Writing that Commercial!

I'm going to use one of my posts I made on another forum yet again, on the topic of writing an ad for your forum especially for an RPG. Many RPG forums have a guest-friendly board specifically meant for other games to post their ads and in the early days of an RPG's life, can be an amazing aid to bringing in your first members. Just make sure that if you do use these, that you have a similar board for them to link back with their own ads.

...Your ad's first draft probably will require considerable editing regardless of your skill level. 99% of writing is rewriting! One problem a lot of people seem to have is that they windup with a first draft that is overly wordy. Heavy use of large words, long sentences and flowery text only serves to dilute the writing's effect and in a commercial this is particularly harmful. You could probably say the same thing in half the length or less, which would concentrate the information much more closely and make that same plot summary a lot more riveting. Take these two examples:

"War and death was all the people of Aden knew for hundreds of years, running for their life from the bandits, evil beings, men who wish to claim the world of Aden as theirs, and even the people they loved who went mad. The people desperately needed a hero, they cried out for someone, anyone to save them from this horrible life, some even took their own lives to escape the pain of this world. "

Could be something like...

"War and death were the only things the people of Aden knew. Bandits and evil beings tormented the land with their greed, driving its denizens to desperation and suicide. The people needed a hero."

When you write a commercial, and this is basically what these ads are, you aim for brevity and a poetic feel. The rhythm of the text {first sentence in my example} , as well as moderate use of things like alliteration {"driving its denizens to desperation.."} will help the words sort of fit well in the reader's mind. Aspects of poetic writing also enhance prose quite a bit. Just make sure if you try this stuff that you know what you are doing.

This is an ad I created last year for my own game:

http://forumpromotion.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=29493

Not saying it's ideal, but it did have the highest click through rate of any ad I ever did. That might have been due to the shock factor of the graphic though :P But that's another topic for another day!