The Purpose of a RolePlay Post

I was looking through a few of the old tutorials I had written over on RolePlay Gateway, and spotted this one. It’s a good edition to be added here, I’ve decided. As such, below is a revised version of the tutorial. While designed specifically for RolePlaying, replace ‘post’ with ‘chapter’ and I think it’s equally as pertinent to fiction.

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Each post you make in a RolePlay is your opportunity to contribute positively to the story being played out by the group of writers. Oftentimes, for new RolePlayers it can be difficult to know exactly how to do this. As such, this tutorial is designed to make it a little easier for you.

Three-Fold

There are three primary purposes to a RolePlay post:

1. Reveal your character.
2. Develop the environment.
3. Move the plot forward.

If you do these three things, your posts will certainly have a positive impact on the story, creating an enjoyable read for your fellow players, as well as any silent observers you may have. However, let me elaborate a little on each point in turn.

Revealing your character: Each of your posts should reveal some aspect of your character. Whether it be their appearance, thoughts, personality, attire; any developing traits or quirks, or maybe traits that are regressing and becoming less and less prominent over time.
One mistake often made by inexperienced RolePlayers is revealing everything about a character in the first post. What are you going to write about after that? An introductory post should be just that: An introduction to your character… Letting the reader and other players know that your character exists. Subsequent posts can be used to reveal further aspects of your character. Giving you things to write, and others to read.

Developing the environment: The environment is an essential part of any RolePlay, and is constantly changing: It should be alive. The sun moves across the sky, for example; so if you have two characters sat in the sun, a few posts later (perhaps an hour or so later in ‘In Character’ time), they may well be sat in the shade. Make mention of that. A person in a bar shifts off his stool to go to the bathroom. Make mention of that. It’s important to maintain a ‘real’ feel to the environment.
Also, atmosphere is an important part of the environment. Does moving into the next dungeon hall, for example, mean a deathly silence that weighs heavy on the party? Is the tavern a smoky, smelly place full of tension? Make note of these things.
The environment is the world your readers are drawn into. If a city was made entirely of still backdrops in a movie, with only the main actors moving, not many people would watch it.

Moving the plot forwards: Each of your posts should move the plot forward in some way. What’s the best way to do this? Maybe the easiest is through ‘prompts’ and ‘reactions.’ Let me give you an example:

A Prompt: As John Smith opened the door, he looked to the man he’d been chatting with and cocked his head to indicate the man should follow.

A Reaction: Dave Johnson noticed the strange fellow who’d been sat next to him a few minutes ago make some gesture. Picking up his drink as he stood, Dave walked towards the door.

Rudimentary examples, I know, but they should give an easy understanding of what I mean.
Another major aspect to consider about developing the plot is pacing. What amount of time should each post represent? A minute, a day, a week? Whatever is pertinent to that particular post. For example: Your party of wonderful heroes spends a full day on horseback. There is no need at all to describe every mile. But maybe you need a post where they break for lunch? To give a chance to display their discomfort, complaints, etc. Or do you just wait until they make camp in the evening. The choice, of course, is your own, but it’s something to consider.

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Well, there you have it. A quick overview to the purpose of a RolePlay post. Now you are armed with the tools needed to play a positive part in any RolePlay you join.

Your views

What do you feel RolePlay post or chapter should contain? Do you have tricks you use to maintain any of the points raised above? Share them with us! We’d love to hear what you do and what your opinions are.

A Break Can Be A Good Thing

For just short of two weeks, I’ve been at a friend’s house. As such, I’ve been able to take a break from most of my writing. This blog (though I did manage to get a couple posts published), my novel, and my short story.

While my flow has been disturbed, I believe the break was a perfectly good thing: The mental rest was welcomed, and stepping away from the world of writing has allowed my mind to clear considerably. I’ve returned home, and to my projects with more ideas and a greater perspective.

Being able to focus on more than my writing, I found that ideas popped into my head from time to time. Ideas that perhaps wouldn’t have done so otherwise. Ideas that I’ve been able to mill over and develop, ready now to apply them.

