This guide is written by an experienced roleplayer, MineLegotia and Equestria, and aims to provide a good guide on how to write well within the Commonwealth of Sovereign States’ Regional Message Board. So if you wish to write well and not write the Pacific level slop, this is the guide for you.
What does a Story Need?
When I say story, one must first understand that this is the same with saying ‘roleplaying’ in the context of NationStates. The difference between the two is that in roleplaying, you are playing a role within a story. In the case of NationStates, this means you end up playing the role of something from your nation within a story of your nation. Or in other words, when you're roleplaying, all that you're doing is playing a character within a story. And if you're roleplaying by yourself? You're writing a story.
This means that at the end of the day, you’re writing a story that is trying to be compelling and good for others to read. No doubt if you spent enough time on the regional message boards, you would understand that some posts aren’t really stories as much as declarations. Declarations are not good stories. Saying that you invaded another country, razed their cities, and raised their interest rates by 3% is not good roleplaying.
This is because a story contains three things, [1] characters to read about, [2] events to see them in, and [3] reasons to care about them. Often, when you’re first starting out, you often lack the first and the third.
An example of really bad Roleplaying
As you can see here, this is bad. There are events, but there aren’t characters to read about, nor reasons to give a damn about what I wrote eight years ago. And more often than not, you might be starting here. If not, congrats. You're already better than me when I started out.
This short example, with eases tells you what need to write a good story. [1]Characters to read about, [2] events to see them in, and [3] reasons to care about them. As long as you have all three, everything else is a matter of technical issues and practice.
Basic Rules of Writing
To not dump upon you an entire degree’s worth of English material, there are several basic rules of writing:
Keep punctuation correct;
Make your writing clear and specific;
Avoid confusing terms;
Be consistent; &
Write, Read, and Listen more.
These five points are the basics of writing, and will allow you to write in a manner that allows people to enjoy and understand with ease. Issues in writing can easily degrade an otherwise good RP into the void, so please make sure that your punctuations are correct, you write clearly, and that you also avoid using confusing terms - i.e use a vague german term when using an English term would work.
When being consistent, this simply means making sure that your writing does not contradict itself. If you say X is Y, keep it as so, and don’t change it in a way that can confuse the audience. This also applies to scaling and what a nation can and cannot do. Don’t suddenly change their capabilities to suit the situation.
And finally, write more. You must understand this one simple point. You will start out writing badly and that is inevitable. As long as you are willing to learn from others and write more, your writing will get better. But it will never get better if you don’t write more. You will never know how to get better if you never read more. And you will never be able to get better if you don’t listen from other people’s input.
Writing is a skill, and by leveraging a community, you can get good at it really quickly.
How to Write the Plot! What’s Going to Happen?
As all stories that occur, you have to first decide what is going to happen in the story. It is imperative that before you write, you figure out first what is going to happen.
Do not make stuff up as you go. You can make the details up sure, but we mean the big picture stuff. This is a vital part to making your RP makes sense. And is also one of the simpler things to handle.
However, there really isn’t much rule on what is allowed to happen as long as it doesn’t violate NationStates Terms of Services. Most rules on writing tend to question the consistency of things happening along with how to write it properly. So, go wild with your ideas!
Where's It Going to Happen? Now, once you have done the basic planning of ‘hey I want to do X, Y, Z,”, you will inevitably begin writing - hopefully.
When you write, you want to make it clear where it is occurring. You needn’t go full gothic and describe every single detail. But a way to make your story more impactful, is to describe where it is occurring.
The 'where' of your story is quite important, as when you write you will inevitably need to describe the location or what room your characters are in. Suitable description of the place can allow you to further worldbuild your society without needing to rely on character dialogue.
Seeing the blood stain on the wall is enough to tell you that the place the characters are at is dangerous, rather than having some character say that it is dangerous.
Being able to describe a place in your plot, will serve you well as it can help build up the ‘vibe’ of a scene or of your nation. Allowing you to do more with little. So, pick your set pieces well in where you want things to happen, as it can help you set the plot in motion if you set the place up well.
Who’s getting Involved? Since you’re writing, you will inevitably need to write characters. These people will often be the vehicle in which people understand your story from. So writing a proper character can be what breaks or makes your story.
Further details on character writing will be provided in the next section, but for now in terms of the plot - figure out who you want to be involved in the plot, instead of making new characters on the fly. As it is much more easier to reuse characters than making new ones.
Why is it Happening? The most important beat of the plot is quite the one that starts off screen - why does the plot, that you have planned, occur in universe? We know, out of universe, that it is occurring because you the writer want it to happen, but why in universe?
What sets up the civil war in your nation? What causes the colonel to overthrow the republic? What causes the economic recession?
