PREFACE TO THE GUIDE
This guide is designed as an instructional tool to help players here at NationStates learn the basic mechanics of roleplaying—both in terms of structuring posts and the art of writing stories. It is far from a conclusive guide, as the amount of space necessary to go in-depth on all aspects of roleplaying and writing would be vast in scope, and I myself am hardly qualified to be the definitive guide for anything, let alone the finer points of writing. Consider this a tool—one of many—that can be used to help better understand the finer points of roleplaying, created by a player who has attempted to learn and develop his writing style for several years now.
Far from advocating any one type of roleplayer over another, this is a generalized guide for actually writing roleplays, versus espousing competitive roleplaying over cooperative roleplaying, or vice versa. Regardless of how you get your kicks, the art of writing a roleplay is surprisingly uniform across the board. So to help elaborate on the points we want to look at here, consider the following scenario as a backdrop for the guide: take an idea that you have, that you think would make for a great story. You're not really invested in competing with someone; you just want to write. Now, as you read this guide, the points that are made will be tailored to that specific set-up. But the concepts learned here can be applied in competitive roleplaying just as readily as it can be in both cooperative and individual roleplaying as well. Writing, in its purest form, draws on the same strengths in each type of roleplaying written here.
Preparing to Write || The Individual Post || Story Progression || The Conclusion || Tips for Success