It’s interesting for me to see the change in clarity that has occurred. Previously, when working on projects, I’ve taken the mindset that I should work until finished. This little hiatus has shown me that a break can be a good thing.

Your Breaks

What are your thoughts on taking an extended break from writing? Do you gain or lose focus? What are you experiences here? Let us know!

Battling Writer’s Block The Easy Way

All writers know of, and dread, writer’s block. That sudden lack of inspiration, a depletion of creativity. A costing of money, even. It can be one of the great banes of writers’ lives, and is never at all welcomed. So, how can we battle it? How can we unblock our creative pipes?

Try This Simple Irony

My writing of this post is actually a result of my own writer’s block. I had absolutely no idea what to write on my blog, which is probably mostly due to the fact that I have been rather distracted this past week with various away-from-computer issues. So, my mind has been entirely in some other direction than writing of any kind. Let alone writing about writing.

So, I decided, “Hey, I’ve got writer’s block, let’s write about that.” And as you can see, it’s actually worked pretty well. Though probably not as long as my other blog posts, I’ve been able to actually produce a post for you all to read. And hopefully a post that will be helpful.

If you have writer’s block, whether in regards to your novel, blog or any other type of writing, try writing about your writer’s block. It could work wonders in getting those pipes nice and clean once again, at which point… Hey presto! You can write again.

Your Experiences

Give this method a try and let me know how it works for you. Do you have your own tricks for beating writer’s block? If so, share them with us. It’d be great to hear them!

A Change of Perspective

This is a part of my Writing From A Different Focus group-write project. Here, I went for a roleplay post style of writing, but while also shifting the focus away from what would be ‘my’ character. Taking on the role and perspective of a minor, or even unseen, character, I am pushing my boundaries by writing in first person and also be taking the perspective of a by-stander rather than that of the character who is doing the actions pertinent to plot.

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I’d heard tell of late about a man who had the ability to perform such trickery as hadn’t ever been seen in these parts. Magic, they were calling it. I was far too old to believe in such fantasy tales though; I was still at times amazed by how gullible the young were.

Well, despite being in the local tavern for a cold ale after a hard day’s work, I still couldn’t escape the rumours of this foreign fellow. Telling my peers to stop being so foolish, a solitary corner was certainly favourable.

Try as I might, however, no matter how hard I thought about it, something was certainly different about the man who entered the tavern some time after my solitary solace from foolish chatter and whimsical ideas. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

Maybe it was the black clothes. No one wore such colours in these parts; unless at a funeral of some sort, of course. Perhaps his eyes were what caught my attention: A crsytalline azure that, had I knew no better, would have appeared to glow slightly. Certainly, the fellow walked in as though he owned the place; such arrogance I’d not witnessed before. Even the local Lord carried himself with a little more humility and he was well known as a pompous, arrogant fatman.

My eyes and focus were drawn entirely to this stranger and as he walked, no, sauntered, to the bar, I made the assumption I’d had one too many ales as he seemed, for only the moment he spoke to the barkeep, to glow a deep blue. I had to shake my head, trying to kick off the effects of the evening nectar.

He walked upstairs with no change of manner and disappearing from my view, I disregarded the strange man and returned to my relaxation. I did notice, however, a few bangs and scrapes in the upper levels of the building. My attention was once again drawn to the stairs as a loud rumble revealed a tumbling dwarf. He’d obviously been thrown down, the poor little bloke.

Normally, I had no liking for dwarves: They generally were uncouth and with accents deep enough that I never understood them. With a face covered in blood though, I wondered at why someone would want to cause damage to one of the small folk. Then I saw him again.

The man with the azure eyes stalked down the stairs, a piercing stare aimed for the stumbling miner beneath him. I gasped as a grip was had on the beard and the arrogant one dragged his mark from the tavern. I tried to shrink further into my corner, not wanting to get involved with such things.

The knocking over of chairs and drinks caused quite the ruckus, and rightly so. No one moved to prevent the young man continuing his cruelty though. He was dangerous looking, and his eyes were threatening - nobody wanted trouble on a Wednesday evening.

