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 Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 12:45 am
Well I was reading the "Go.Start.Threads" announcement and decided, "Hey, why not make a thread to try and meet some of the member's of this guild!" So here it is!
Basically the point or direction of this thread is to try and share our different types of style, either by examples of posts or just attempts to describe our writing in a small concise paragraph as well as talk about some of the distinct characteristics each individual tries to display in their writing. Another thing to talk about would be what causes a person to write, why does a person RP, what inspires them and what do they hope to accomplish?
As for my style and writing, things I try to focus on, are not just length and detail, but more importantly the symbols in every detail. I think colors, lighting, shadows, and sound are some of the biggest symbols I use in my own style of writing and RP'ing where I try to relay a certain idea or universal concept with my audience. Yeah, it's great to have detail, but to have purpose for that detail, is even better! By doing this I hope that not only am I painting a vivid picture in someone's mind, but am also, trying to connect with a reader but sharing personal universal theme's such as love, struggle, hardship, anger, pain, apathy, friendship, and other values society faces everyday.
I think one of the main purposes I write, is to share, my own beliefs of the world, through my own wisdom gained from my many experiences, I've had throughout my 18 years of life as well as my own outlook and philosophy of life. To be able to create something meaningful, immortal, and beautiful out of something so lifeless and simple as words is literally an art to me. It takes, time and hard work, and much like many things I've had to learn in life, it's all trial and error. RP'ing is a big thing in my life and has definitely made a huge impact on my life as well. I'd go into why this is, but that would take to long and would stretch this post out to well over 7 pages in MS word, but if anyone is interested in my philosophy, please do feel free to read my journal!
Anyway, I digress...back to point, some of the most influential things to effect my writings are three authors, J.D Salinger, F. Scott, Fitzgerald, and Arthur Miller. They are key influences that have impacted the way I write. But on everyday occasion's some of the biggest things I notice that make me want to write would be anime, movies, and my own weird real life experiences with my friends and family. We are all student's of life, and in my opinion, everything has some type of underlying purpose, meaning and lesson to be learned. To be able to recognize this is all dependent upon our perspective of the situation. I think for now, what I hope to accomplish in my RP's from my character, is to let everyone know a little about myself, since my character's personality is my very own, and share with everyone the concept that everyone is connected, and we are the people who make up this world. How we act accordingly, effects everyone else, and in order to accomplish greatness is a team effort, not just one single person.
Those are my thought's on RP'ing and just writing in general, now I'm curious as to everyone else
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Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 1:46 am
 >> Only the blackest of heartsColor and sound are important to me, and I will use similes sometimes - but I am not big on metaphors, probably due to the fact that our teachers have a habit of drilling it into our brains. I will write about the setting quite a lot - and I have a thing for letting my fellow roleplayers, or readers, know what the characters are thinking. Half of my characters lack any really strong emotion, as a good portion of them are kinda... sociopaths. When they do, I usually just use adjectives (I am not big on adverbs, but if I need them - then I'll add them).
I write because it is fun - I don't expect, or really want, people to enjoy it. I just like writing out my thoughts and sick little twisted desires. I could give a, pardon my French, ******** less what everybody else thinks of it in the end - because I don't really do it for a profit (I don't need to) and I know half of the stuff I write is taboo to the average public (not including anime fans, as half of what I write is boy/boy).
I suppose the most influential writers to my style are Holly Black, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Freewater (fanfiction authoress). Holly Black - because she writes the Modern Faerie Tales (and she doesn't mind mentioning Japanese pop culture, or randomly making one of her characters homosexual), J.R.R. Tolkien because he creates such in depth and thought out details to his world (and I love fantasy), and Freewater because... well, she writes good, flangsty yaoi - that's about it really.
