Reivax

[xavier]

Character Name:Joran Savon
Character Source: Pending but about to be accepted.
Character Faction/Alignment: Jedi/Light Side
Type of Roleplay: Any
Roleplay Requirements: One Person or Two
Reason for Request: I would like to Improve on my RPing
Notes: I can say one thing... I like big butts and I will not lie.
Roleplay: N/A

[Kella]

Alright Xavier, here's the deal. X) I know you want to improve on your RPing, so I'll help you -- even though Joran isn't improved yet. It's probably going to feel brutal -- I'm going to correct everything from grammar, to sentence structure, to the actual content of the post. Literarily and Grammatically, you're writing's quite rough, so It'll probably be quite some time before I can pay you any compliments.

Also, it might be several days to a week before I post replies -- I'm a busy Mod. However, if at any time I get the feeling that you're not respecting my time, you'll find that I simply won't reply anymore. X)

If you're up for it, respond with any ooc comics, and then your first In-Character post.

[xavier]

Nar Shadda. The Perfect place to have a Drink. And get killed. Joran wasn't there to chill out or chat. He had a Mission: Stop the Rodian Crime Lord Oliveran Bocco. He had to start at the Cantina. Besides where else would someone into Crime be? He looked everywhere in the Cantina room but didn't see him. He then heard the Crime Lords name from a Twi'lek and a Quarren talking about him. He walked past the table but stayed when he was a yard away pretending to do something.

--an you should of saw him! He just took the Vibro Axe fom that Gammorean and ripped his head off."

I don't know... How do you know if that was actually him? The Quarren put his cup down after sipping from it.

Are you kidding? What other rodian crime bosses do you know that have Purple skin?

You planning to work for him? The Quarren asked after burping grotesly.

Yeah he looks like he can pay a fortune. You know that one of his Bounty Hunters is a Jedi?

Hold Up. I think we have a Visitor. The Quarren said getting up and pulling out his Blaster Pistol. Joran was about to run when all of a sudden the Twi'lek grabbed him by the neck and held a Vibro Blade to his face.

Look Kid we can do this the easy way... or the hard way. You better pay up, you little creep. He said as Joran was trying to breathe.

Why should I give anything to you? You seem like you have a ship load of credits. Joran said struggling.

You have a lot of nerve kid. It's time someone taught you a lesson! He got ready to stab Joran in the neck.

Help! They're gonna kill me!

[Kella]

ooc// Okie dokie! Here we go!

First of all, even if you put the dialogue in color, it helps to use quotation marks around the actual speech. Oddly enough, if a person has been reading long enough, they start to look for that as a clue for speech, without really thinking about it. In fact, not having the quotation marks can throw the reader for a loop, so it's best to include them. It requires forming a new habit, but it's actually easier than adding the color tags, and you get really used to it after a while. X)

Also, in your posts, you want to make sure you're balancing plausibility, with creativity. The moment your reader goes, 'Oh, that would never happen', you've lost their interest. However, you can push things that might not quite be possible, but as long as you can make the reader think that 'hey, maybe that could happen', you've got them interested, and you're doing something creative.

For instance, the logic, 'You know any other Rodian Crime Bosses with purple skin?' doesn't quite make sense. If you want to stress the lack of intelligence of the thugs, then this works. However, it's usually best to take a moment, and think, 'How do I get from point A to point B?' Either that, or you use a more mysterious identifying feature, something like, 'He had the scar!' or, 'I saw his tatoo!' Now, you leave your reader wondering what's so special about this scar or tattoo, how it's so immediately identifiable, and intimidating. The reader is less likely to care about the color of his skin. X) Purple skin is not very mysterious, or intriguing.

Also, detail is your friend. You don't have to over-explain everything, but you do want to answer the reader's questions. For instance, how did the thugs know that Joran was listening in on him? Why do they think he owes them? Is it a, 'your wallet or your life' sort of scenario? You tell us what Joran says, but how does he say it? How is he feeling right now? Is he scared? Terrified? Trying to keep his cool?

Try rereading your posts, and saying, 'If I were reading this, what more would I want to know?'

And I think that's about enough for one post! Now for the juicy stuff. X) //

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The noise of some welpling's yelp brought the human's wearied gray eyes up from the swill in his cup. His chair was tilted back on two feet against the wall, his boots kicked up on the adjoining seat, one hand on his glass and one hand on his gun. You never really could relax on Nar Shaddaa. But you could sure as hell drink your cares away, and that's what Craig Denek, retired pretty-much-everything, intended to do.

That is, until he'd heard that distinctly human shriek. Humans were outnumbered folk here on Nar Shadaa. Some confounded feature of the race often compelled them to stick together. Craig didn't really care, but he cursed his own conscious -- the damn thing compelled him to drop his boots to the floor and stand, when he would have liked nothing better than to get himself stone-cold drunk.

His hip-length leather coat had once been stiff and shiny, but now, it was as worn and wrinkled as his own skin. An even coating of stubble clung stubbornly to his face, the creases at his eyes revealing him to be middle-aged. That didn't mean his bones didn't work just as well -- they just creaked more.

Pity drove him to step towards the kid, closing on the hasslers. The gun was now in his hand, unholstered, and revealed itself to be an archaic-looking slugthrower.