As the two left the tavern, the silence that had been case over the common room was lifted as rumours began to spread once more. I sighed and took another gulp of my ale.

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Whew! That was a challenge and half! Despite being a pretty short scene, taking it from someone’s viewpoint who has no idea about who the character was (my primary roleplay character, by the way: Saladin Akara), what had brought him to that tavern, or what was going to happen afterwards was hard in itself. I’m so used to taking the role of the character being the focus of someone’s attention.

To add to that, I was writing in First Person, which I so very rarely do. All in all, for so short a piece, it took me a whole longer to write than I would perhaps assume it should do.

So, what did I learn? I think one of the important things I learnt was how perspective can entirely change the feel of a scene. Here, for example , my character would have been interacting with the dwarf for reasons far from malicious: He is quite the ‘goody two shoes.’ However, from a stranger’s viewpoint, Saladin is seen as a cruel, rude and violent person, though entirely mysterious to the point of distraction.

This was interesting as I have to ask myself, “What do my readers see from this scene? What I intend when writing from Saladin’s viewpoint, or what the old guy saw?”

An interesting thought, certainly.

Writing From A Different Focus

Sometimes, as a writer, it is far too easy to remain within a defined comfort zone. Whether it be a particular genre of writing, a specific style or a point of view that is essentially the same, we generally are proficient within our writing comfort zones. But as we try to grow as writers, perhaps we should try to step away from our areas of comfort.

A nice excercise in this is to change our focus. Whether this is a change from third person perspective to first or second, or perhaps moving away from scenery descriptives to more motion-orientated work. And maybe even shifting from fiction to non-fiction.

All of these things challenge us and as such make us grow as writers.

A Challenge

As a group writing project, I challenge you push yourself and give writing from a different focus a try.

• Post a new entry on your blog with your writing piece, linking back (in the spirit of community) to this post.
• Give a brief (or not so, it’s your choice) explanation of how what you wrote moved you away from your current comfort zones and a little on how it helped you to grow.
• I’ll (again, in the spirit of community) compile a list of all the entries for reference.
• Please email me a link to your entry at hayhed2k3@gmail.com so I can add you to the list.
• Entries should be received by the end of Sunday 19th April. (I’ll go by EST on this deadline).

Have Fun!

I hope that you all have fun with this little challenge and group-write; I am certainly looking forward to some brilliant reads.

A Personal Essay

Terry Heath recently gave a writing prompt at his blog:

Spend an afternoon in a location (or reflect on one where you’ve been). Explore it thoroughly, then recreate an actual scene you experienced where something you’ve observed ran in strong contradiction with what you expected in this location. Reveal the subjects observed by appearance, action, and dialogue.

This seemed like a nice challenge, and as I am always looking to challenge myself and widen my spectrum of writing, I thought it would be an enjoyable prompt in which to take part.

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As I sat in the Intensive Care Unit of a chlidren’s hospital that specialises in heart surgery the most prominent memory is that of the monitoring equipment: Giving assurance of life, piercing the respectful silence that weighs upon even the most stalwart of hearts.

Little hope was found in the hall of beds, lights darkened, the incessant blips were enough to send any person to the point of insanity. Nurses spoke with a gentle whisper, solemn, humbled, as they sat at their station or visited beds to perform obligatory observations.

Those who were in attendance of their loved ones; sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, all maintained their vigil. Trusting in the skills of doctors and nurses, knowing that they have no control themselves, and remain focused wholly on their own concerns and tribulations.

That was until, from a secluded private room stepped out a slip of a woman. Short, slim, brown-skinned, dressed in the bright colours of garb native to India or Pakistan. The sharp features of the woman focused on the bed at which I sat as she approached my family.

“May I give a blessing for my religion?” Her broken English was a barrier that was easily overcome as an understanding was formed not only of intent but of special circumstance.

“Of course, so long as I can give your son one of our blessings.” My dad spoke to the woman, both their voices sustaining the hushed reverence of such a place as, with some enthusiasm, the unassuming woman agreed.

