Forums » RP Discussion » Best Writing Advice Ever?

And important thing I learned about that is to just not try. Almost every great book I’ve ever read only describe their characters with one key quality to make the reader know what to do from there. In fact I just read a book, one of the characters only description is;

“He was a very heavy set man with a kind look to his eyes”

And from that point forward my mind made up whatever I wanted and it was 100x more fun that way. When you go into paragraph long descriptions of how a character looks, you lose me. Part of the fun of reading is having enough description, but enough of a open ended thread to let your mind wonder. In this same book it describes the city as,

“Warm down, returned to nature as sands of the nearby desert crept in, vines crawled up the once monumental buildings that housed many humans, and it’s streets void of any life that walked in two feet”

He did not describe what style the architecture was, he did not give a layout or each block, he did not tell me what apocalypse hit this world, he didn’t tell me how man years it was like this. He in fact, gave the reader just as much information as the characters had. With this, I was able to fill in those blanks, make the story truly my own because the fact is, once art is out there it isn’t truly yours anymore and you shouldn’t try to hold it too close, because in order for people to have fun with your work, for your work to be enjoyed by many you have to, as you said, sign a contract that states that you are no longer in full control of what the creative minds of a fan will do.

In a RP however, it is totally fine to pursue a detailed look into your characters features, photo references and all. But RPs and writing a story are somehow two different styles entirely and what works for one won’t work for the other.

Eeeeeyeah so my thing is that I care about my characters and want people to have the correct mental image of them but thank you for missing my point.

This is wildly rude and pointed for a topic dedicated to sharing different perspectives and advice. Please don’t come to my post to make it unwelcoming.

This is super true. Description really has to be parsed out. It can be hard for a reader to sit and mentally go head to toe on a character in one sitting. I’m not sure why that is. Also for some reason, sitting and picking through every character detail comes off as corny? At least when it’s blunt, like we’ve seen in the infamous My Immortal. I think it’s because when we’re reading, we don’t always want to sit and think about every t-shirt the character has. I think because it sort of stops the scene and pauses it onto the details, it can be hard to want to sit still inside a paragraph sometimes.

"Don't talk about writing, just write. When you talk about doing something, you get rewarded by the same part of your brain that'd reward you if you actually did it. That'll keep you from being motivated to write, because it feels like you already put in the work."

Learned this from a youtuber by the name of "Diregentleman", I'd certainly recommend checking him out.

Actually, I think you missed their point. I think you're going into this with the wrong mindset if you're getting upset over people "imagining your characters incorrectly." If you only want people to see things the way you see them, then the medium you're writing in shouldn't just be words. If appearances are that important to you, then include illustrations, or write scripts for visual mediums, or anything of the sort.
Reading fiction has never been about perfectly imagining things the author wanted you to, hell, no artform has ever been about that. It's always been about your own interpretation of the things in front of you, and what they mean to you. Trying to force people to do it the "right way" is just going to alienate your audience, and fill your writing with unnecessary details that people aren't going to remember.

(P.S. Really bro? "my thing is that I care about my characters"? You have to realize how hostile that sounds, right?)