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Writing With Style: An Editor's Advice for RPG Writers |
€4,73 |
Average Rating:4.8 / 5 |
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As a new publisher/creator, this book really helped me out. I enjoy making adventures but I struggle with putting them into words. Before, my writing felt like it came from an academic research paper or an appliance manual. Then, I found Writing with Style. Not only did this guide give my writing flow and flavor, but it also made it clear and more concise. Overall, it's a stellar resource and a great investment for any rpg writer. 5/5
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I would recommend Ray Vallese's book to all aspiring TTRPG writers. It's easy to read and full of helpful advice. As I was writing my first adventure, his advice kept popping into my head every time I encountered one of the many pitfalls he warns us about. Thumbs up!
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Thank you, Ray! Maybe one day I can afford your work :-)
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I've been on wiki and fan sites for the last six months or so, and after I summoned the Demon Prince of Apathy, paid homage to H. P. Lovecraft's amateur style, then admitted to Cthulhu that sanity is for the weak, I promised the Internet I would improve my craft. I purchased three classes from the great courses, which were informative, but each took twelve hours a piece to get their message drilled into my soul. In a short span of forty five pages, Ray Vallese summed up those courses and threw in industry pointers, such as cliche words to avoid, over used words, and suggestions on the use of pronouns. I wish I had bought this before the great courses {I got this on sale for $2 or so}, dived right in to my work, and worried about the rest later.
I recommend this product to anyone that wants to take their words seriously. My pilgriwizard to the dark side is complete!
Thanks Ray!
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Get this. Period. Full Stop. Writing with Style is not revolutionary. It is not mind altering or world shattering. Writing with Style is plain common sense and simple writing advice -- which we all forget or ignore and need to be reminded of on a regular basis. I don't write RPGs except for those adventures I run for my players. I do write books, however, and magazine articles, and I have the advantage of a kick-ass copy editor with the mind of a Byzantine lawyer and the heart of a grammar loving Mongol. All of those things, in theory, put me way ahead of the game. But I've had Writing with Style open on my desktop for a couple of months now as I work on a couple of projects and it makes a difference. It makes me think, simplify, write in a way that, I hope will make my copy editor give her grudging approval. Nice job Ray Vallese. I still punctuate by sense of smell, but that's a matter for another book.
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Absolutely terrific book of advice for freelance RPG writers and small publishers. It's packed with useful stuff on how to tighten up your text and will definitely help me improve my writing!
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Full disclosure: Ray edited my work when I wrote for WotC.
That said, I got spoiled by his input (and learned a great from it). This guide provides a great deal of his insight directly to writers. As he points out, Ray didn't write THE definitive style guide, but focused on the areas that he frequently sees when editing gaming material. Many authors setting out to make a name in the RPG/tabletop publishing realm bemoan the fact that they cannot afford an editor. In the earliest days of your career that can be true. But you CAN afford to pick up Ray's advise and I highly recommend you do.
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Since the tender age of ten, I've been in love with RPG's. I learned the fine art of writing for professional publications as a starry-eyed college student. I've taken more writing classes as a journalism major than I care to remember, plus all the English, history and creative writing I could pack in on top of gaming.
This book takes all that great technical advice from any given print journalism or English class and rolls it into one concise document for RPG writers. It also catches a lot of practical mistakes that many of us have had to learn the hard way. (i.e. getting barked at by our editor or boss.) I can't recommend this book enough.
Please, if you are considering writing anything for a game company, self publishing any game content, or even starting your own game company- Do yourself, your fans, and potential customers a huge favor and read this book! Follow this advice as much as you reasonably can and you won't go wrong.
Also, I wanted to give a big shout out to the examples in this book. Not only are they perfect for illustrating the points being made, but they're extremely amusing. I must find a way to use Tum Tum the marshmallow elemental somewhere in a game, just not anything I intend to publish. Lots of love for the T$R mage word replacement anecdote, too.
Keep up the good work!
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I find this book a more complete guide to writing for those of you who wish to submit your work to a publisher or even if you want to self-publish. At 44 pages, it cover many of the elements needed for the RPG style. He gives us examples and suggestions on phrase stuctures, run-on sentences, word use, participles, player-text versus GM-text, etc.
