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+--- Thread: Writing Practices (/showthread.php?tid=13506)
Writing Practices - Kaden - 01-29-2009
While I had a specific question I wanted to pose, I thought it might be interesting to create a thread to talk about the things people try to actively do/avoid when they write an RP.
The question I wanted to ask, which seems as good a way to start the thread as any, was how do you deal with things that have happened between your RPs?
Do you tend to rewrite events that have already happened, but portray them from your characters point of view? Do you have your character reflect on things that have passed, instead of actually putting them back there? Do you just move on and not touch what's already been written?
Writing Practices - Ander - 01-29-2009
I love flashbacks. They're my favorite way to integrate past and present. I usually do this by breaking it up into pieces and splicing those pieces into what is currently taking place, so that it plays out as the present scene is unfolding. Or it could even simply be a soundbite, a past word or phrase that pops into their head. I'm probably guilty of overdoing both of those techniques.
Whenever I have a character in a particular situation that reminds them of a past event, I never hesitate to somehow weave in that past event, whether it's through a short flashback, or just an old familiar feeling creeping back in that affects their thought process.
As far as reflection goes, yeah, my characters do reflect, so long as it's pertinent to the storyline at hand, or if it's something they really have a hard time forgetting. Although, I generally tend to play my narrative towards my character's point of view as a general rule, versus an omnipotent voice, so I really don't allow myself the opportunity to take a previous RP and replay it from different perspectives or angles. Since I need to start fresh, I'd probably have a better chance at doing that to try to grow from a writing standpoint.
Purely from a writer's standpoint, though, if I ignore old RPs, it's either because I've forgotten about them or really hate the direction I ended up taking, so I gloss over it. I don't erase it from a character's history, but I conveniently neglect to ever mention it again.
Writing Practices - Ashe - 01-29-2009
I think I shuffle between all of the mentioned methods. I also have a very hard time letting things go from my character's history. I've never been able to just overlook something as a solution to a plothole.
I do frequently have my character just continue on and acknowledge events that I consider as having happened between other events that I never managed to actually put into writing (the Videl eradication being an example) while other times (FoF) I have written where my character seems to pick up from halfway through the previous poster's roleplay and review it from their point of view, with it then continuing on from there in my own direction.
Writing Practices - Vad - 01-29-2009
I have no guidelines. I write what feels right. I even re read some of my stuff in the Earth thread. I can honestly say, I don't know what the hell I do. I guess I do everything depending on how right it feels.
Writing Practices - Jesper - 01-29-2009
I generally don't like to rewrite past occurrences, though I've done it a few times in the past. Usually, I have my character reflect on it. I've noticed that you, Kaden, prefer that first option most of the time. =P
Writing Practices - Alura - 01-29-2009
I hate flashbacks. I feel like switching between past and present in one single roleplay completely messes up the flow. I would prefer, if the past absolutely has to be mentioned, that the character references it, or the narrator explains it.
On the other hand, if someone was to do a whole roleplay that was a flashback, (with maybe like an opening and closing paragraph in the present day), I would be comfortable reading that. This is because virtually the entire thing is written in the past, and I can follow it easily.
Writing Practices - Kaden - 01-29-2009
Sophia Wrote:I've noticed that you, Kaden, prefer that first option most of the time. =P
That's actually why I started the thread. Replaying events from my character's perspective is something fairly new for Kaden. As Raditzu, for example, I rarely revisited previous RPs. He just did what he did and if something needed to be thrown in, I did it as I continued on. Similar to what Bar was talking about with flashbacks.
I think I've been doing that for two reasons. The first is to get a better feel for my character, and the best way to do that is simply by writing them. I think some of the best times to establish who your character is is by reinterpreting situations that someone else has thrown them into. That's why I think people like sagas so much. When you're the one doing all of the writing, you control everything. You can set up situations and confrontations that work to your character's advantage. In a saga, all you have is your character, and everything else is being decided for you. It forces people to make decisions about their character's personality and motivations and so on.
The other reason -- and believe me, I know how lame this sounds -- was to get some extra XP out of my posts. Part of what's integral to Kaden, as a character, are the Custom Techs I've created for him, and the sooner I can get those purchased and out of the way, the sooner I can move on to why those are so important to him as a character.
Writing Practices - Ander - 01-31-2009
As far as taking a scene and re-playing it from your character's point of view, yeah, that typically happens in sagas, so I suppose I did that sometimes but most of the time I'd pick up the scene from where the other person left off. Even if people got my character wrong, which happened plenty of times, I'd just bear with it and move on.
Actually, the best (or at least my favorite) person who was good at working with what other people threw at him would be Reijin/Ashe. Tim could take an entire scene that someone else wrote that didn't fit his character at all, and he could make it fit. He could think of character motivation for every spoken word and every action that would range from slightly off-base of normal Reijin or completely opposite of normal Reijin. I was always impressed by that.
Writing Practices - Ashe - 01-31-2009
Nobody Wrote:As far as taking a scene and re-playing it from your character's point of view, yeah, that typically happens in sagas, so I suppose I did that sometimes but most of the time I'd pick up the scene from where the other person left off. Even if people got my character wrong, which happened plenty of times, I'd just bear with it and move on.
Actually, the best (or at least my favorite) person who was good at working with what other people threw at him would be Reijin/Ashe. Tim could take an entire scene that someone else wrote that didn't fit his character at all, and he could make it fit. He could think of character motivation for every spoken word and every action that would range from slightly off-base of normal Reijin or completely opposite of normal Reijin. I was always impressed by that.
Wow.
I'm actually glad you noticed that. I did put a lot of effort into doing that. In a way, I think Reijin was a special case of someone that I could do that for without making his character too fluid. To me, if someone wrote a scene with him, I would do it for multiple reasons. One being that sometimes it wasn't the reactions that I would have done, so I wanted to show the thought process that lead to it and show WHY he'd have done that thing that originally I wouldn't have done. Secondly, it would give me a very good base to then have inspiration for the followups.
I did this a lot in the Dante events, and to a larger extreme in FoF2, which is where a large part of my writing came from. Not in terms of creating length, mind you, but a springboard to fluidly fit in the rest.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to quite do that with Ashe, as she's a lot different from Reijin and less experienced, so if someone does anything character altering, I may have to just grin and bear it.
Thanks for the kind words.