Welcome to the Draft forums, our center of development for the site. Please do not rush through this stage. Take time and make your work something to be proud of. Make heavy use of our writers guide and formatting guide throughout writing your piece. Join the Sandbox to work on your article and then post your page here for feedback!
1. Remember that you must get two pieces of criticism on the forum before posting your article to the main site. If you are having trouble getting critiques please come to the discord. The best way to guarantee getting critique is to trade with someone who is also looking for crit. Please refrain from making multiple forum posts for the same article, but feel free to comment on your post when you have updated it.
2. Remember our terminology!
- We use CSD Personnel for testing
- MSTs are "Mobile Specialized Teams", not "Mobile Strike Teams"
- ASFs are our basic security force
- The highest ranking officials of the RPC Authority are the Global Directors. Collectively they are referred to as The Board
- The operations section can have stories for MSTs. Authority Tales can be any stories, Acquired footage lets you have videos that have been taken by the Authority (not from youtube), Acquired Photographs lets you post pictures that have been taken by the Authority (they must be made by you), and Acquired writings let you post writings that have been found by the Authority (Please make use of these!)
- Lesser objects, events and locations can be posted under Authority archive
3. Known Cliches - It is not law to avoid most of these articles, but you should include a new twist if you try!
- Performance enhancing weapons, items, armor- anything that makes a novice an expert
- Reality Bending/Benders – People or things that change reality to suit them
- Irresistible Overpowered things
- Previously existing items – Known from writings, video games or movies. Don’t copy- create
- Insanity/Sanity Producing items
- Resource Pigs - If the killer robot vacuum only does so on diamonds- don’t give it diamonds
- Undeniably Cute/Irresistible items
- Meat Grinders - Anything that serves as a killer that the Authority has to throw countless lives at
- Indestructible Items for no reason
- Enigma-Spewers without reason or story
- Time-Machines
- Creepy Toys
- Zombies
- Straight up Aliens
- Everlasting Power Supplies/Fuel - Mechanical/Electrical items that never require new batteries or a refill of fuel
If you have the skills and give a good twist you can easily subvert a trope and make something interesting out of most of these ideas (Sans the one about straight up copying)
Helpful links
- Common writing mistakes https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/most-common-writing-mistakes/
- How and when to use disasters https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/structuring-your-storys-scenes-pt-5/
- Basic story structure https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/secrets-story-structure-complete-series/
Do not hesitate to ask for help. Best of luck on all your writings and I hope to see them on the site! See the original threads where this information was compiled from here, here, here, and here.
Thanks to DoctorHamm,
ThermicLine,
jetairliner and
James Pitchford