Retreating back to the small room where her son lay, only a few moments passed until she returned with oils and various other items needed to perform the blessing of her religion.

Speaking in a language I didn’t understand, she offered forth the blessing and prayer to the deity or deities in which she believed. My dad, in turn, disappeared into the secluded private room and, I assume, performed a blessing of my own religion.

It was, while families prepared for possible bereavement, a wonderful and humbling demonstration of selflessness and faith. A sharing of cultures that carried no pretense or bias.

Solitude was transormed in that simple exchange to a feeling of togetherness. Time was sacrificed from vigils that were of utmost importance, and with a kind thanks for the blessings and being able to share faith, lives continued on their separate paths.

A momentary crossing of roads that inspired a small boy.

Characters: An Alternative Creation Story

This is yet another post in response to my Twitter survey, suggested by George Angus over at Tumblemoose Writing Services. I had actually been planning a post similar to this as part of my reality in fiction theme I’ve been running over the past week or so. George had made the request of looking at character creation in RolePlay so the focus will be shifted a little from my original intentions, but it works for ‘normal’ fiction also.

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Characters are key to any story. They’re the crutch upon which the story rides, conflict is created and the reason that people will read your work. They play an especially important part in RolePlaying: They are the tool by which you are able to write and interact. Your posts are focused on them, you must rely on their own view of the world to bring it alive. You, for all intents and purposes, become that character while playing. But, how important is the creation process of your character?

It all starts with a name

At least, for me it does. I’m among a rarity in RolePlay: My character becomes my muse and in a sense all my roleplay writing comes from the character itself. When first introducing a character, I generally know nothing about him/her beyond their name. Their appearance, personality, likes/dislikes, and abilities all come to me as I write. For me, this allows a nice progression for my characters throughout the story.

However, that doesn’t really give a true insight. So, let’s take a closer look at character creation.

Balance

It’s essential. More so than a lot of people realise. Regardless of setting, genre, race or rank of your character it needs to have balance. It’s very tempting (and even I fell in this trap when new to the RolePlay scene) to create a character without flaws, a character all powerful and all knowing. But oh, how bland such characters really are! No one is perfect. And neither should your characters.

They will surely have weaknesses, fears, personality flaws and yet they indeed will still have their own strengths. The art to character creation is finding the right balance: Someone with no strengths at all is just as bland, remember.

The Process

Creating a character can certainly be broken down into a number of steps:

1. The basics: Age, sex, race and appearance. These all are dependant on what setting you’re playing in. In a post-apocalyptic world where all adults were killed, you wouldn’t make a character over the age of 18. Sex most often is never an issue: Man, woman, both, neither - the choice is yours. Race again is an important one for maintaining reality. In a realistic setting (based in our real world) you would’t play an elf or Martian. Appearance again is all dependant on the factors already taken into account. It needs to keep with the world in which you are playing; would a European person in the 1300s really wear a ninja outfit? I doubt it. A guy wearing a skirt? Well, maybe. But a woman wearing a full suit of armour is perhaps not so likely (I’m going to get lynched by all the women readers now!). And would your dwarf really be five foot eight inches tall?
2. Skills and abilities: Here again balance is the key. Someone with muscles that dwarf even WWE wrestlers who can move with the ability of an Olympic gymnast? That just wouldn’t happen, I’m afraid. A person who is masterful with every weapon in existence? Not unless he’s been around for several eons. Masterful in one weapon? Oh, certainly. Able to shoot lightning from her knee all day without any effect? Maybe, but is that maintaining balance, or looking for an all-powerful sorceress? Making magic usage effect your characters creates a nice feel for realism: They don’t have a constant supply of energy. Just like the knight wouldn’t be able to ride his horse for three weeks non-stop.
3. Personality: I once saw a character profile where the character was “shy and talkative.” What?! Again, keep things realistic. Conflicting personality traits like that make your characters unbelievable. This will break what was discussed in an earlier blog. Something of utmost importance. Sure, have your character shy and maybe one person to whom they can approach with total ease: That’s entirely believable.
4. Background History: A lot of people like to write a full biography for their characters. While this may be useful to some people it isn’t at all necessary. If nothing more than why your character is where they are at the begining of the game/story and their current motivations and goals, you’ve provided more than enough information. And, revealing everything at once means you lose a great back-up tool when you can’t think of what to write: The Flashback.

