Second Thoughts in Writing
Hey..
Hi..
Hello the-
Hi and welcome to-
Hey, it’s Vexar, again! Back with another article to those of you who have a little bit of trouble getting your thoughts down to words. If you’re one of the people who typically spend a lot of time struggling to find the right series of words to describe what’s in your head, this article is for you. Especially if you type much like the example above.
Stick with it!
If you find that you constantly delete what you just typed, you’ll never make any progress. In the end you’ll forget or miss a crucial detail. Some of you have probably seen the commercial where two people who love eachother are chatting back and forth. They delete what they say so many times that they never get together. Role playing and writing are much alike. By the time you get down something you feel okay with, the emotion or meaning is completely lost.
I’m not saying don’t go back and make quick corrections here or there. But, you need to get your thoughts down as quickly as possible. The brain can be finicky and it will forget or get caught up on small details if you let it. If it didn’t, magicians wouldn’t be as good as they are in some cases.
So, write down what you can; and as much of it as you can! Don’t think too heavily on it.
Wait and revise!
I know there are countless times where I’ve felt great about a post or writing. Then, I revise it, give it the okay, and send it out into public. This results in me finding a hundred errors and seeing things that just don’t make any sense. If I had just waited an hour, or even just fifteen minutes, I would have made a much better writing.
So, take a break once you are done spilling words out. Let your brain get off the topic that you were just writing on. Refresh it and start back once you feel the slate is clean. Only then will you notice the errors that spellcheck can’t pick up on. You will see where you failed to make your point, or where you feel like you need to fix something. I also typically use this time to edit the post to make it look 'pretty' on forums. Or align the paragraphs in a normal writing.
This is the best time to go over where you felt like you needed to delete. If you have too much information you can now see where it starts to drag on and you can start tidying up. Writing can be a lot like cutting hair. You cut and trim here and there with a lot to work with, it can be easy. But, if you go to short or don’t have enough to work with; it can be very hard to fix and leave readers happy.
Now go back again!
That’s right, you didn’t think you could just skim over and find the errors. Did you enjoy what you wrote as much as you had the first two times? You waited another fifteen or thirty minutes to read it a third time and you’re just not happy with it. What could you do? These are things I will save for another article. However, the third revision of writing is often the most important one.
Here, you can find out how much your other readers will enjoy or understand it. It may sound boring, but in a role play this can be major! Sometimes you just didn’t notice that someone had posted and then you didn’t mention them. Or perhaps you’re just writing in general and you forgot a small, but crucial, part of the story. This third reading allows you to remember those key notes or see the post you missed when you start tying things back together.
(TL;DR) The key points are:
- Stop deleting what you wrote! Just stick with it and change it later.
- Wait before you revise. Give it a good 15 minutes.
- Revise again! You never know what details you may have wanted to include until you think about tying the post or writing in elsewhere.
-Vexar
