Taldryan Runon: viewtopic.php?f=79&t=6980
Sins of Our Fathers: https://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/competitions/7158
Run-on: https://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/competitions/7160
Clan Naga Sadow has embarked on a mission to exact revenge against Taldryan for the actions of its Aedile in defacing ruins sacred to Ancient Sith Lord Ludo Kressh. Detail the mission, and the events surrounding the attack from your unit's perspective.
Rules:
- Posts must be a minimum of 250 Words in length.
-Try to keep your posts below 1250 words in general, but exceeding this will not disqualify you.
- You can edit your post until another person has posted. Once someone has posted after you, any edits to your post will disqualify your post.
- There will be no posting twice in a row.
- Disable signatures on the forums.
Going to compile a list of tips and tricks for posting in runons. To help the new and old out. If you have any tips you like to use, post em up, and I'll add them to the main post.
Runons are traditionally a bit of a cluster fuck. Packing in multiple people with multiple writing styles, and all who want to have their characters shine through in the fiction makes for often disjointed, and hard to read runons. Team runons differ from this, as you know who is in your team. You can focus on smaller, more concise posts. You can spend a bit of time getting to know everyone in your team, including their strengths and weaknesses, and their character's flaws/tendencies.
Team Based Runons
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Know your teammates. DB Fiction is often focused around combat, so know whether they're heavy force users, or prefer to beat people with fists. Know what their weapon preferences are. Find out how they view their character's personalities. Find out if they're chatty or serious in combat, ask whether they're likely to taunt, or just get down to business. Figure out what they're like outside of combat, are they always dour, expecting the worst to happen? Maybe they're always focused on the mission like an arrow. Knowing your teammates makes it easier to write as them in their posts accurately, and letting your teammates know about you does the same for them. (Yacks)
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Have a Plan: Runons are a good chance to flex your writing muscle, you learn to write as characters other than yourself, and you get to react to other people's ideas. A common mistake people make in runons is they think that they don't need to plan it out. Remember, when the runon is graded, the judges are looking to read a story, judges in the DB have to read copious amounts of fiction, and ultimately when reading, they just want to be entertained. Get together with your team for the week's phase, and do an outline. "We need to accomplish A, B, and C. We'll start with A doing this, and B doing that, then meet up to finish C." You don't need to make it super in depth, just make sure everyone knows where you're going. (Yacks)
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Spell check: Can't stress this enough. If you're using a modern browser, chances are that it will do an automatic
spell check for you. That's not enough. Brush off a copy of Microsoft Word, or Open Office, and use it to check your spelling & grammar. It may not be perfect, but it'll catch little things like when you should use that pesky semi-colon.
Spell-Checking is one of the most important things you can do. Obvious spelling and grammar errors may not be readily apparent to you, but to a set of fresh eyes, they can really stand out. (Yacks)
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Group Editing: You're writing in a team. Use your team. Just like spell checking as mentioned above, a set of fresh eyes can do wonders for the quality of your runon posts. Before you post your reply, send an email out to your team with a copy of your post for them to edit it. If you're a little bit tech savvy, you can use tools like google docs that allow for simultaneous group editing, so you can see what people are writing as they write it. Involve your team, and they'll help you get better. (Yacks)
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Don't make it all about you: Team runons are often designed with the team in mind. The story isn't about you, it's about your team accomplishing a goal. Focus on making sure everyone in your team gets equal "camera time", and use the knowledge you've gained about your team to utilize their strengths and weaknesses to make it a better story. (Yacks)
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Make sure your post advances the storyline/plot. That's the key to making the best use of every person's posting time, especially if you only aim to make one or two posts per person. If there have to be filler posts, agree with your team ahead of time who will write it and what it will say. That way the person who is next to post on advancing the actual plot can begin preparing their post in advance. (Tarax)
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Only One Introduction. Each poster does not have to introduce their own characters. There should be only one introduction post (first post) introducing the characters. All other posts should then follow from that first post. Having multiple "flashback" posts introducing your own character will break the flow of the Run-On, making it less legible. Any new characters can be introduced within the context of the plot; integrating them directly to what has already happened. (Halc)
General Runon Tips
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Establish the Scene: My general rule is to always establish the scene with each of the senses -- sight, smell, sound, feeling. (Jac)
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Don't swear. I learned this the hard way. It may be your character's "thing", but the judges dislike it. Be creative with your language, and you'll find the story will benefit for it. If you absolutely have to cuss, use SW curse words or make something up. Just don't do it in excess. (Tarax)
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Judging Rubric. When writing, it is helpful to know how the judges are going to be grading you. Although there is no Run-On specific criteria, Sarin posted up the basic fiction rubric for the first phase of events. A quick look will tell you that the focus of grading goes towards your storytelling and realism. Storytelling refers to how well you craft your mission. This includes things like plot, character development, and how you follow the given prompt.
Realism is judged based on how you adhere to standard Star Wars and Brotherhood canon (official characters, NPCs, ships, weapons, etc.) and, more importantly, your characters as defined by your Character Sheet. Realism also means that your character (or your team mates' characters) are not gods. Without that sense of danger or possibility of failure, both writing and reading your story will be boring. If you're unsure whether you're making yourself "too good", through in some adversity. Take damage. Become wounded. Require a team mate to save your. Push your self to the limit to get the job done. If it's easy, it's boring.
Read the rubric. (Shad)
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Continuity. Yacks touched upon this somewhat in his other headings, but I'd like to elaborate. An RO involves writing a story as a team. A major focus of this, and what judges will be looking at, is how well your continuity flows from one post to the other. So if DJK Rex loses his lightsaber in Post 3, then he shouldn't magically have it back in Post 6. You and your team need to keep track of these kinds of changes as they're made. One helpful way to do that is by keeping your team up to date (via email) with a TL;DR. Summarize the main points of your post and any changes made to the situation or characters involved. That way, you help ensure no one makes a mistake down the line. (Shad)
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Originality. Judges will be reading a lot of entries, and many of them will be fairly similar. You want yours to stand out, so try and do different things with your plot. You must still keep all other aspects in mind (ie. realism, continuity, etc...), but trying to do something out of the ordinary may be a key factor in getting your entry noticed. This also applies to general fiction submissions. (Halc)