bailee needs help with depth/description

Hiya, bailee! I want to start off by apologizing for the long delay in responding to this thread. Thank you so much for your patience!

Communicating character reactions, especially when they involve more subtle/nuanced feelings, is in my opinion one of the most difficult challenges to tackle in RPing and generally in writing. One thing that I like to do to try to overcome this is think of posts in terms of theme and mood versus reactions/actions. Reframing a post this way can help you add depth to posts by drawing on memories and musings that aren't necessarily direct reactions but that are still relevant to your overall post.

Here is an example of what I mean. In this post, Julian is reacting to question of who he is without his family name. Fundamentally, the post is about identity. And thus, we get the following paragraph:

Who was he? Underneath the constant performance and the charisma wielded like a shield, who was Julian? He was a boy that loved to spend his hours inventing useless trinkets, such as handmade lamps for Sunny’s bedroom or little wooden figurines for Cathy to play with. He was a boy who wasn't good at painting but tried nonetheless, making grotesque artworks that Jackal often mocked. He was a boy always eager to play hero, recalling fondly all the times he used to swing around a wooden sword and challenge Larissa. He was a boy that played, frolicked, dreamt, and lived. He was — he was a boy.

And that wasn’t enough. Being just Jules wasn’t enough.

This paragraph isn't the answer that Julian is planning on saying aloud. Rather, it is a stream of internal musings that connect to the general theme - identity - as well as an underlying mood - unease.

Exercise!

I want you to find a post that you feel exemplifies a strong theme and mood. Identify both and indicate which parts of the post make the theme and/or mood obvious.

Good luck!