Post by flippedside on Feb 18, 2009 14:31:56 GMT -8
For fun, Trinity and I are starting something new. Each post will address a different thought about writing and role-playing based on my own experiences…and accumulated knowledge. It seems to be something largely missing from the online role-playing community. Too often, posts suffer from the same mistakes, simply because people don’t know how to make it better. So my thought is to write about something that will make for stronger posts and role-playing, and hopefully also inspire conversation. I am leaving these posts open for replies, so that others can add their thoughts and experiences. As the first post, this is more of an introduction than a thorough piece on character development (that's what the fancy title means: making good characters).
One of the hardest challenges for writers is the tension between good reading and fast action…and developing strong character with a unique voice and solid internal understanding. In a story, this comes out to be the time spent showing the character’s thoughts/feelings, and the time spent doing something. It’s the doing something that makes the story interesting, but the character development that keeps us personally involved with the story. Lack in either one makes for, at best, a poor story. (At its worst, you feel as if the author has raped you of your time—time better spent doing something else.)
In role-playing, a new tension is added: that of not being able to control the other character(s). At least in other types of writing, you can control the action in the story by writing the actions of both characters. But in role-playing, you can’t. So how do you keep a post dynamic when you can only bring so much action to your post? Your character is limited in the amount of actions that he can take…and writing just those actions is only going to get you a few sentences at best.
There seem to be two traps that role-playing writers fall into: too much detailing of insignificant information, and too little detailing of internal thoughts and feelings. Both need more internal development of the character. However, overdoing the internal thoughts of the character can also drag a story down. The real solution is to write about the immediate thoughts and feelings (and the consequential actions) that a character has…But have it going somewhere.
Emotions are always taking us somewhere and developing into something new. They aren’t static any more than our thoughts are. To be in the moment with your character and see through their eyes and feel their emotions allows you to accurately express internal dialogue and the resulting external actions. Since role-playing focuses more on the individual characters than on fast action, learning to piece together and then effectively express what your character is feeling is an important skill.
It takes hard work and time to think through everything that your character is thinking and feeling in a given moment, but the results are well worth it. It’s even harder to then express those feelings in similes that make sense but also add a fresh perspective to that emotion.
Here is what I mean. Anger is a strong emotion that everyone feels at least once in a while. Our characters are going to eventually find themselves in situations that make them feel angry. Simply writing, “Kaye felt angry” is dull. It might be accurate, but it doesn’t give the reader any sense of what Kaye’s anger feels like. “Kaye felt hot anger building inside of her” is better, but…it’s a cliché. We kind of understand that her anger felt hot and it was getting hotter, but it still feels really flat. “Kaye felt a dull ache that opened like a void inside of her, a gnawing rage that threatened to overwhelm her vision and swallow her whole. She pushed the anger to the side, but it kept swarming over her, drawing her down into the darkness of its embrace.” Not perfect, but way better. In the last one, you can really feel Kaye’s anger. I didn’t even really need to name it, but I added that to make it clearer.
Honestly, I rarely put enough time into an individual post to bring that much dynamism to it. When you’re writing quickly to add to an online story, it’s easy to slack off in descriptions and fall back on clichés and simple descriptions. Bringing the emotions in a post to life takes time, effort, and considerable thought. On the other hand, they allow you to participate more fully in the story as you come to truly know and understand your characters…and they make it so much more fun for others to role-play with you. Everyone enjoys reading complex, dynamic posts that lets him or her see into other characters and experience their emotions with them. It’s what builds a good story. It also gives the other role-players things for their characters to respond to and ideas for new places to bring the story, thus allowing other players to have a richer role-playing experience themselves.
One of the hardest challenges for writers is the tension between good reading and fast action…and developing strong character with a unique voice and solid internal understanding. In a story, this comes out to be the time spent showing the character’s thoughts/feelings, and the time spent doing something. It’s the doing something that makes the story interesting, but the character development that keeps us personally involved with the story. Lack in either one makes for, at best, a poor story. (At its worst, you feel as if the author has raped you of your time—time better spent doing something else.)
In role-playing, a new tension is added: that of not being able to control the other character(s). At least in other types of writing, you can control the action in the story by writing the actions of both characters. But in role-playing, you can’t. So how do you keep a post dynamic when you can only bring so much action to your post? Your character is limited in the amount of actions that he can take…and writing just those actions is only going to get you a few sentences at best.
There seem to be two traps that role-playing writers fall into: too much detailing of insignificant information, and too little detailing of internal thoughts and feelings. Both need more internal development of the character. However, overdoing the internal thoughts of the character can also drag a story down. The real solution is to write about the immediate thoughts and feelings (and the consequential actions) that a character has…But have it going somewhere.
Emotions are always taking us somewhere and developing into something new. They aren’t static any more than our thoughts are. To be in the moment with your character and see through their eyes and feel their emotions allows you to accurately express internal dialogue and the resulting external actions. Since role-playing focuses more on the individual characters than on fast action, learning to piece together and then effectively express what your character is feeling is an important skill.
It takes hard work and time to think through everything that your character is thinking and feeling in a given moment, but the results are well worth it. It’s even harder to then express those feelings in similes that make sense but also add a fresh perspective to that emotion.
Here is what I mean. Anger is a strong emotion that everyone feels at least once in a while. Our characters are going to eventually find themselves in situations that make them feel angry. Simply writing, “Kaye felt angry” is dull. It might be accurate, but it doesn’t give the reader any sense of what Kaye’s anger feels like. “Kaye felt hot anger building inside of her” is better, but…it’s a cliché. We kind of understand that her anger felt hot and it was getting hotter, but it still feels really flat. “Kaye felt a dull ache that opened like a void inside of her, a gnawing rage that threatened to overwhelm her vision and swallow her whole. She pushed the anger to the side, but it kept swarming over her, drawing her down into the darkness of its embrace.” Not perfect, but way better. In the last one, you can really feel Kaye’s anger. I didn’t even really need to name it, but I added that to make it clearer.
Honestly, I rarely put enough time into an individual post to bring that much dynamism to it. When you’re writing quickly to add to an online story, it’s easy to slack off in descriptions and fall back on clichés and simple descriptions. Bringing the emotions in a post to life takes time, effort, and considerable thought. On the other hand, they allow you to participate more fully in the story as you come to truly know and understand your characters…and they make it so much more fun for others to role-play with you. Everyone enjoys reading complex, dynamic posts that lets him or her see into other characters and experience their emotions with them. It’s what builds a good story. It also gives the other role-players things for their characters to respond to and ideas for new places to bring the story, thus allowing other players to have a richer role-playing experience themselves.