And there you have it. A nice skeleton profile of your character, ready to leap into whatever game you’re taking a part.

Why?

Why go to all this effort though? Surely you can just write out your character as you go along like I do? Definitely. Often for new RolePlayers this gives a nice template for easily making a character, when perhaps it isn’t the most natural of things to do. Also, it can provide a quick reference tool for other players to learn about your character. The players can then have an understanding and look to implementing sub-plots with you or areas of conflict or mutual interest.

If writing for a purely literary purpose, the character profile can help you to organise your cast of characters. Though I would add in one more area: Relationships. Between main characters, other minor characters and anyone they may meet. As your novel progresses it’s a good idea to also update that section (along with all others - I know they can all change at times) to keep your information up to date so you have a quick and simple reference tool.

Your very own creations

Have you roleplayed before? Written a novel? How did you go about creating your characters? Please share with us. Everyone is different and my own methodology may not be the same as yours. Let us know how you write your own story of creation!

Disbelief? Suspend it!

Following on from my previous post on realism, I was reading an article by Vicki Hinze on the Fiction Factor website. It discusses suspension of disbelief when writing fiction.

But, what is this idea of suspending disbelief? It’s all about making your readers be able to believe that what you are writing is, or could be, real. Whether it’s a romance, action-adventure or fantasy piece you are writing your readers need to be able to believe in what they are reading. Elves? Not in the real world, that’s for sure? Don’t be silly! If you can suspend their disbelief, however, then it could well be possible that elves do exist in reality.

It’s all in the detail.

How do we do that for a novel without an atypical or unusual element?
In a word, details.

And in that quote, Vicki sums up the concept perfectly. It is the tiny, seemingly unimportant details that are key to suspending your reader’s disbelief. From making sure your characters are believable and relatable through giving them ‘real’ personalities, to giving enough prior background for an event to be plausible.

An example by Vicki speaks of snow in Florida. Sure enough, a snow storm in Florida wouldn’t happen in real life (I think. Do feel free to correct me if otherwise), in your novel it could well be. A change in weather fronts and well developed plans by Organisation X to affect weather against the natural order? Sure, that could well make snow fall in Florida.

Consistency is key.

Throughout your novel or fictional piece you need to be consistent to maintain the suspension of disbelief. To continue the the ’snow in Florida’ example: Suddenly throwing in this Organisation X and all related factors in the chapter immediately before or after the snow storm will look very much like a desperate ’saving grace’ attempt that will make the reader stop, think and still believe it couldn’t happen.

Before and after the event, you need to continue suspending disbelief. As another extreme example: There is snow in Florida for the above-stated reasons one day, on the next, blistering heat once again. No, doesn’t sound real to me either, considering the information we’ve been given already. “Boo!” at the writer!

Informative delivery.

Vicki goes on to speak about how you give this details and ‘facts’ to the reader, and brings up an interesting point:

It’s widely accepted as fact that a reader believes what one character says to another far more readily than the reader believes what an author says to them.

And that, I think, gives point enough on how best to deliver the information that builds believability.

Over to you.

What methods to you use to suspend disbelief as a writer? As a reader, what are you most likely to notice that will reinstate your disbelief? Or what do you like to see to enable suspension of disbelief?

My First E-publication

Having seen George Angus’ review of the e-book publishing service Smashwords over at Tumblemoose Writing Services, I knew I just had to give it a try. E-books, while still only making up a very tiny percentage of book sales, are a growing industry. The proliferation of such gadgets as the Sony Reader and the iPhone’s Stanza application will only help the e-book industry to grow.

A free service that takes your Word document and converts it into various e-book formats, then, sounds very enticing. Especially to a writer like myself, trying to get into the industry beyond hobbies. I was itching to give it a try.

