Action and Prose -- what are they?

It's fairly simple, in fact!

Action style is the style of writing with the speech as normal text and the actions denoted somehow. It is generally known as "first person" and while it can use any of the three (first person, second person, third person) it's most often written in third person. It can be written in either present or past tense, depending on what the RPer wants to do. This would be an example of action style writing:


Yeah, I've been there.

[Jospeh shrugs, scratching his head and clearly confused. He clearly knows something, even if he's not all that inclined to tell it to Manny.]

But, that's no big deal. So how about your girlfriend?

[He changed the subject awfully quickly...]






Prose style is the style of writing as if reading a book, with actions as normal text and speech in quotation marks. It is generally known as "third person" but can use any of the three (first person, second person, third person) though it's often written in third person, if not as often as action tags. It can be written in either present or past tense, depending on what the RPer wants to do. This would be an example of prose style writing:


He frowned a little, shifting on his feet and scratching the back of his neck with a sigh. What was he supposed to say to her? He didn't know...

"Um..." Well, might as well dive right in, right?

"I'm sorry... about your... you know." More shifting. Why was this so hard. "She was... a great person. Yeah."

Well. Now he felt utterly stupid.




And that's that! Easy, right?

If you need more examples, feel free to ask! We'd be happy to provide them.