A few moment's later, the barrel was pounted at the Twi'lek's skull, point-blank range. The sound of the gun's cocking hammer drew the eyes of both the Twi'lek and the Quarren.

"I got eight bullets and there's only two of you," he said, with a voice made hoarse by years of smog and yelled threats. "Scram."

The Twi'lek and the Quarren were cheap criminals, quick to hassle anyone smaller than them. They put on the tough-guy act, but they were cowards under it all. Eying the man and the gun, they did was was probably the smartest thing they'd done all day -- they heeded the man and ran.

Craig holstered his gun and turned to the boy.

"You're a special kind of stupid, Kid," he said. Nar Shadaa cantinas were usually deadly to those who couldn't defend themselves, and not much better to those who could. "Don't you have a babysitter around, or something?" he asked, skimming the crowd. Nobody looked like they were missing anything. Craig grunted indifferently.

"Go home, Kid. Unless you wanna die, then just--" he gestured somewhere between Joran and the fleeing thugs. "--keep... doing what you're doing."

And with that, the man turned to walk away, heeding the call of his unfinished drink...

[xavier]

He felt greatful. He had been saved from his own death. Who knows what would have happend if he failed his mission. Well the Council would of course send a other Jedi but his mother would greive for him and try to get people to not trust the Jedi for she was very concerned for him. Joran thought the Jedi were to be trusted so he felt like the Man had done a good deed.

Joran was just about to turn the other way. Then he thought: Wait! That guy could know where he is! He turned around in a hurry about to trip himself but saved himself by jumping. He poked the man on the shoulder and asked

"Thanks for saving my life, but would you happen to know where Oliveran Bocco is? He needs to be arrested. Today. He waited for his reponse. As he held his waist exposing his Robes and Lightsaber.

[Kella]

Much better! The more the reader knows about Joran, and what he's thinking, and what motivates him, the more the reader is going to care about Joran, and be interested in the post, and in the story.

This is more about content than writing -- remember, if you're RPing a Jedi, he has to sound like a Jedi. ;) The Jedi are separated from their parents at a very young age -- Joran wouldn't remember his mom, and she wouldn't know anything other than he was being trained as a Jedi. In fact, she probably wouldn't recognize him. So, as you RP a Jedi, try and write Joran from a Jedi's point of view -- it will make him more realistic, and more convincing as a character. The best way to learn that, though, is by making mistakes, so I'll just letcha know what's amiss, and as long as you don't turn around and forget about it, we'll be all set. ;)

Something you'll hear a lot in relation to writing is the phrase 'show, don't tell'. Basically, you don't want to tell a person everything that happened -- you want to use words, to help them make a picture with their imagination. You do this by using words and descriptions that appeal to the senses -- sight, sound, touch, taste, and hearing. What does the cantina sound like? Smell like? What does Joran's voice sound like? What does he look like? Is the cantina dim, or bright? Sprinkling these details here and there helps the reader make a picture. For example, 'Joran gasped as he felt the cold, painful blade of the knife against his throat', or 'Joran could barely hear the man's words over the roar of cantina chatter'. It's a habit you have to build over time, but learning to show, not tell, is going to improve your writing more than anything else. ;D

Another thing you might want to use is metaphors. Similes are basically the same -- but where a metaphor says something -is- something else, a simile says something is like something else. The main purpose of these is to describe something unfamiliar, using familiar things, or to compare one thing to another, in order to tell you more about it. For example, I could say, 'The stone was blue and green some flecks of brown, in a swirl pattern.' but using a metaphor, I'd turn it into, 'The stone was like a bit of ocean, swirls of blue and green.' Even though they both have basically the same information, the second sentence creates a much better image -- because one word 'ocean', can wrap up a whole lot of words about colors. Also, I might be able to imply something else about the stone -- that it's peaceful, like the ocean, or cool, or something natural.

So this is now your mission! Focus on painting a picture, using words that appeal to the senses, and metaphors, if you want.

Also, keep working on the quotation marks thing. ;)

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Craig felt the boy poke his shoulder. Of all the ways to get someone's attention, he grumbled. For a moment, he didn't turn around, but with a ragged sigh, he relented, turning his grim expression on the boy.

"There's a lot of people here need arresting," he said wryly, dismissing the request. Who did this kid think he was? Running after criminals? As Craig spied the lightsaber hanging at the boy's waist, he got a little closer to his answer. Jedi? Surely they were smarter than to send some teenager alone into Nar Shadaa. Then again Oliveran Bocco was hardly much tougher than his thug idols. Maybe the Jedi were smart -- letting natural selection run its course or something...

"Hey kid, isn't your master around here somewhere? Go find him."

Craig turned his back again. His conscious complained again, pushing him to help the obviously lost boy, but Craig growled at it, and the annoying little voice retreated. He'd done his duty. He'd paid his due.

But he was kidding himself if that logic got rid of that inkling of guilt, that bit of unease. It poked at him persistently, like a mosquito buzzing in his ear. He swatted it away, but it cam back again. Craig realized that there was no way he was going to be able to drink his drink in peace.

Alternatively, enough alcohol and Craig would forget all about this too. He liked that logic. So, he took another step back to his table, hoping this kid wasn't as persistent as his conscious...