My writing style, aside from the above mentioned, varies depending on what I am doing. I like to use darker words, or words that have a pretty flow to them no matter what it is I am writing - but for things that I am really into, I put a lot more work into designing everything. I like to use less common creatures, the ones that have only appeared in one or two video games, or none at all (if that's possible). I like incorporating German and Japanese pop culture into some of my works, and essentially the ancient history of anywhere in the world. I also tend to come up with some peculiar government systems and religions for no really good reason... Can feel the purest of love <<
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Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:15 am
I had to do a lot of thinking about this one... Okay, here we go:
I'll start by saying that what inspires me is basically anything I watch/read/etc. Much of my inspiration comes from Naruto (the anime in general) and Voldemort (not so much the Harry Potter series as just that one character). Most of the characters that I'm inspired by tend to have dark pasts and personalities just as dark, so that explains most of my own characters. I suppose, in this way, I'm trying to show something to the world; that if you push people too far, look what happens. A few characters share my religious beliefs (meaning that they would have none), but many of them just fit the time period. For example: a polytheist in ancient Egypt. Most of the emotions they portray are ones that I have felt many times (anger) or ones that I think would be helpful for someone in their particular situation (indifference).
Why I write, basically, is just because I've always been able to come up with characters and plotlines easily, and I've always been good at reading/writing. I've wanted to be an author since at least the third grade, and was even coming up with ideas then. The reason I roleplay is to further practice my writing, and it also serves as a constant source of inspiration. It's also for enjoyment; writing an interactive story with others who share my interests is one of the most enjoyable things I can think of. I really don't care that much what people think, but if their criticisms are constructive, then I can learn from them, and if they're not, then I just tend to ignore them. I do normally try to make my characters in roleplays (even the antisocial ones) associate with a certain type of person, and tend to make multiple characters just so I can have one on each side. It's more fun for everyone if nobody gets left out. I'm fairly new to Gaia (in comparison to the others), so I still remember my first roleplays quite well, and that my favorite roleplayers were the ones who tried to include everyone, and make everyone a main character (also, the ones who could do that literately). I was probably influenced by that, and followed that example.
My style is basically just using the description of their movements, expressions, and thoughts to give everyone a better understanding of the character, and why they do things. I believe it's important to show their reasons behind everything, and the specific mentality and range of emotions that led them to it. For instance, I don't make a character who wants to destroy everyone for no reason. Normally, they were treated with cruelty by a specific person or group, so they will generally be less trusting, and more angry, people who want revenge against that person/group alone. As a side note, many of my characters want revenge, and none are without good resons of wanting it. As a general statement, characters who have endured hardships will find them easier to get along with and understand, and those who just got lucky and had the perfect lives won't.
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Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:08 pm
Most of my inspiration comes from the short story "Bullet to the Brain." It's got one of the greatest uses of pacing I have ever seen. Not to mention that does a great job of showing how memories can affect a person's mannerisms and even their personality. Creating a mood is more than just choosing words for their specific meaning, their sound has a great impact as well. If you really take you time when choosing words to create a certain harmony and rythym, you get a much more powerful product.
I also think it help tremendously to really understand your character. This notion is most derived from vestiges of my acting days. To create a believable character, you need to understand so much more than just their personality, past, and appearance. For starters, thinking up how they would have reacted to significant events in their past and how that could have affected their personality does a great deal to make your writing richer. It also helps to think of how they move, what they want at any given moment, and how they would go about achieving it.
The below sample is one of my personal favorites as far as taking full advantage of those concepts. It's not too long, but I think it gets the job done.
