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| Fakey Teaches Good Writing Skills(Applicable to Roleplays); Just to show you all I'm not as dumb and hateful as you think. | |
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| Topic Started: May 31 2012, 02:40 AM (826 Views) | |
| Kamidio | May 31 2012, 02:40 AM Post #1 |
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The Game Master of the SSU:NC
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Alrighty, I've decided to do this because people often do things in the SSU2(I'd have preferred if it were called SNA) RP that are really big no-nos in writing. So basically, I'm here to edumacate you. Lesson One: Good Characters and Bad Characters. Good characters and bad characters. What is a good character? Are they the hero? Sometimes, yes. It all depends on your moral standpoint. But a character's morals are not what makes a character good or bad. You could hate a character to death, but they still might be a good character. Hell, the reason you hate them might be because they're so well written. To put it simply, a good character is a character that fits in all snug with the plot, and has consistent behaviors that match their traits and personality, while a bad character contrasts horribly with the setting and makes no sense whatsoever. (Looking at you, every 'speshul' furfag oc that isn't the natural colors of their species and is a total 'kawaii desu desu' sparkle shit.) It's like the difference between drinking fine wine(The Plot) with either crackers(Bad characters) or a sandwich(Good characters). The crackers are unrewarding and are only there to serve as padding. They feel tacked on, and often unnecessary, and often leave you feeling like you could've enjoyed the wine better without them. But eating the sandwich, you aren't getting padding. You're getting a meal that feels rewarding, and often enhances how you feel about the wine. Sometimes it might be the sandwiches that make you come back for more wine, instead of the wine itself. So while good characters make a story feel fun and rewarding to read, badly done, or unexplained characters can detract from the story itself. Or you could just be a fukken pig and eat it all... Say you want your characters to have some mystery and intrigue left behind. Wouldn't that mean you have to leave out details so you can make the mystery? "Hey, I think I'll leave out some details to seems mysterious, and then make something up to fill the holes as I go." *ding dong* "Uh, hello!?" *bwooip* "GUESS WHAT ASSHOLE, YOU'RE WRONG!" *punch* You never just 'make it up as you go'. As a writer, I have done this before, and it has made me abandon one story and put another on hiatus so I could write its prequel. YOU NEVER MAKE THE DECISION TO MAKE IT UP AS YOU GO, DO YOU HEAR ME!? You should always fully plan out your character and then not tell anyone minor details that can make your character all the better. Now, don't make these details something shocking unless you want wild mass guessing to go on, and everyone winds up with a wildly different view of how a character thinks(Which can be very bad in a roleplay, as it'll start a huge shitstorm.). Not to mention that the details need to be consistent with a character's behavior and mentality. We'll do a little comparison. Which one of these vastly different characters is more likely to give a heart-felt, long winded speech about your enemies and fighting spirit?(Study up on SSU2 to understand this next part. If not, then just nod and smile, because I will explain the choice made at the end.) Bloodrunner Walking Heavy Metal Album Cover Man-X Cartoon Borys Possibly Depressed Ukrainian Man, Possibly Has Sand In His Buns We can immediately eliminate Man-X as a choice, because his only real goal is to spread smiles and cheer. Even his powers reflect this. He can't kill, but he can pull several cartoony antics in order to get a smile or two. He isn't fit for the speech because it would be oddly out of place on a character that completely misses the point, sneaks up on it, and drops an anvil on it. Now the next one to be unlikely to give the speech is Borys. Borys would seem like a logical choice, given the other options, but considering his stoic attitude and rather depressing outlook on his own life means that it'll take years of therapy and education for him to accept that superpowers don't automatically turn someone into an abomination in the eyes of whatever deity he believes in. (Personally, I think he worships a great sky seal with crab pincers for eyes and nipples made of dog shit, but that's just me.) So Borys is a long way from giving the hotblooded speech. ![]() "WAIT! WHAT!?" *punch* "UH, YEAH. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I'M FUCKING TELLING YOU." WELL SHIT SON, LOOKS LIKE THIS STUPID METALHEAD MILITARY MAN IS GONNA SET YOU STRAIGHT. Now I know most of the people on this website can identify patterns and generally fall into what I consider human. I say most of the people, because Miocene is clearly insane. (Seriously, he keeps telling the site bronies that we're wasting our time. Each time we refute him and tell him we're sticking with it, he comes back doing the same shit, with the same faulty logic, expecting a different result. He makes a horse's ass out of himself, basically. But yeah, I generally like to assume my brothers in the scientific arts aren't idiots. (And don't say speculative biology isn't art. It is, and you know it deep down to be true.) But see, you have to look at the patterns to see why Blood is the most likely to give that hot-blooded speech. Right off the bat, without knowing anything beyond 'metalhead soldier', you can make deductions, like a fully-functioning braining thing should be able to. "Alright, let's see. He's a musician, so he must love words. He's not as dumb as I thought. He's a metalhead and a soldier, so it makes sense to give a fiery speech. If he's a soldier and a musician, then he must really believe in freedom and fighting for it. So that must mean he'd give a fiery, long-winded speech about fighting spirit, because it totally does fit him, now that I see it." *ding dong* "Hello?" "IT'S ME AGAIN, ASSHOLE!" "OH, FUCK NO! WHAT DID I DO WRONG!" "I WANTED TO CONGRATULATE YOUR ASS ON A JOB WELL DONE! LET'S MOVE ALONG!" So yeah. Man-X is too cartoonish for the speech, Borys is too Borys, but Blood is just right. Now let's go deeper and see Everything about a character, so that we can see more contrasts with how the world works. I will be using the same characters for examples, with one more to do so. So let's sort them shall we? Good Characters: