So as it says in my little footnote thing before every post I make. I only refer to Scrubble as Scrubble when writing. Which led me to wondering do any of you guys have any disciplines, or rules that you adhere to when writing? If so did you have it initially or was it something that happened over the course of your writing?

An odd habit of mine is when I'm writing, I look like an idiot behind the screen because I'm acting everything out to help me visualize stuff. :P
included with voices and accents, getting up to try different 'walks' and whatnot. :P

it's silly but it helps with figuring out how I should describe things because English isn't my first language. :3

>.> I need to write visuals majorly. Sometimes it makes me a wordy birdy. At one point my temple was over 1500 words XD

My major discipline with writing is to make sure I read the final product aloud. That has stuck with me since my early days in roleplaying, and it helps catch fluency problems I might otherwise have missed.

I always make sure to try and stay as true to what my character would do as possible, even if it makes me super angry @_@  I've had out loud verbal fights with characters before (probably look super nuts when I do this too).  It especially sucks if I have a good guy and they do something bad cuz I don't want them to…but they would.  

So I make sure to never 'take the easy way out' and do what I'd want them to do merely because it would be convenient to me.  I also try to look ahead as much as I can to try and figure out how something might go to decide on whether certain threads will pan out or not and it helps me a lot with writing up intros.

I also make sure to not look at the word count as much as possible since in the past I was obsessed with high word count to the point that it stressed me out.

And no matter what, I'll never, ever, ever let there be room for accidental godmoding or power playing to the point that I've ended up dumbing down my otherwise strong characters out of fear that I will do so.  Sometimes it can be problematic because I won't even let my character leave a room without permission from the other writer (in case their character would try and stop mine @_@).  Small example but still lol

When I first started, it was difficult to strike a balance between introspective reaction and external action (I still catch myself slipping sometimes). Partially due to the fact that I had always just written by myself (also still do) before discovering RP. Describing environment is good, as is giving a sense of what a character is like on the inside to garner emotional rapport from the audience. Too much can tend to be boring, and not give a writing partner enough to work with - unless you don't mind getting incredibly wordy on every single post. If I had the time and energy, I would.

I've played some characters longer than others, but not a single one is more important to me than another. All of them have very personal elements of myself ingrained in them. For instance, Bash her has the hidden Lovecraft inspiration, among other things. What I've discovered over time playing him is that a lot of the supernatural things he battles internally can really be a metaphor for conquering depression, and self-actualization. Writing can be very healing. I also loved theater through high school, so in many ways, RP is like acting things out, and sharing pieces of myself with the world.

As Naota said, I hate hate HATE being over-powered. The items that I sub for abilities are usually castrated a bit, rather than simply modified or enhanced. Non-human characters can take a little more license in that area, I think…but only to a degree.

When I begun writing, I had a terrible habit of placing my own thoughts and feelings into it instead of thinking "what would my character do/think/feel?" By the time I started to use my original Nemesis character, I forced myself to step back and ask the previous questions before I would sit down and write. Aside from that, there are already bits and pieces mentioned by the others that I had adapted into my writing process, but I will save us the time and not regurgitate the same advice :P

@Paige 

I used to do that too when I first started to roleplay back on WoW RP-servers. :P
But now I'm able to completely separate myself from my characters. It's like slipping into a suit and switching personalities and way of thinking to try and portray my characters as best as I can. :3


@Sebastian

I write out their thoughts as well, but the thing I struggle with is descriptive writing. Like describing a setting/environment/object etc… Because I always feel that my descriptions are boring because of my lack of English words of that nature. ;__;
For me though, I feel Ramla and the Eldritch Princes are higher up on the shelf of muses for me. Because they're the oldest that I've had and had the largest character development. Which in turn also becomes more challenging to write about them because of how extensive their history is. And because they are supernatural/alien beings with magic powers they just get stronger and stronger. Ramla Started out as just a human slave-girl with no powers. And as her powers grew I tried not to make her too OP. But after 8000+ years of history I can no longer say to myself, "I'm not going to make my characters OP." Because she is OP now. And that makes it hard because people ever want to RP with an OP character, fearing that scenes like Combat will become unfair. Or that I'm god-modding. So in order to give them at least some form of limitations I made sure that she (as well as the Princes) stick to their domain of magic only. Meaning for Ramla, she will only ever be OP in the domain of Shadows and Darkness, and be denied magical access to any other forms of magic/powers. Even artifacts. (unless it's for plot)
So at this point it's really up to my writing partners to figure out for themselves on where their weaknesses are and how to deal with them.I like to make people think about how they should approach my characters when it comes to combat. :P


@Naota

When it comes to accidental godmodding, for me it all depends on my partner and how well we mesh as writers. My fiancee and me whenever we'd be stuck in a post, we'd briefly godmode each other's characters but only to get the story flowing. To unstuck ourselves or to steer the story back towards the direction it needs to be. And it's always little things like moving the character elsewhere but never do we take the free will or mess with the thoughts of a character.
For me I'm usually okay with people doing small godmodding if it's because they were stuck in a post or they wanted to help keep the story going. But unless I myself prefer to ask permission before i godmode their character to unstuck my post. Like i did with Scrubble in the "Afraid" thread in Tarishitar.

When it comes to godmodding for me… as long as you don't kill my characters or do something you know I don't like >> I'm cool with it as long as it moves the story about.

I have an extreme fear of godmodding which is why Jake has such a large aversion to combat.