What, is the Average Air Speed Velocity of an Unlaiden Swallow?

Which One? Swallows from Terrrenus, or those from Iselyr?

That's right, as a role-player of Valucre, you should just simply know these things. While it might not realistically feasible for a Genesaris based swallow to grip a coconut by the husk and carry it over to Rosinder, it is quite the possibility that you are going to find some damn fine role-play going about. It's not just a baseless claim, it is a divine providence passed on from The Lady of the Lake, from bosom of the water, as she bequeathed Valucre upon the landscaper known as Carlos. Of course, if you believe that strange women hanging around in ponds handing over forums is no basis for a system of roleplay, you might be inclined to say that great role-play derives from a mandate from the writing masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Well, I say that you are just hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society, thus setting a basis for illiterate versus the literate, where some feel so inferior to others they cannot participate equally, and that you might as well go build yourself a castle in a swamp. Now get to reading the blog, before I send you out to chop me down a tree using nothing but a forage fish.

Annnnnd just in case you forgot, this is the second to last Thursday of the month, so that means this is your last update for February :(

We will be back in action on March 7th! :D

5pts to whoever can guess who I was just blatantly ripping off. :P  

What's Happening Valucre?

Valucre's Next Writing Contest is Here- I spoiled it last week, and now that contest is up. The Valucre writing contest is up, and this time there is a real, tangible prize. If you win this one, you get a hardback version of The Red Wolf Conspiracy, book one of the Voyage of the Chathrand Quaret. It's a great series, so winning this will certainly be worth the effort. This contest's theme is Cleverness- and we leave it to you clever folks (ooohh, shameless plug) to decide how to use that. No hard limit on size, the format is completely up to you, and this time, the voting will be done on the basis of deciding on your favorite three, in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd based order (the points given in that order are 3pts, 2pts, and 1pt). The one with the highest point total gets 1st prize and the book, the next two placers (2nd and 3rd) get Valbullion.

So, get out there and write people!

Gladiator Gambling Halls Will Open- Well, if you like to gamble, or are interested in testing your ability to predict fights, the Gladiator betting pools are going to open in the very near future (like, probably today). On top of that, the fights are going to get a little more interesting. Watch the odds change, and then get in your bet! Strike it Rich!

Project Pandora- An old project that never quite launched, Project Pandora is back online and ready to go. This is a rather interesting idea, with some homage to those dystopian futuristic novels where things have gone awry. After cloning became legal, many clones were cryogenically frozen, so that one day they could be restored. 200yrs later, their services are needed, so that they can assist in shutting down a still active defense plant that continues to make life on impossible. You get to play as a survivor (someone who was frozen and brought back), or as someone in the Bio-force military. It's an interesting idea, and you can check it out here.

Le'Chery Killer in the Night- An Iselyr based quest, the city of Le'Chery has had a real problem with murders as of late, and Zenophoenix is looking for one to two people to assist with this quest, role-playing out finding and stopping this killer. He says he has some leeway granted from Nette, Iselyr's board owner, so this one has some flexibility. Just keep in mind Iselyr's tight rules on tech, and stick to the canon so you can have your quest officially completed. ;) Can you catch a killer?

Shrine City, Available for New Management- Unfortunately, Shrine City's last manager has taken leave, and now the city is back open for those who are interested. We have had one member step up with definite plans, and it looks like a couple others as well. I know that the first has some great plans and ambitions. If you are looking for a chance to get in on the development of a major capital, you should head here to state your interest, and I would recommend talking to Alexei as well.

Terrenus Bulletin Board- Once again pimping out an awesome resource for finding your fix of Terrrenus based RP. If you are having a hard time locating something, it always pays to check this out. Take a look over this way.

The Chosen Tournament is Back- Shamelessly beating this dead horse, because hey, that's what I do- ask the regulars in Unvalchat. ;) Anyway, the Chosen is shaping up to be a huge tournament, with 21 confirmed participants so far and still plenty of time to get signed up. That doesn't mean I am endorsing sitting around and waiting longer- no, go down there and sign up today! Sign ups end March 5th, the tournament starts a couple weeks thereafter, and so you can chill out and wait inside the lounge. This is a no death tournament, so don't worry- no matter how bad it gets, it shall only be a flesh wound!

