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Creative Writing Post Format BBCodes (Novel, Poem)
paranormalis.com
Hey everyone, I hope you're doing good!
I've been working quite a bit on the site behind the scenes, and I'm ready to unveil this new forum feature.
I created a series of BBCodes, that now make it possible to publish your content in styles that are greatly different from regular forum posts. This opens many possibilities, one of which is the focus of this announcement.
Posting creative writing on the forum is fun. But it looks like crap. The text you are reading right now looks fine for a forum discussion, for an announcement. But it's not a format that's suitable for publishing your writing. The font is too small, the text area is way too wide, etc. It breaks the immersion and doesn't feel like you're reading a novel, a fiction story, or a book at all. Let's fix this!
Here is the NOVEL FORMAT. It allows you to post your content as a book/novel page, within your posts. Effectively allowing you to "publish" so to speak, your writing here, on the forum, in a format that looks and feels like you're reading a book. Alegreya Medium 500, first-line indents, black-on-white, centered images, etc. It's mostly standard and imitates a novel's typography pretty well. As you'll see below, it attempts at recreating the same look and feel, as reading an actual book.
First, here's a title page, followed by the formatting BBCode syntax I used to create it. I decided to take The Two Towers as an example. The image is optional.
The Lord of the Rings
The Two Towers
J.R.R. Tolkien
[novel]
[H1]The Lord of the Rings
The Two Towers[/H1]
[ATTACH type="full"]18023[/ATTACH]
[C]J.R.R. Tolkien[/C]
[/novel]We have a couple of tags between brackets, here.
- NOVEL: It's the primary bracket that contains what you want to be published as such.
- H1/2/3: Heading tag for titles. 1 is for the novel's title. 2 for chapters. 3 For sub-sections inside a chapter.
- C: It's a capitalized, centered italics tag used for chapter numbers, highlighted quotes, or the author's name above.
Now, a short excerpt from chapter 3 of TTT. I modified it for convenience and included a paragraph divider and a centered quote.
Chapter III
The Riders of Rohan
‘You are our guide,’ said Gimli, ‘and you are skilled in the chase. You shall choose.’
‘My heart bids me go on,’ said Legolas. ‘But we must hold together. I will follow your counsel.’
‘You give the choice to an ill chooser,’ said Aragorn. ‘Since we passed through the Argonath my choices have gone amiss.’ He fell silent, gazing north and west into the gating night for a long while.
- - -
‘Where sight fails the earth may bring us rumour,’ said Aragorn. ‘The land must groan under their hated feet.’ He stretched himself upon the ground with his ear pressed against the turf. He lay there motionless, for so long a time that Gimli wondered if he had swooned or fallen asleep again. Dawn came glimmering, and slowly a grey light grew about them. At last he rose, and now his friends could see his face: it was pale and drawn, and his look was troubled.
-
They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!
-
‘The rumour of the earth is dim and confused,’ he said. ‘Nothing walks upon it for many miles about us. Faint and far are the feet of our enemies. But loud are the hoofs of the horses. It comes to my mind that I heard them, even as I lay on the ground in sleep, and they troubled my dreams: horses galloping, passing in the West. But now they are drawing ever further from us, riding northward. I wonder what is happening in this land!’
‘Let us go!’ said Legolas.
Here's the syntax I used to create it:
[novel]
[C]Chapter III[/C]
[H2]The Riders of Rohan[/H2]
[P]‘You are our guide,’ said Gimli, ‘and you are skilled in the chase. You shall choose.’ [/P]
[P]‘My heart bids me go on,’ said Legolas. ‘But we must hold together. I will follow your counsel.’ [/P]
[P]‘You give the choice to an ill chooser,’ said Aragorn. ‘Since we passed through the Argonath my choices have gone amiss.’ He fell silent, gazing north and west into the gating night for a long while. [/P]
[D]- - -[/D]
[P]‘Where sight fails the earth may bring us rumour,’ said Aragorn. ‘The land must groan under their hated feet.’ He stretched himself upon the ground with his ear pressed against the turf. He lay there motionless, for so long a time that Gimli wondered if he had swooned or fallen asleep again. Dawn came glimmering, and slowly a grey light grew about them. At last he rose, and now his friends could see his face: it was pale and drawn, and his look was troubled. [/P]
[D]-[/D]
[C]They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard![/C]
[D]-[/D]
[P]‘The rumour of the earth is dim and confused,’ he said. ‘Nothing walks upon it for many miles about us. Faint and far are the feet of our enemies. But loud are the hoofs of the horses. It comes to my mind that I heard them, even as I lay on the ground in sleep, and they troubled my dreams: horses galloping, passing in the West. But now they are drawing ever further from us, riding northward. I wonder what is happening in this land!’[/P]
[P]‘Let us go!’ said Legolas. [/P]
[/novel]Let's look at more brackets:
- P: The P bracket is very important. Here, every line equals a paragraph. So each line has to be within its own P bracket. That way, it ensures each paragraph has the proper indent.
- D: Similar to C, it's a bracket used to create a paragraph divider (- - -). I also used it in the example above (-), before and after the quote, to make it pop out more. The font size and style are a little larger than for regular text so that the divider is easy to spot and looks good. So you might not want to use this tag for actual text. Just for a divider.
Now, here's one last example, with images.
Chapter III
The Riders of Rohan
‘Where sight fails the earth may bring us rumour,’ said Aragorn. ‘The land must groan under their hated feet.’ He stretched himself upon the ground with his ear pressed against the turf. He lay there motionless, for so long a time that Gimli wondered if he had swooned or fallen asleep again. Dawn came glimmering, and slowly a grey light grew about them. At last he rose, and now his friends could see his face: it was pale and drawn, and his look was troubled.
‘The rumour of the earth is dim and confused,’ he said. ‘Nothing walks upon it for many miles about us. Faint and far are the feet of our enemies. But loud are the hoofs of the horses. It comes to my mind that I heard them, even as I lay on the ground in sleep, and they troubled my dreams: horses galloping, passing in the West. But now they are drawing ever further from us, riding northward. I wonder what is happening in this land!’
‘Let us go!’ said Legolas.
Take note that images always have their width set to 100%. They'll always be as wide as the book's page. Therefore, they have to be inserted using the "Full image" mode. Not a thumbnail. It's to make sure everything is as standard as possible.
So, here's a short wrap-up:
NOVEL bracket: Main container for your novel
H1 bracket: Your book title
H2 bracket: Chapter titles
P bracket: Each line of your novel
C bracket: Centered italics quotes, all caps
D bracket: Paragraph separator
All these tags will allow you to use this display style, in the BBCode mode.
I updated my John Titor 2K Fanfiction to this new format, it looks way better than before:
Fiction - Num7's John Titor 2K Fanfic
paranormalis.com
I'm aware that this is a little more technical than usual, so feel free to ask any questions you may have. If you want to host your writing project here, I'll be more than happy to help you post it here, in this format.
I also have a POEM FORMAT that's not entirely done yet. To be continued.
--Num7