A Decision Had To Be Made

What, exactly, would I make an e-book out of? As a first attempt, I knew it best to follow George’s “An Inspired Query Letter” and make my ebook free. I didn’t, however, want any of my ‘real’ work to be readily available for nothing. So I had to decide on a subject matter.

I finally decided to compile an anthology of various roleplaying posts I had written. I did this for two reasons: Firstly, the content was readily available and required very little work on my part. Secondly, it would serve as a great way to display my writing ability.

So off I went, finding various roleplay posts from the two and a half years I’ve been taking part in the past-time. Organising them by date order, I made the rest of the content: An introduction to the e-book, and a small paragraph of background to each post.

The Process

I typed everything up in the Ubuntu equivalent of Notepad, then formatted the e-book as outlined in the Smashwords Style Guide. Or so I had thought (more on that later).

Registration was quick and easy, taking all of about three or four minutes including ‘account activation.’ The easy-to-use navigation gives a nice “Publish” link that, you got it, is where you publish your ebook. Allowing you to add a synopsis (400 or so characters long), tags, and categorisation the first page is nice and simple. You can also add an image to act as the front cover; something I opted out of.

Uploading your Word document is as easy as you’d expect: Browse to the relevant file, click okay, then click upload. Then your file is run through what is fondly referred to as the ‘Meat Grinder’ to be converted into the various e-book formats on offer. This took a couple of minutes for my 33 page e-book.

The Value of Proof-Reading

A greatly important lesson was taken from this little outing into the e-publication world: Proof-read, proof-read, proof-read!

I did have some initial formatting issues that meant the HTML Reader on Smashwords didn’t recognise any paragraph returns in my book; making it just a single block of text! This was my own fault, for not fully following the Style Guide, but I managed to fix it.

Then, the worst thing happened when I re-checked the HTML Reader (which thankfully was now working)! My actual roleplay posts, some of which were from as far back 2006, were riddled with various errors: Typographical, missing or added words, spelling errors etc.

I knew that none of my ‘new’ content in the e-book had any errors, and I had been sure that all my older stuff was proof-read back when I originally wrote them. Not the case. I had to read through everything once more to correct any mistakes, and then re-upload the e-book once again.

For this, it is really easy: There is an “Upload new version” option in your ‘dashboard’ on the site, and takes only a minute or so; needing only to upload the file and convert it - After all, the rest of the information is still there.

Finally, I’d Finished!

“Excerpts From Role Playing Endeavours” was at last published and suitable for being read.

Overall, the process was an enjoyable, and my own errors aside, the Smashwords service is fantastic. Simple, easy to use, intuitive and most all… Free to use! I expect that I will be using it again in the future. Perhaps to even publish some of my work non-free.

Thanks must be given to George, though, for sharing such a great discovery with us all.

Twitter As a Writing Tool

For the past two or three weeks, I’ve been getting myself involved with Twitter for the first time. It’s certainly an interesting beast: 140 characters to get your message across. Anything from what you are doing at any given moment, to chatting with other Twitters in the ‘Twitterverse.’ Think of a heavily simplified Facebook and you pretty much have Twitter in a nutshell.

Yet, I cannot help but wonder what it actually does for me. It allows a much more open networking facility than Facebook, is less full of gimicks like poking and sheep-hurling while still maintaining that sense of connection. But what does it do for me as a writer?

• Teaches me to be concise. An average of 20-ish words isn’t a lot to convey what you’re thinking or feeling.
• Connections with other writers. At the moment I have only a small network and a fair few are writers. Who better to make friends with and have the opportunity of learning from.
• Offers inspiration. Such people as Joanna Young and Amy Palko and a few others near constantly seem in a good mood with motivating things to say that can inspire. Links posted from blogs or other such things also offer sources of inspiration: Be it photos, articles, funny stories, it all adds up to inspiring me to write something.

And on that last note, I must make mention of the Confident Writing community’s lessons from blogging, summarised here. A great collection of experiences and something I, as a new blogger, will find greatly useful in the learning process.

Your experiences?

How have you found the Twitter experience? Has it helped you in any way? If so, how?

You can follow me on Twitter: @MattHaywardUK

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