HMD

[somakemelaugh]

How are things? Is Undertaker too creepy? Not creepy enough? Giggling too much? Don't be shy! Let me know!

Comments

[kneedsocks]

Hey there! I wanted to reach out because I remembered you saying on the riverview mod plurk about branching out more that you were having a hard time getting tags from other people. With that in mind, I'd specifically looked to Undertaker's recent catch-all log and Wing's post in the Memoria mingle. I was hoping to help by tagging them, but I realized I was having a hard time finding things to respond to. I think others might also be having the same problem, so I was hoping to give some feedback on why, and suggest some things that you could do that might help.

The most basic problem I had with all of them is that they're extremely vague.

I'm going to quote one of Undertaker's prompts to talk about it a little:

"He prefers to grieve in private, when old scars begin to fester again. It would have been easier to take care of at home in London, back where he lived alone, but the old wounds haven't irritated in some time. But the city is bent on remembering those lost, so he'll participate and hang a lantern of his own from the front porch of his home."

I want to start with the third sentence, because that's the one that actually starts to set up a scene. I say starts to, because the description doesn't seem finished. He's putting up a lantern. So what? Is he having a hard time of it? Is he standing precariously on a stool? Has he decorated the lantern outrageously? What is there about this scene that will differentiate it from the dozens of NPCs a prospective tagger's character has already seen putting up lanterns? I don't know from the description you've given, which makes it hard for me to tag it with any sort of meaningful response.

I also wanted to talk about the first two sentences, because right now they don't seem to help your tag at all. That's not to say that introspection is a bad or unnecessary thing. Having meta from your characters thoughts in the brackets can make a thread more meaningful to the players. But the important thing to remember about introspection is that it should connect back to the character's actions. Right now I know that Undertaker thinks of loss as a wound. I don't know how that changes his actions in hanging the lantern. What do those thoughts have to do with his expression? With his body language? Has it changed the way he's decorated his lantern? Has it made him change the way he's dressed? Is it going to make him snap at people if they pass by while he's putting the lantern up, or would he be likely to invite them to help?

A starter that answers those kinds of questions in its descriptions gives people things to react to. You might have seen people talking about "hooks" in tags before. This kind of thing is what they mean. Not every tag needs to have a strong hook, of course, but when it comes to writing starters, I think you could do a lot to make yours more taggable by asking yourself 'what's happening here that will stand out to someone passing by?'

Don't be afraid to have your character directly interact with passerby, too. A really good, easy way to make a hook is to have your character ask a question out loud to people around them. It's up to the people tagging you to figure out how their character would respond to yours, of course, but the more you can help give them things to respond to, the better. I'd suggest looking over other people's starters, and trying to figure out what the hooks they're including in their tags are, to see what kind of things you might use in your own tags.

[somakemelaugh]

That's really good feedback right there! Thanks so much! I'm too tired to fuss with the posts right now but I saw this and I wanted to reach out to you for giving me this advice. I'll definitely keep that in mind and change things up soon!