If you're submitting your work, he even recommends asking the publisher if they have a ''Style Guide''. Something I didn't even know existed, but then, I'm not a professional writer nor did I study journalism.
Ray does a very good job of showing us the little thing need to write with style. Venger's book mentions this only briefly, were as Ray goes in depth.
I believe that both of these books would well together, but that if you can only chose one, then go with ''Writing with Style''. For only 2$ more you get more bang for your buck.
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If you're a freelance RPG writer, aspiring writer or just want your fan material to read better, do yourself a favor and get this.
It's easy to read, there are many good tips and the examples are clear. It makes so much sense.
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Buy this. Read it. Read it again.
Ray Vallese has written the TTRPG equivalent of Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" or Truby's "The Anatomy of Story." It is a book I never expected to see, and one that I am incredibly glad now exists.
As the Managing Editor of a 3rd party publisher, this text hits close to home. I have already sent it to my Lead Writer, and it will be required reading for all of our contractors. It is plain, simple, and forthright. But most of all it is applicable to our work where so many texts of this sort aren't.
So buy this book. Keep it close. Revisit it often. You will become a stronger writer as a consequence.
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An Ehn’s Gaming Foundry review:
Ah, Writing with Style: An Editor’s Advice for RPG Writers. This…this is a book that I initially did not want to buy. To give you a bit of history on me, I’m prideful and handsome, and I don’t like admitting that there’s places I can improve, especially in places where I believe I am talented. Because of this, this book sat in my cart for about 4 hours while I went back and forth before finally swallowing my pride and getting it.
I am very glad I did.
The thing about this book is that I can’t really review it like I normally do, because it’s not my normal type of book to review. I can’t really run it down, because really, this book is a sum of its parts. No one part of it is going to completely fix your writing, and the author goes out of their way to tell you this. What it will do is give you a clear path on problems that you may be having with grammar, delivery, extraneous words, and all sorts of other things that even the best writers still do. And the thing is, having each one of these placed into its own section is like a targetted guide on how to properly fix your problems.
Out of any book I’ve owned, I may say this is the one for which I am most thankful for proper bookmarking, giving me a checklist to go through when I write something, so that I can check off each individual section, and double check the ones I know are problems for myself. Each section gives solid advice in a tone which doesn’t feel condescending (that was one of my biggest fears here) along with clear examples of what the author is talking about. This alone makes the book worth the price of admission, as like some of you, I require examples instead of just explanations to be able to grasp a concept.
The tone of the book as a whole is warm and welcoming, something that I very much appreciate, and there feels as though there’s a genuine desire by the author to educate their audience. Despite the book being 40+ pages, it’s an incredibly easy read (I might have taken about 30 minutes to go through it once before giving it a second read), and it has become an indispensable resource for me since picking it up.
Mechanics: X/5
Doesn’t really apply, but I’d give it a 5 if it did.
Thematics: 5/5
The only way I can rate the thematics is by the tone of the book, and that was enough for me to give it my highest rating. The terminology used and the tone of the book are just what I would want from something like this, and I just…I really like it.
Final Thoughts: 5/5
To give you an idea of my thoughts on this book, the file’s saved in my computer as “Designer’s Bible”, and that sums up my thoughts on it. Writing with Style by Ray Vallese is concise in getting across very important issues in writing, and really the worst thing I have to say about this book is that it didn’t come out sooner.
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I run my own RPG publishing company, so I rarely review products from other companies. I don't want to give other publishers the idea that I'm playing favoritism if I like a product or more importantly, in the event that I don't like a product (or have a similar product), writing the review to discourage others from buying it.
This book demands a response.
Writing With Style: An Editor's Advice for RPG Writers, is quite simply one of the best writing guides I've read. The PDF gives established writers and aspiring writers alike a wealth of information on grammar, style, word usage; I could go on and on.
Writing With Style: An Editor's Advice for RPG Writers has already helped me refine a manuscript I'm currently working on, and I'm not even finished reading the pdf! I encourage anyone seeking to hone their wordsmithing skills to buy this product immediately.
If I could ask for one thing, it would be to get this book into Print on Demand as soon as possible.
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This is the book I've spent the last few years looking for. Clear, simple, style advice with a focus on tabletop gaming. Every creator who is publishing on DTRPG or the DMs Guild should buy and read this book. It really is that good.
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