So you want to be a better roleplayer?[h1]Read.[/h1]Read the thread you're signing up for, so that some of your questions may be answered without your needing to ask. Read the other players' character sheets, so you can design relationship potential within your character: romance, rivalry, friendship. Read [i]other[/i] threads too, even the ones you have no intentions of joining, to see how other players handle this same process.

Read classical literature for its masterful grasp of language, and to understand the historical context of many of our favorite clichés. Read Young Adult lit for fast-paced, gripping plot ideas.

Read good books to learn what works, and what to do. Read bad books to learn what [i]doesn't[/i] work, and what [i]not[/i] to do.

Read resources on your characters' careers and hobbies. Whether it's [url=https://www.heraldsnet.org/saitou/parker/Jpglossa.htm]heraldry[/url], [url=https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pwp/tofi/medieval_english_ale.html]brewing[/url], or [url=https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/]computer programming,[/url] you owe it to your character, and to your readers, to portray these activities with some degree of accuracy. It will also help you to write longer posts, as you will suddenly know some of the jargon, some of the details to which you should be paying attention while on these topics.

Furthermore, engage yourself with other types of texts entirely: film, poetry, comics, video games, short story magazines, pulps; because you never know where a good story may arise, and because creativity takes many forms indeed. T.S. Eliot once said that "good writers borrow, great writers steal," so why would you not want to steal from as wide and diverse a selection as possible? That, after all, is how your writing becomes truly unique and inspired; ideas are not created in a vacuum. [i]Star Wars[/i] is just [i]Flash Gordon[/i] plus Westerns plus Kurosawa. [i]The Witcher[/i] is just [i]Elric of Melniboné[/i] plus Slavic folklore.

Read.