Question of the Week!!!

Yep, seems like this little section of the weekly blog is gathering a little dust. I pulled two answers to this blog this week. I am not sure what else I can do to get you guys to drop more, so I am just gonna get down to the answers and see what happens next week.

"What trait about you most often becomes a trait within your characters?"

Response One: Probably a general tomboyishness. Some combination of athleticism, physical strength, appreciation for alcohol, distaste for romance, and a tendency to be or appear somewhat unemotional is present in almost every female character I write. I have been trying to make my characters more varied, lately—especially in terms of allowing them to experience emotions (-.-)—but this is still the trait that pops up most often.

Response Two: The trait I find that always manages to work their way into my characters is the feeling and almost need to be kind and care for all those around them. Trust me...I've tried to change it, kindness never dies though. No matter the excuse for doing it.

Well, I only got two answers for you today. Maybe next time we will get some more. So, with that, we move on to the next question of the week. This is a user submitted question, so thank you to the one who is almost always late, but was nice and early this week. ;)

Which do you prefer to read/write: A character driven story, or a plot driven story? 

Obviously, both come into play eventually, but how do you like your story to get running off the ground, and maintain its speed. Is it by means in which the character is creating a need to move forward, or is the character moving forward because the plot has swept them up and taken off with them.

Tell us Valucre! Or bring me a shrubbery. Yes, a shrubbery, in fact, make it two. Only, place one slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle

New Members and Returns!

Welcome, Thisismeandmyplayers 

Welcome, BeautifulGothGirl

Welcome, Lawman

Welcome, Alora Veta

Welcome, Nam3lessOne

Welcome, Alixandria13

Returns:

Welcome back, Omerta

Welcome back, S t a r s c r e a m

Welcome back, The Hound

Bah, another low week, with only 6.While low, we did have three older members come back around once again. Speaking of which, if you see The Hound (Aka Kilos), give him a hard time. This guy is the most notorious person in all of Valucre for promising an extended stay and then disappearing. Make sure to razz him and ensure that he knows we'd like him to stick around for longer than a week. >_>

Other Highlights?

For many months now I have tried to gripe my way out of this one. After all I throw into this blog, I still get hounded over coming up with something else to add a little more spice to your old blog. Is it now enough that I spend upwards of three hours on these things? Is it not enough for you that I manage to keep a weekly schedule, and update you with lots of good content? I should have known, look at who I am asking. Sheesh, take your highlights. If only this animator could suffer a sudden and fatal heart attack >_> 

Quick Links- Hey, have you noticed that there are some useful buttons along your header tab on Valucre's topside? If not, you should have! I've made note of several of them already, so here is one more for you to explore, if you have not done so yet. The quick links button sits right below the what's new button, and contains several handy options. You can see all of the posts for today, see all the most recent posts in your subscriptions, open up your friends list, view the site leaders and see who is online. Several useful tools, all packaged in one convenient place. ;)

Did You Know- You can nominate role-plays for the spotlight in the newsletter. The newsletter comes out monthly and is seen by nearly everyone. What a way to give your favorite thread some love by getting it underneath the spotlight. :) Check out the other did you knows over here.

Closing Thoughts?

A little while back, there was a discussion brought up about how to become a better writer. Part of this pertained to developing talent, and the other part of it had to do with the networking aspect of writing. There was a particular comment made that just did not sit well with me at the time. Without outing anyone here (as in no names you silly folk), it essentially amounted to that Valucre will do nothing for your writing career. This particular person went on to elaborate from a perspective of the networking side of it- which I can find agreeable- but made did not say anything else to the effect of whether or not Valucre could have a positive influence in your writing ambitions.

I present to you my rebuttal, and thoughts for the day. :)

Valucre is not a hub for connections in to the writing world- you are going to have to find your own way of achieving that end of your goals. As it stands right now, Valucre is not a resource for editing, though there is talk about how we can establish a feedback group who will look over your stories and work to help you improve in the areas that are in need of it. Of course, that is future talk, and future talk speaks of what might be, and not of what actually is. Valucre has many ambitions we hope to see fulfilled over the coming years, but it also has ways of helping you as a writer, now.