Being able to set up at least why something happens in your country, and then demonstrating how it works, in conjunction with what, where, and who is involved, will allow you to write the beginnings of a story.
This why, has to be consistent and easily traceable. It should be easily explainable in a full picture, why X leads to Y. The characters don’t need to know that, but the audience should.
Character Writing Who, why?
When you write a character, you must understand that you are writing a vehicle for people to understand the plot. So you must be able to explain why that vehicle is engaging with the plot.
The solution could be simple, ‘oh they’re a politician and thats why they’re involved’. But not everyone’s going to write about politicians. The commoners, the soldier, maybe the journalist too. This means you need to make much more compelling reasons why people would risk their lives over the plot.
This, is something you need to be able to convey to the audience. It can be simple, it can be complex, but it has to be conveyed to the audience on why they care about the story. Because having the audience know why the characters are invested, allows them to be invested in turn.
People will root for characters, and they will read because they want to know what happens to those characters. So give them a good reason on why they’re engaged with the plot, and the audience will read your writing, no matter how contrived it may be.
Who, how? When writing about characters, there are many ways to write about them. This is how you write your characters, and it's an art, as there is no proper way to write characters. But there are some categories you should fulfill when writing about them.
The most simple one, is to describe enough of them that they become a distinct character that people can imagine. How do they act? What do they feel? How do they move? The minuitate of a character allows people to slowly build up a mental image of your characters. As after all, through writing, you can't convey everything. The importance of how you write your character cannot be understated - as they are how the readers see the world unfold. If the character is not written properly, the story and RP tends to fall apart. At minimal, you must be able to convey properly what they are doing, what are their limits, and what their goals are.
Who? And what of your characters? Whilst most people often write regarding the leaders of their countries, you can write about the mundane folk, people on the ground, people at the scene of an incident, etc.
As long as you write them properly, you can explore different aspects of your countries. In peacetime or wartime. How they treat one another, how the actions of their countries paint their lives. Roleplay after all is about pretending to be something else - and NationStates provides you the ability to pretend to be in a world wholly different than ours. So explore it, and not just the limited range that diplomatic actions have.
Roleplaying with Others General Manners
A rule of thumb regarding Roleplaying, is that, you must first coordinate OOC-ly with the other participant. If you want to RP with someone, better communicate with them that you want to.
Communication is important, as if the both of you don’t communicate, you both won’t understand what the other sides has, and the longer you RP without communicating the more than likely you two might end up arguing about some minituate that wastes everyone’s time - so, go communicate.
Godmodding and Realism Similarly, when communicating and all, you must understand that your nations have limits. People don’t like a person coming in with a “Win All” button unless its agreed upon beforehand. Godmodding, as this behaviour is called, is often associated with griefing as it often manifests as doing something that the other side would blatantly not approve of.
In addition, even if your godmodding is “realistic”, realism is not a hard rule. Realism is only a hard rule when the other players agree that in their RP, they want realism. If not, Realism is not applied to a given RP. Meaning that at the end of day, communication is key.
Joining Existing Roleplays When joining existing shared roleplays - such can be seen in the RP Index - it is always a trickery and confusing process of trying to join a preexisting map.
Its not always a good idea to join such a shared roleplay, but it can be an enriching experience to get to know others and learn from them.
There are some caveats to joining an already existing shared roleplay, more often than not, you are stuck with small bad positions on the map. If that is the case, simply take the smaller positions or negotiate with existing players.
You are late to the roleplay after all, and being polite and asking where you can get plots is a necessity. Plus, roleplaying with less and in a disadvantageous spot could help you in writing better as you have to write within the limitations of your nation.
Most importantly, you also have to learn about the setting you’re joining. The closest equivalent could be like joining a preexisting Dungeons and Dragons party, meaning there is lore and stuff that you haven’t caught up on. So I recommend regularly asking others about the lore and circumstances which you are joining.
Be polite, curious, and courteous, and joining shared existing Roleplays will be fun. And who knows, maybe form it you can join a new shared roleplay in a better position!
Conclusion
From this relatively short and flawed guide. You can take away three simple points - plan out your plot, communicate with your RP partners, and describe your characters well. Do these three things well, and you’re already better than the average RMB poster. So, Plan. Communicate. Describe. Do that and you’ll be on track to becoming a proper writer.
For example, that earlier example of my writing? Can be made into something better. Like as follows.
With characters and a turn towards their actions, you can elevate mere words of an announcement into a truly captivating story.
Remember - Plan, Communicate, Describe. And then Learn.
The Multiversal Federal Empire of MineLegotia and Equestria.
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MineLegotia and Equestria, and aims to provide a good guide on how to write well within the Commonwealth of Sovereign States’ Regional Message Board. So if you wish to write well and not write the Pacific level slop, this is the guide for you. 
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