lovelorn I do not want to put you on the spot or anything, and I'm glad you came out to answer my question on why we afford so little attention for the writing itself! But I'm curious: what experiences have you had that make it difficult (I assume that's what you meant) to give feedback on writing itself?
There's writing clubs, editors, agents, and other professions/communities where it's rather normal and expected to give advice on writing, so I'd love to get some insight why it's kind of...taboo? in the roleplaying world. One of my fondest recent roleplaying experiences was on
Patisserie, where one of my roleplay partners took the time to message me with some feedback on my writing, and I kinda feel we should normalise letting others know what we like about their writing. And we should normalise asking others how we can make our writing more interesting.
Or even just have threads dedicated to generic writing advice, like when to use long sentences, what's the function of the first line, how to use beats, or whyever should we tell rather than show.
what i mean about it being difficult to give feedback on writing itself is that writing itself at a certain point becomes subjective/based on style; a lot of writing advice is subjective and can't be applied universally. there's the obvious stuff like "have good grammar" or "spell things correctly", of course, but then what about people who break these rules to create runons or fragments to convey certain states of minds (like disorientation, a sense of pressure/speed, etc.)? some people will tell you to be more descriptive in your writing and add more detail (no longer the yellow dress but the voluptuous yellow dress, bulging with the sheer volume of ruffles and lace painstakingly added to it for example) hemingway, on the other hand, is famous for being succinct. one of the most infamous pieces of writing advice i think most people here have heard is to not use the word "said" and instead use, like, "shouted", "exclaimed", "vocalized", whatever: but what if said works better for the sentence/the characterization/etc.?
you bring up "generic writing advice" like when to use long sentences: but just like one person can have an opinion of when to use long sentences, what about writers whose styles don't use long sentences at all? is their writing bad? not necessarily. writing is an art: therefore subjective. there's no rubric that we can meticulously check off that'll fit everyone's style and preference. we can even narrow this down into more specific critique: "show versus tell"/"tell versus show", in your example. when it comes to rp, some people prioritize efficiently communicating things to their partners over showing it, for example; it may be better writing for someone to describe 600 words of their character attacking an enemy in an site-wide event thread with their inner thoughts and turmoil, for example, but it would be easier for their partners if they simply outlined their character attacking in consideration of other rpers in the thread having to read each other's posts, potentially on a event time limit of a day or two. is either more objectively valuable in roleplay?
obviously part of improving as a writer is knowing when to take advice and when to disregard it while developing your own personal style but that's basically what i mean when i say it can be hard to give advice to people because writing can be subjective.
more than that: i think that it's important to note that rp is not necessarily a writing club or a profession. obviously a lot of people take rp seriously and that's not a bad thing, but there are people who think of rp as just a hobby and way to wind down; it's not something that they're trying to become the "best at". it's like gaming: some people want to improve and focus on it, but that doesn't mean you need to walk up to every single person playing a game and tell them, "hey, you should actually be doing it this way instead, here are some tips to improve". it's one thing to tell people what we like about their writing (especially since i wouldn't consider compliments necessarily "advice" strictly speaking) and another one to tell them what we think is bad and what we think they should improve on. this is especially true when you start out: unsolicited criticism can be a reason why a lot of beginners drop their hobbies. but if you want criticism, you can just ask: here, elsewhere, otherwise: i've never seen that being a "taboo" LOL and i've been rping actively in different forms (1on1, forum, discord, skype, jcink, invisionfree, icyboards, proboards, ttrpgs, mmorpgs, etc.) for a decently long time, i feel like; 11+ years.
i agree w/the fact that we should normalize asking other people for advice about how we can make our writing more interesting; like i said in my reply, i try to reach out to writers i admire regularly myself !! however, i don't think people should feel obligated or feel like they're expected to give advice when rping, especially if it's not even mentioned in the site premise or anything. sometimes i want to drop off a post and write about my oc making mad money or regretting their life decisions; i don't want to feel like i'm sitting at my english literature class diligently reviewing my peer's essay. generally speaking i think it's bad to say that anyone "should" partake in their hobby a certain way.
tl;dr writing subjective so no advice is 1sizefitsall, not everyone wants advice or to become the next top rper (tho i personally would like to improve LOL), and i don't think anyone should feel like they have to get or give criticism if they don't want to.
edit: that being said i wouldn't necessarily agree that the rp community "affords so little attention" for the writing itself; i mean, the hobby itself entirely revolves around writing. there's no forum rping without posting/writing; i can agree that maybe there aren't a lot of communities that are explicitly focused on improving as writers when it comes to rp sites versus like, collaboratively telling a story ("character-driven storytelling" being a keyword i've seen in nearly all of the sites' synopses or rules that i've seen recently as a serial site lurker), but that doesn't mean that people aren't focused on writing or actively trying to improve as a writer iykwim.