Bloodrunner, Borys, Man-X Bad Characters: Sarge, Rianna/Ryan, Artie Now let's go back to 'making it up as you go' and 'intentionally leaving out details'. This will make or break a character. We'll use Blood and Sarge, who was created by Dial, for comparison. The detail being looked over is 'Mobility'. Let's look at Sarge first. Sarge is a blind, old military man who was experimented on. The experiments gave him the ability to see through rats. Sarge is good at heart, but refuses to bend to the law. Blood is up next. Blood is a member of a secret military unit called the Hellhounds. He protects and serves the American public, and is very vocal about freedom. He has fire and psychic abilities that allow him to make the best of his musical talent. Blood is hotblooded and rash. Now Blood seems like a bad character, while Sarge seems like a good one. But if that is the case, then why did Dial abandon Sarge in order to make a new character. when making a character, one needs to think about the setting.It just so happens that the setting is a massive alternate version of Louisville, Kentucky. Now which character would fit a giant city better? The feeble old man that walks through alleyways, or the hotblooded metalhead who tears through the streets on a motorcycle? When on makes a character, they must give that character mobility, especially when the setting is huge. So now Sarge has restricted mobility, while Blood is free to dark from one place to the next. Because of his restricted mobility, he couldn't keep up with the other character when the left the city. Dial was onto something when he gave his character the ability to command rats, but he shouldn't have stopped there. He should've given some forethought and gave his character some mobility. Daredevil is blind, but he doesn't let that stop him. So Sarge isn't a bad character, just ungraceful. Next up for comparison: Borys and Rianna. The detail being looked over is 'Neatness'. Now, in creating Borys, Canis made sure to make everything about his character known to himself, and told almost everything about him, but withheld some info in order to keep some material for plots and conversations. Thus, Borys is a neatly made character who won't run into making any contradictory statements about himself anytime soon. But in creating Rianna, Nano wasn't sure what he wanted, even changing his character from a male to a female halfway through writing the post, and then coming up with 'She accidentally changed from male to female in a power-related accident' and failed to give their character any real depth beyond 'OOH SHINY'. Thus, this character a big fat sign post that says 'My creator made me up on the spot and didn't put forth any real effort!' Finally, Man-X vs Artie. Now both of these characters we're created by Rex. The detail we observe here is 'In-Character/Out-of-Character Consistency'. Man-X is a goofy ball of joy who you expect nothing but cartoony antics from. That is what you get. Artie is sold to us as a character that takes things about as seriously as Man-X does, is popular at the orphanage, and would never try anything too dangerous. What we got was this emofag who isn't cheerful or goofy at all, sat alone at lunch, and did things that were extremely dangerous. This is like the difference between giving a man sugar for his tea and giving him crack-cocaine and a straw. That is what we call lying. And lying is BAD. So while Man-X is constantly in character, Artie is always out of character. You wanna know when a character is allowed to break character? When it's funny as hell, or leads up to a big "Oh shit, Dumbass had a point. How did we miss that?" moment. Basically, if you can't keep your character in character, go back and give them schizophrenia, because I'm getting really fuckin' tired of seeing characters getting robbed of their identities. Keeping those in mind, let's move on to how you make a good character.
Now, to finish off lesson one, I'm giving you freeloaders homework. I want you to use the method above for creating a character. You will send in the character to me and I will decided if you pass or fail. The character can be anything you want it to be. Superhero, flaming homosexual, both Homework is due one week from now, on Thursday, June 7th. U.S. by Noon U.S. Central time. You can send it in any time before, but if it is late, you automatically fail the assignment. Now go forth and CREATE! Send it to me via PM. Edited by Kamidio, May 31 2012, 02:57 AM.
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SSU:NC - Finding a new home. Quotes WAA
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| trex841 | Jun 4 2012, 05:27 AM Post #16 |
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Entity
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And Scootaloo is a unicorn. Poison joke is the culprit...I think. |
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F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team. At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting. (And this is just the spec related stuff) | |
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| bloom_boi | Jun 4 2012, 03:29 PM Post #17 |
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What The?
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http://www.gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?topic=12232.0 Thought I just post this. Because PatMan is awesome. |
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"You shall perish, whatever you do! If you are taken with arms in your hands, death! If you beg for mercy, death! Whichever way you turn, right, left, back, forward, up, down, death! You are not merely outside the law, you are outside humanity. Neither age nor sex shall save you and yours. You shall die, but first you shall taste the agony of your wife, your sister, your sons and daughters, even those in the cradle! Before your eyes the wounded man shall be taken out of the ambulance and hacked with bayonets or knocked down with the butt end of a rifle. He shall be dragged living by his broken leg or bleeding arm and flung like a suffering, groaning bundle of refuse into the gutter. Death! Death! Death!" | |
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| Kamidio | Jun 4 2012, 04:30 PM Post #18 |
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The Game Master of the SSU:NC
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Can't see the link because my virus blocker says it's bad. Therefore, whatever you were linking me must be bad too. |
SSU:NC - Finding a new home. Quotes WAA
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9:27 AM Jul 11