Quote: Filthy, putird habit. He was doing it again. Biting his fingernails. For three years, Arianna had tried to tolerate it, staring in wide-eyed disgust, using all of her self-control not to vomit, scream, or rip the hand away from his mouth. Not a moment seemed to pass when he wasn't either biting his nails until the skin around them turned pink or using his teeth pick the dirt out from under them. When he was idle, when he was working, when he ate, when he spoke, and probably even while he slept. At first, she thought she would get used to it, but it only got worse. In the rare moments of silence all she could hear was the sickening, yet soft, sound of teeth cutting short fingernails. There was no telling how quickly the damn things grew. About two months ago, she began having dreams about cutting off those nasty fingers. They first frightened her horribly, forcing her awake with a racing heart and beads of ict sweat on her forehead. It wasn't long before the idea sounded appealing, and soon after that the dreams got worse until she imagined herself hacking up his body and actually enjoying it. Every minutes of the day she found herself wanting to do what she had done in that bizarre dream. In every idle moment, she imagined him dead at her feet. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the image of his mangled corpse. Each time he brought his fingernails to his mouth, the temptation grew stronger. He would never stop it, but she could make him stop forever. His death was the only way that nasty habit could be broken. That disgusting sound had made her a slave to her own uneasy mind, and there was only one way to set herself free. Then it would end: all of her trouble, her nightmares, her insane thoughts. Arianna silently slipped into the other room to fetch a dagger. She returned quietly, strangely calm, especially for a woman about to commit murder. Holding the knife behind her back, she sat down beside him, the slipping sound ringing in her ears. "You have to go," she whispered. Cool. Calm. Without giving him a chance to respond, she drove the knife through his chest. Must have hit his heart because it bled quite a lot. He was probably dead already, but that wasn't enough. She had to do what she had done in her dreams. Such a cruel, twisted b*****d only deserved it. It was only after his body lay in pieces that she really began to act like a madwoman. With her light blue dress soaked in blood and her dark brown hair in a tangled mess, she ran out into the street, laughing maniacly and bragging about how she had freed herself from such a vile demon. Everyone needed to know about it. It wasn't long until they came for her - an hour at the most. In a rosy haze from the excitement, one man, armed to the teeth, tied her hands behind her back and led her through the city. Arianna went along quietly, docile as a lamb. No struggling, no questions, no words at all. Though she appeared calm, resting latent in the back of her mind was the fear that the b*****d might have survived it; that since she didnt remove his heart and crush it he could still be alive. Alive and wanting vengence.
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Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 10:04 am
You people are very long winded. xP And small font?
Any way- my inspirations... Lemme see. I had an AP english class int he 11th and 12th grade. Every since then? I've been really interested in the follies of man and all that.
My posts are more focused towards internal dialogue- sometimes expressing my thoughts sometimes expressing theirs. Thats why I have issues with rps where I can't really get into them, or where I can't have my own input.
This is mostly because I read As I lay Dying- which is about this rednecked family, but it's written from the prospective of the characters from each chapter.
You have to peice together the story from what the characters tell you. And then sometimes they can lie. You can usually pick up that sort of thing in my roleplaying.
I'm also inspired by stories like Paradise Lost, Dantes Inferno, and Heart of Darkness.
Finally- I have a very bare bones writing style. I don't like to add too much detail because I'm trying to get a point across. I always skim for loose things. I like my posts to be neat and trim. Something like what you would read in Old Man and the Sea.
The guy who wrote it, Hemmingway, used to be a reporter and his boss used to tell em to keep it brief because people don't want to READ they want to get the news. I usually try to write in the same style, so I'll only describe things as needed.
^^; I also format by posts by seperating them into 'thoughts'. Since I think a lot, my posts are usually very spaced out... like now!
What I focus on? Um... I'm more for describing action than going into colors and hair and... I hate it when people describe hair too much! xP Or random blasts of wind, wtf!
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Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 2:35 pm
I'm going to combine two questions and make this a writing sample as well as a response. Cue third person:
***
Penny had two styles of characters-- alter egos and fillers. Her alter egos, true to their name, came into being when she was very little. The first few were her own twisted versions of heroes, from Link to Harry and Sabriel, each equipped to be the epitome of Quanonreip. But as she grew older and began picking up on the patterns of heroism, Penny began taking the qualities of her twisted characters and building originals from their carnage.
At first, they were Mary-Sues to the T. The very epitome of what a 12-year old girl wants to be as captured on scraps of paper and little doodles on the back of her sheet music. There was a leader, a magician, a demon, an animagus. There were those who defied authority and those that held it. As Penny learned more about cause and effect, she began giving these characters backstories to justify who they were as she envisioned them.
