Nakeds and Desc Workshop v2
The longerer betterer edition

So a quick and succinct breakdown of descriptions and nakeds. I asked Celestial a few days ago if I should post a new thread or not. They said to post a new thread... With that said... I will be breaking these into individual posts with this first post acting as an index and description of the purpose of the thread.

This is a workshop thread, this is where we all come together to workshop tips and the like for various topics. In this case, it's how to write descriptions and nakeds. A big strong disclaimer for newbies here, this is all advice not a requirement for coming in the game, consider this a 103 course where 101 is just getting in game and playing and 102 is knowing nakeds exist at all and maybe writing @naked groin is "10 feet of pecker" in the prompt to have a giggle. This is stuff that I've learned from talking about this stuff with people for 3+ years now.

I'm going to go through my general ideas for things when I write nakeds and descriptions. These are things that I've come too after playing this game for 3+ years now. I have a lot to say about this. And I'll try to keep on point. But I may drift off at times. It's okay, you start to do this as you get older.

Some people will certainly contradict these. And this is fine. A lot of it is opinion based and not 100% factual as is everything in narrative and character writing. But these are what I consider the basics. And another note: I may not have the best grammar, but I write these things in an attempt to educate people on the structure of things, and the techniques behind them, not basic English. These are techniques that should be considered important in my opinion for the game Sindome, and not things that should be considered important for a Grammarian to pour over.

Index of initial posts in the workshop:

1. Brevity/How to Trim useless chaff.

2. Standalone Narratives/How to avoid looking like a derp when injured

3. How to draft/working with attributes and stat structures

4. How to write/advice on structure and how to write nakeds out of game and then edit for in game use

Second off. I'd like to discuss standalone narratives.

Each naked you make should stand alone. Your shoulders are your shoulders. They may touch on other nakeds but should never be intrinsically linked on a scale of grammar or description to other aspects of your nakeds.

Your shoulders should not describe anything more than the connection to the arms. Your neck to your shoulders, your chest to your shoulders, It should all be grammatically, and this is key, descriptionally separate and standing alone from every other naked.

In my opinion, how not to do this, looks like this.

Shoulder: Huge arms, big ass fucking guns sticking off the sockets, it's like these shoulders bulge in ways you'd never expect.

This makes a few other mistakes but those aren't important. Here's how I'd change it.

Shoulder: Big shoulders, wide, broadset and bulbous, with bulges of muscle that contort in unnatural fashions.

Conveys the same information, and emphasizes the same elements, but doesn't assume anything of the reader. And creates its own narrative within the naked without having it bleed into other nakeds creating repetition. Another important thing to stand alone narratives, is to not over narrate. To not assume your character is taking action, and to not assume other characters assumptions or knowledge beyond the basics.

If a character isn't a doctor, they likely won't know what a surgical scar looks like, and so it's probably best to not assume, and just describe the scar as is.

A long scar on a well muscled back, straight up the curve of the spine, slightly to the left and clean, simple with no jaggedness to it.

Let's get down to the last post I'm going to do thus far. I call this one shaping, this is advice on how to -actually- write your nakeds and description.

For descriptions. The .5 seconds in a crowd rule should always apply.

Odds are you don't need people to know your character is buck toothed from description alone. But rather that should go in a naked somewhere. Similarly, avoid being too vague.

Form, factor, feature.

Is how I typically do an @describe for a person.

Form, Describe the form of the person, the general silhouette.

Big and beefy himbo for example

Factor describe the magnitude this person stands out, their confidence and posture.

Cockily posturing big himbo beefcake for example

Feature, pick the most obvious feature, generally but not always gender, to stand out.

Cocky big beefy himbo with very obvious bulge in whatever clothing he wears.

For nakeds, the best advice is one I've repeated a couple times above, every naked should be separate and stand on it's own. No comma's linking them. No references to other parts. And so on.

The next, and the topic I've been avoiding all through here.

If you EVER plan to use disguises. Learn some help pronouns. Because it will save you SO much trouble altering descriptions to have these setup.

The actual active of writing nakeds I don't think should really be done in game. As it's very slow and doesn't allow for easy error correction. I believe you should type @nakeds me. And copy and paste those into your text editor of choice and edit them there.

Throwing in my 0.02 Chy.

Don't feel like you need to fill out every single item in @nakeds, as that will make the complete description excessively long with what is most likely needless information that most people won't even bother to read (which goes back to Rhea's point of brevity). Describe what is necessary or notable.

One way I've found to trim down on @nakeds is to not give duplicate individual descriptions for symmetrical body parts. If there are no distinctive features between the left and right eyes, hands, etc., but I still want to note that body part, I'll put a pluralized description in the left one and leave the right blank. Of course if my character is ever wearing asymmetrical clothing that would cover one part but not the other I would change this, but in general it works to just describe things in pairs.

Also, it's OK to skip describing a body part if that description adds nothing to what is already known about the character. Perhaps if your character is already described as a "large, hulking, muscular mass," then we don't need to know specifically about how large and muscled his feet are; we can infer it from the general description. Unless of course the same character actually has rather dainty little feet; then a @nakeds description of the feet would add something to the overall image of the character.

In short, you can reduce the @nakeds by focusing on notable features that would attract attention, and where appropriate, pairing up symmetrical body parts.