Last year, I helped contribute to PaRaProMo by building a race...and hoo boy, could you feel the "clueless ameteur" coming from it! I mean, absolutely ZERO flavor text, RP values next to all of the traits, and nothing novel about any of the traits as I just pulled from the ARG. Compared to the rest of the races, mine looks like most half-assed of the bunch.
Any advice going forward to maybe not look so brainless at race creation?
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First rule of race building: the race builder rules in the Advanced Race Guide are just guidelines. It's entirely possible to create a race that's quite overpowered despite being under the RP budget, or underpowered despite being over it. There's no intrinsic value to that budget and most experienced GM's judging your work will completely ignore it.
The second thing I'm going to touch on is a more general approach to building anything for your game. You want to pick a firm starting point and build your concept around this. That could be an abstract conceptual idea, or it could be a firm mechanical ability you want to build a race around. A lot of people may snidely make remarks about "rollplaying" if you use mechanics as your starting point, but there's nothing wrong with it. What matters is how you build from that point. For instance if you want to build a race that's focused around incredible jumping ability you might end up with something that is basically identical to if you started with a "cricket-folk" concept, they're two different starting points that can lead to the same destination. The important part is that your concept grows from that starting point and you flesh it out. If you start with a concept you'll need to marry it with interesting mechanics, and if you start with interesting mechanics you'll need to develop a solid concept that brings it together.
Once you have your starting point, you want to develop on it. If you chose a mechanical ability, maybe think about what other qualities would go along with that ability. If you chose something more conceptually abstract, maybe start thinking about specific strengths or weaknesses the race might have. Don't worry about putting too much on the drawing board, in fact you want to go overboard at this stage. Keep brainstorming and putting ideas on the table, with the full intent of bringing in the hedge-clippers later. You want to consider both flavor and mechanics as you go; they go hand-in-hand and should complement each other.
As you build, try to think like a player; look at those abilities and ask yourself which classes and builds you can see this working with. If you start leaning too hard in a very specific direction, try to correct. A well-built race should support a variety of playstyles. If it's too strongly geared for a specific class or build type, it's going to feel munchkiny if you take advantage of that and underwhelming if you do not. All races will have certain predispositions, just don't make it excessive. This is also how you consider a race's balance; it's not how many abilities or features the race has, it's how they're used. A bunch of disparate abilities with no synergy is going to be a lot weaker than a few tightly focused benefits that are specifically tailored to what you're doing.
Once you feel like you've got something complete, now you want to start pruning. Look at your concept and think about which abilities are most expendable. Some might be repackaged as alternate racial abilities, but for the most part your goal is to start paring it back. Look at other similar races as guidelines and try to ensure you're comparable to them. If you have particularly unique abilities take some time to think hard on how they might be abused (even small things like subtypes can matter a lot!). Don't be afraid to do something unique, but do be mindful that some things haven't been done for a reason.
At the end of the day, things like flavor text, writing, and presentation have to come from you. And there's really only one way to get better at writing: practice! Learn and grow from your mistakes, and always seek to improve.
From your post it sounds as if you went about it from the perspective of these things would be mechanically cool, so I'll add them, and so you just ended up with a bunch of cool mechanics with no real theme or flavor.
Instead you might try thinking of a race and culture first. Picture what they look look, how they act, how they think, why they do those things and what makes them interesting and unique and then use the ARG to try and make your ideas have mechanical backing.
Personally when it comes to race I would either have one specific mechanically ability in mind and think about what kind of race or culture would have that.
Or just start with a concept for the culture and make mechanics that fit it.
Honestly, look at humans mechanically. A bonus feat and some extra skill points help to make it one of the best races available. Humans might not be the best at everything, but there never a bad choice for anything.
Aim for something like that mechanically when it comes to a race and you'll be fine.
From the sound of it you chose the mechanics of the race and then added the fluff. Try doing it the opposite way. Write up an outline of the descriptions of what the race is before you make any choices. Don’t get into the details or game mechanics until after the outline is done. It should be similar to the first part of the races in the book. Have at least a sentence for each section Habitat, Physical Description, Society, Relations, Alignment and Religion, and Adventures.
Once you have the outline then start choosing the game mechanics. Everything you chose should be something that fits in with something from your outline. After you have the game mechanics done go back and rewrite the final version of your description.
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