When she tentatively stepped into the realm of roleplaying to ply these caricatures of what she wished she could be, she realized that in her own writing and in others flaws must be apparent as well. Her backstories became years longer and her beloved characters grew older. Duncan's education, which enabled him to be an unparalleled politician, was recognized also to be the source of a bitter elitism which held sway over his judgement. For the first time, her alter-egos faded from heroism into shades of grey. At seventeen, she loved them for their humanity instead of their offer of escape. The last line in production was thematic-- each character created in this set was more a symbol or message than an individual.
But their context was changing. The more Penny explored cause and effect as it helped build character, the more she found herself left cold by fantasy plots. Magic began to feel like a cheap trick to break the laws of physics. It made no sense to her, and she became disenchanted. Her own fantasy plots took on a fierce edge, frosted over with cold explanations which, while destroying the flowery simplicity, offered a weight that a cynic could truly appreciate. Her plots focussed in on philosophy and fictional politics as opposed to magic and quests.
It was here that her second set of characters emerged-- the fillers. The violation of NPCs by roleplayers looking to give their characters cool points made her angry, as it defied realism. More and more often the alter egos of other roleplayers were, she noted, constructed to be unique-- in some cases so much so that 'normal' became a frowned-upon term, and not common enough to have reason to be normal, anyways. In a few nights, Penny dreamed up a set of average joes to counter this effect and provide balance in roleplays with other writers she admired. Jonas, a tired old cook, brought contrast to a cast of young, wild space pirates. These characters were easier to maintain because she did not cherish them as she did her egos, and was not slighted when they were. As these characters developed, their personalities became extensions of her own. Gray asked the questions Penny wrote papers on, Feren stressed over money like she did. Deacon like skittles. It was easier than lying, and didn't require much thought. By this time, she had little to spare, and little self-esteem to bear it on.
You see, in the midst of all this writing Penny had suffered a few slights that had marred her confidence. A preening plagiarist, a crude critic, and a set of classmates intolerant of her style had left her wondering why she wrote in the first place. And truly, she couldn't find a reason. It wasn't for escape anymore-- the realism in her writing was proof of that. If it was for others, then she should just quit while she was ahead. Competition? A plethora of skilled -younger- writers on Gaia were enough to convince her it was pointless. Collaboration? All of the RPs died before they even started. Creative release? No, definitely not that. The roleplaying world had been deemed early on by Penny as "practice". For what, though? Now she wrote out of habit, nothing more. Her characters now served to facilitate plot or add to the characters of other roleplayers. They were all fillers, her alter egos having been deemed too fragile to place on the field after too many scathing results. Penny had lost her spunk. It was enough to drive her away from Gaia in shame. Eventually, she returned out of need to procrastinate, but still stayed away from creativity. She has not roleplayed in two months.
***
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Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 4:41 pm
I like to RP because I never grew out of playing 'make believe' as a kid. I like to make up characters and stories, but I also like to interact with other people, so overall, RPing is just plain fun.
My husband doesn't get it at all.
When I write, I generally aim to create the flavor of the world. An RP which takes places in a steaming jungle should look and sound very different from an RP which takes place in New York or Medieval Europe. A character from NY should look and sound different from a character from a jungle or Medieval Europe.
One of my pet peeves in RPing, actually, is characters which sound like they come from modern America, or at the very least, not the RP's locale. No, seriously, feisty spunky teenage girls who believe in the basic tenets of feminism, democracy, freedom of speech, racial and religious equality, etc., have a ******** of explaining to do if they're going to show up in a Medieval RP.
I think the easiest solution to that particular problem would be if people just worked out their characters' backgrounds a little more. How many characters show up with essentially no parents and no family and no past? They've had this mysterious bout of amnesia which ended about five minutes before you met them? Almost every amnesiac I've ever met was a shitty character. (There's one exception, when someone had a good reason for their character's amnesia, and part of the story was actually the character regaining the memories.) Most amnesiacs, though, seem completely and utterly unaware of the fact that it is weird to not have a past.
