these feelings towards your own character, but they can also come from your own thoughts. If you think of something from the past, it can put your character in lot of different tones. It just depends on what the thought is about.

Tone is a good form of usage in stories and roleplays, and hopefully you can use the tips I have provided you with.

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Bad at handling emotions just like me? Nerd can help!

We need to control ourselves and learn our limitations emotionally and mentally to not let our emotions dictate us. But that doesn't mean emotions are bad, emotions are what make up who you are:

How you react to things, how certain things make you feel, all that jazz make up you and your own unique traits. After all, we are the main characters in the story or book that is our life. Main characters are one of the greatest factors to make a perfect story.

How do you feel when your mom dresses you in something that makes you look fat? Do you feel angry, embarrassed, or upset? Do you feel like you might cry, or that you could punch a wall?

How do you feel when you see your sister walking down the aisle? Do you feel proud of how she has grown? Happy to see her smiling for a man (or woman) she loves? Do you already feel the pang of pain that comes from the lonely thought of her leaving you? Do you feel protective and want to make sure her significant enough thee doesn't get too frisky too soon? You have to put yourself in your character's shoes, if they think plain readers will be disinterested. You could also put in the five senses. Do you heart your hurt thumping in your ears? Does your mouth taste like metal? Is you vision blurring? All that. It adds more to the feel, gives a mood.

You have to take into consideration the character's personality, likes and dislikes, hobbies, dreams, etc. when writing their emotional state. A more hot headed character will obviously react to a bully differently from a diplomatic character, they see things in different ways. If you were to have Mikasa suddenly triggered by the slightest remark sent her way, that would be too OOC.

Little Tip: And if you're ever lost on how to describe your character, it's always nice to have a song to describe your character. You could use that as a reference of the character's actions.

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KAPOW! Bust through the wall with action tips from Valeria !

Creating an action scene or moment in a story or roleplay can be difficult. There will be many actions at once. Try describing different things that are happening in different paragraphs and parts. Give the scene a detailed setting, so it feels more real. This can help the characters use their surroundings to complete the task. One of the most common settings is some type of forest. This can be useful for attacking while using the nearby trees.

Another way to create a good action scene is to describe what the character is doing, and how the victim or enemy may be reacting. Show what the character is thinking through actions. And dialogue may lack in this part of the story, but inculde it if needed. There can never be too much dialogue.

Finally, do not prolong the scene too much. Yes, the scene may be longer due to the many aspects of it, but making it too long will bore the reader. Maybe add some sort of twist to spice up the writing and keep the scene interesting.

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Welp, that's it for this months lit team tips! Tune in next month for some more!

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