Five Best Tips for Posting on Strolen's (and Other Places)

These are five good tips for those who want to produce better items, npcs, lifeforms, locations, plots, and such.

First: Review!
Review the top rated posts of the category you want to post it. If you want to do an item, click into items, then the highest rated (in red) and it will give you a list of the best items. Read the first ten or so.

Second: Effort!
Put some thought into your post. Take your time putting the post into print. Taking time to do a post right shows you care not only about your audience and yourself, but you care about the thing you are posting about. If you aren’t spending a minimum of 15 to 30 minutes on the post, it will probably be abused and low rated. Most of us spend 45 to 60 minutes on a post. Remember, you will spend more time actually thinking about your post before you put it up, if you want to do it right.

Remember that you can edit your post, so if you find something wrong, go back and fix it.

Third: Check it!
I really mean it. Go through your posts. Make sure it follows the basic rules of grammar . Sentences start with capital letters, end with punctuation, and have everything moderately correct in between. Extra lines should be inserted between paragraphs (and there should be paragraphs). I can not stress the next part more that simply scream, “Spell check!”. If you can, copy (from web site) and paste (into word processor) your post into a WP with spell check. Run the spell check (and the grammar check if it has it). Copy and paste it back. If you do this, it will automatically improve your post by one point (on average). If we can simply and easily read your post, we can start critiquing it rather than your awful spelling.

If English is not your primary language, let us know. However, be warned that many of our best posters have English as a second, third, or even fourth language. So all we ask is that you continue to work at it, to get it right. http://www.strolen.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1559

Fourth: Completeness!
Your posts needs to tell us nearly everything about the subject. You should strive for items that are generic, rather than dependent on a specific setting or campaign. While being vague can help make the item more “generic”, you need to “imply” the answers. (For example: while my game might not have Rykor the BloodSlayer, I can figure out an approximate match “The most dreaded demon riding Dark Knight in history.”) Implied answers act as guidelines for the GM/ Player adapting the post.

To be complete, your post needs to answer; “Who is involved?”, “What is happening (and where and when)?” and “How and why things occur?”. If it is an item or setting then include: What is the item/place? and What can it do?

Details are not as important as completeness. Read your post. Is there anything that someone (who doesn’t know your campaign and the backstory) might have a question about? If you find such a question, edit the write up and include the answer to that question. Keep reading your post until you have answered every question (including ones that seem really stupid… there are a lot of really stupid people out there).

Fifth: The Gold Standard
If your post could not be part of a published fantasy novel, it needs work. That is what you should aim for.

If your item/ npc/ plot/ setting is not as well described and developed as something you would find in a published fantasy novel (excluding most DnD licensed novels), then it is not equal to the gold standard and needs work.

This standard is really not that hard to meet. New members often meet it on their first or second try. You do not need to be a professional writer, you just need to put a little effort into doing it right.