I think people really underestimate the importance of family. I did, too, when I was a teen--mostly because I couldn't stand my family, and the last thing I wanted to write about was families. Now that I'm a little... healthier, I can see that no matter what I think about my family, they've still been massively important in shaping who I am. The same goes for our characters. A kid who's been raised in foster care or passed around from relative to relative is going to grow up to be different from if they'd been raised in a king's household or an humble but happy peasant's cottage.
I'm not saying to make masses and masses of background. I'm just saying that characters should fit in their world, and have enough history that they're more than just the writer's Mary Sue talking to the other players.
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Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:48 pm
Alright, let's start off with the fact that I don't think I'm very good. As much as I'd like to think I am, I've gotten a lot of critisicism in the past and half the time I'm unsure of spelling. xD
I like to describe my characters more than the setting a lot of the time. I find it easier to get inside my character's heads and find it more interesting to see their thoughts on things that write about their environment. I'll write about what's going on around them and try to describe things, but I can never get the wording quite how I want it to be...
I notice how a lot of literate roleplayers post in small print. I don't like typing like that, I find it hard to read and since most of the time the author who uses smaller print writes huge paragraphs with precise detail I feel insecure in my own writing part of the time.
I am influenced by the world around me, as general as that seems. Such as when I'm on vacation with family I have moments where I think to myself, 'Oh! I have to put that in a story!' There are so many simply things that get overlooked in stories or there are magnificent things that aren't able to be expressed clear enough, at least by me.
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Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 12:18 am
I like to write as though my characters are thinking the moment out.Example -- Excerpt from a longer post His arms came forward to strike them from the dresser, and they crashed against the support of his bed, shattering into a thousand pieces. He whipped his body around and his reflection--
Snake.
--against the vanity blazed denial and indifference.
See what you have become?
"No," he whispered, the word a soft tread of bane upon the lips that uttered it. Another Example Excerpt That was no matter, though. None of his injuries mattered, for it was just a matter of time and effort on his part to make them all disappear.
Bye bye birdy.
His head turned towards her, hair moving to make his eye and the fang exposed against the tilted grin of the right side of his face visible to her. He then twisted his neck, visage facing her fully and body remaining profile, letting the smoke from behind him waft his hair completely from his face and revealing the damaged part of it in all its lovely glory. It wasn't a bad injury--the concrete had been rough, and as it had grated against his skin it had been a surprisingly kind sort of mistress--but it certainly was a nasty one. His entire left cheek, temple, and part of the left side of his forehead was completely crimson, a bloody mess of glass, dirt, and torn flesh. Although it was not disfiguring, the fire behind him glared against it in solemn accusation, making it seem a half-mask of raw animosity.
His eyes were dead, cold, lifeless. They fell upon her in a lazy swoop, as though a hawk merely playing with its kill.
"Why couldn't you just chase some other girl?! What do you want from me?!" She continued to scream at him, and seemed to go on and on. Declan wasn't interested in the words that left her lips--he was too intent on on the fear that radiated from her body like a sick sweat. Closing his eyes very tightly, his fists clenched and unclenched at his sides--the healing process was so much more painful for him then the grievance process, and his face winced at the shocks of electric lights that flashed upon the back of his eyelids.
"Oh, sugar, don't you know?" he asked in a murmured tone, bubbles of giddiness rumbling in his stomach through the pain. "I'm the Reaper, hunneh, and I'm here for your soul."
Very slowly, his wounds began to heal. The monster bruise on his back--although she could not see it--trickled away into nothingness; the loose tooth in his mouth wedged itself stubbornly back against his gums; small pieces of glass and metal began to expel from his body like some sort of horrifying circus show of grisley proportion. His face began to close, damaged flesh repairing itself in a sinewy display of graphic stitching.
I'm made of doll parts, baby. At this thought, his lips exploded into a grin, sharp pearly whites extended to reflect the blaze behind him.
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