One thing to appreciate about play by post role-playing is having the ultimate sandbox in which to experiment with characters. If you feel a little weak in the area of practicing taking a character and developing them over the course of a storyline, online role-play is your opportunity to do just that! You have many different stories you can write in, with a varied case of scenarios that will just hand you opportunities to sit and think about- how would this character react, how would it affect them in the moments, hours, days, weeks, and months after? In the circumstances they face, will they lead to changes, or can they come out of it the same as they were before?

You are in a collaborative environment, where elements of role-play will come at you beyond your control, forcing you to adapt and think on your feet. Sometimes you might plan what happens, sometimes you will know what is going to happen, but there are those occasions when another role-player throws a monkey wrench at you and now you are forced to figure out what your character will do. Use these opportunities to grow! Develop skills in thinking from the viewpoint of the character and not yourself. Detach from yourself, and allow the personality of the character to break through and react to these changes.

If you learn to do this in role-play, it will be easier to do it down the road when you are on your own. 

In speaking of characters, and trying to learn to develop their personality and get behind their reactions, you are also working on finding comfort in writing out the perspective that they see the world, and making the character unique. With some characters, this is easy for us, because we know the elements that make up that character and can portray them well. But what of those cases where you want to write from the perspective you are not comfortable with. What if you are someone who never writes as a male/female, always writes about heterosexual/homosexual characters, always athletic, always happy, or maybe always a particular mold. Role-play is the perfect place to overcome that.

For example, in our question from last week, I asked if there was a typecast character you play more often than characters of a different personality. Our first respondent admitted that the majority of their female characters come out as tomboys, who hate romance, love drinking, and have athleticism too. This style of character is fine, but what if they wanted to write a book, and wanted to insert a few different notable female characters. If all of the females were like this, and did not live in some cleverly constructed culture where all women are like this, wouldn’t it strike a reader as odd that there is no variation in the females’ base personality?

This person said they are working on it- and they have a great place to do it. They can join and already active thread with a new character made from the top of their head, or join an RP that requires something a little different, so that they purposely get stuck in a situation where they must write a character who is not these traits. Once again, I point out that play by post role-playing is a great facilitator for sandboxing characters. If you need to experiment more with personalities, or just work on developing them over the course of a storyline, here is your place to do it.

Experiment with characters, and the way they grow. 

Another thing that play by post role-playing does for you is that it does encourage writing. Part of writing a book is doing the actual writing. If you cannot get yourself to sit down and write a few posts a day, how do you ever expect yourself to sit down and put some time into writing a book each day. In realizing that the thousand mile journey begins with a single step, you must build yourself a practice of sitting down at a computer and writing something. Role-play posts are not books, nor are they close to it. But it is written material you are producing through effort, and if you can get into the habit of doing that, you have pulled yourself one step closer to having a continuing habit of writing.

Looking above, we can see that we want to develop skills with our character production, and that we are getting into the habit of writing, but there is another thing that comes to mind in these situations- getting used to continuity. It might sound silly to say that there is an inherent risk that you might get information mixed up, but I have seen famous writers (Ahem, R.A Salvatore) who struggle to keep information straight on their main characters- who knows what else might be mixed up. This is not a skill you will develop automatically, but one that is going to require some work- you have to want to keep your continuity straight in order to glean anything from this.

In thinking of that- always remember to make all the effort you can dealing with online role-playing. 

If you are writing a role-play, and you have to bring in some element from before, you have a three options- fudge it based on what you remember, find a way to find out, or work around the event. Assuming this is not something we can leave out, we are stuck with our first two choices- finding the answer, or hoping we can make something passable. MAKE THE EFFORT. Get into the habit of stopping and thinking- ‘Am I upholding continuity, and if not, how can I fix it?”. You will start by having to scour your old posts and/or threads, in order to dig up information. You might get into the habit of putting it all on your character sheet- that is a good thing, keep track on notes.

I keep notes on characters for a story I plan on writing out, because I need to keep track of certain aspects of them, and of their history. For my characters, I do the same, but I also link to where in the story events occurred, so I can always show them off later if someone wants verification of an ability or context to what made my character the way he is now. You can do the same for your work as well- perhaps write down a note on the character, and then write what page it was on when this occurred. Build those habits of looking back and trying to find answers, and then trying to manage information intelligently, so that way it will no longer be an issue.

Develop your methods of keeping your information straight. 

We got character aspects, we building productivity, and now we even have continuity, so let’s look at developing your own writing style. This one is a bit tricky, because sometimes people mistake a personal writing style with having poor grammar and conventions, and then trying to justify these routine mistakes with simply having a style. We have our own unique writing styles, I am sure you have noticed it when reading a book or reading an internet post. We want to have our own style, because that is what is going to set us apart, make us unique, and possibly more interesting.

Use role-playing posts as a place to experiment with styles. Do you right more to the character’s internal process, or more based on the external processes and the plot itself? Do you carry a certain pace, a certain tone, a way you like to put phrases or describe characters? Develop a rich tone of your own, make it your own voice and your own unique way of writing, and just be sure to do it with proper conventions and grammar in mind. Of course, the rules can sometimes be broken, but in order to get away with it- you must first actually understand them! Even the greats, who break the rules as part of their style, do it in a way that shows they know what they are doing otherwise.

Build a voice, but make sure you stick to the important foundations. 

Speaking of foundations, you can use Valucre as a place to build upon the basic skills. We might not have English teachers here to mark up your papers with red ink, but we do have some capable people who can help point things out to you- if you ask (and ask nicely). You can also simply read the work of other people, and see how they are doing it. Do you think you put a comma where there should be a pause, or do you think you let your sentences run on too long? When comparing yours to another’s, do you see things they capitalize that you might miss? How do their sentences flow? When you see them use the common mistake words (to, too, two; their, there, they’re; your, you’re; alot vs a lot, etc), are you using them in the same way as they do in their own contexts?
You can gain this same information by reading more books, but you can think of a play by post role-play forum as a way of further cementing those principles in your mind. You see them come together in your stories, which you have a bigger investment than just the stories you read.

It comes back around again to making that effort, because while there is some potentially good info there to help you, you have to be the one to go out there and hunt it down. I have seen people improve their basics in grammar and vocabulary over time, as they write more and more on the forum. I have also seen people who never improve, because they are not making that effort- or they are just too oblivious to see that they need to make some improvements. Make the effort, and read posts to see what you can improve, and if in doubt- ask.

The opportunity to learn the basics of decent conventions and grammar are present, but the onus is on you to use it. 

The last bit I want to impart is on how writing on a play by post forum encourages the exercise of imagination and creativity. Akin to how we are building the habit of writing at all, we are also building up the regular use of trying to imagine new things. I must see what my character is doing, and decide how they act upon it. In developing a new character, I must decide on their traits, the equipment they carry, their abilities, and how they interact with the world. I must decide how to develop my plot, and create the story that my character will participate in.

In short- I must use my brain!

The ability of our minds is much like the body, in that the more we exercise it, the more benefits we reap from it. If I want to be better at thinking up ideas and being flexible in my planning, I must be doing both on a regular basis. In regards to aspects of writing, the two best ways to do this is to write, and to read. The forum itself presents an opportunity to write, and write with others in an environment that can be unpredictable and require some stretch of the environment. It also presents you with some regular reading, assuming you are in threads that move decently enough.

Use these opportunities to stretch out the abilities of your imagination, increase your mental acuity, and really build your creativity’s muscles. 

That about sums up what I wanted to say in response to that comment at the time I saw it, but I never had the chance before it became an irrelevant point. I decided that it would serve well as a piece in the blog, giving everyone a chance to think about what Valucre can do for your writing. There are things our humble home cannot do- advanced structuring and critiquing, expert advice on pacing or the use of language, or building your connections into the writing world- but there are things you can use to your benefit through participating in play by post role-playing.

I challenge you to utilize it.

- Acies

"My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice, too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success." 
 ~Helen Hayes