Daisie
Strangely regular (better than the usual bizarre!)
Hey guys! It occurred to me that over the years I've been here on RpNation, I've made leaps and strides in my knowledge of RP and its intricacies. Storytelling is obviously - like any other type of art - a learned skill. It takes time to build and perfect. Some people like to tell their stories as a casual hobby while others will make it their livelihood. There truly is no wrong way to go about it as long as everyone involved is having a good time. Detailed or not, BBCode or bare, plotted or going in blind, the world of writing and roleplay is one of the most versatile forms of expression out there. That being said however, I'd like to share some tips and tricks around telling a good story and keeping everyone - yourself included - interested in what comes next.
This is just a thread that I'm either going to update once in a blue moon, or perhaps never again, lol! I just thought it would be nice to get some of this stuff in my head out there, perhaps someone can learn something from this.
This is all completely anecdotal knowledge gained from my personal experiences in RP. This isn't professional, nor is it the Holy Gospel of Storytelling
On with the show!
I'd like to start out with a useful little lesson I learned early on that I like to call the four elements. These are key ingredients to any game, in my opinion, regardless of its genre. If a roleplay doesn't have a dash of each of these elements, you're likely to feel that something is off, or you may find your RP slowly growing stale after awhile, despite everything sounding fantastic on paper. Of course, this isn't the only reason a RP could be going stale, but it's something to keep in mind, nonetheless. The four elements are, in no particular order...
• Happiness. This is just what it says on the tin: a cheerful tinge to your roleplay. A lot of people are quick to brush this concept off with the label "fluff", but in reality this element comes in many forms, fluff being only one of the many. So maybe your universe is dark and dreary, but to keep the characters pushing forward, they need a brief scene or two in which they're forced pick each other up and remind themselves what it is they're fighting for. It's a reason to keep going, it's the light at the end of the tunnel, it's the diamond in the dump. The element of happiness can show itself by being uplifting, sweet, cute, heroic, or gently heartwarming, and is useful for breaking up some of the darker moments.
• Darkness. Speaking of darker moments, it's no secret that great stories need some sort of conflict. It's one of the first things you notice about an adventure when you dive into it: An exciting tale needs some type of danger or obstacle to be in the way of the characters' path, whether that's something as giant and daunting as a fearsome dragon, as unsettling and thought-provoking as the dark side of society, or as commonplace and relatable as unrequited love. No one wants to hear about how Joe woke up, brushed his teeth, went to work, and came home to watch Netflix. Well, not unless Joe gets sucked into the TV and has to try and survive in the GoT universe. There's hardly a reason to become invested in a story if nothing is on the line. Darkness and conflict are very flexible in their use of manipulating one's emotions: it can be depressing, frightening, disturbing, dramatic, or as mentioned, thought-provoking. It's also a wonderful tool in-character for bringing your cast closer together, as hearts tend to bond through difficult times.
• Comedy. Now, you may be thinking "this sounds an awful lot like happiness". Well, you're not entirely wrong, as those two elements are pretty closely related... But comedy can be used in far different scenarios and for far different purposes. When darkness begins to take over your roleplay, you can't always cut straight through it with warm and happy feels - it might start to feel clunky, preachy, or it may even give you mood whiplash. What you can do, however, is go for the occasional humorous quip! It's like Happiness Lite™. A lot of people cope with things by cracking jokes (myself included!) so it's a good, natural way to lighten the mood (So long as you use it tactfully. Be sure to read the room before throwing in a one-liner). Since kidding around is an organic mood-lightener, you can use it to add extra flavour to the happy moments, too. Comedy is also remarkably useful for making unlikable characters likable. No one enjoys a jerk, but if you make them into a funny jerk, or even allow bad-yet-amusing things to happen to them, it can be a powerful tool of endearment towards your character... it sort of acts as an acknowledgement that you know your character is a jerkwad, and that's the way it's supposed to be. If you want to forge a cast of characters with great chemistry, you have to know how to work with the element of comedy.
• Mystery. Happiness, darkness, and comedy are wondrous elements in a story... but if there's no mystery involved - no intrigue into what happens next - then you may as well be writing a book for yourself. Some people may enjoy that, others may not, but I personally think that a hunger to know what happens next is a great motivator to push a story further into its plot. The truth is that we, as people, are curious creatures. We have a natural desire to discover things; we get a rush from the unknown... especially if we're already invested in the characters and overarching storyline. Why does a character act the way they do? What's driving the villain to destroy the world? Will the lovebirds get together in the end? Who is the secret clique that's seemingly always watching over? Sometimes the best part of asking a question is the hunt for an answer, and that's exactly what the bread and butter of mystery is. The art of this dynamic is a delicate one: revealing just so much often enough to keep the appetite alive, but not so much as to solve the puzzle too quickly. Save that part for the ending... or perhaps not at all, if you're feeling adventurous.
So those are the four elements. Now this begs the question: How much do we need of each? That's a difficult question to put an answer to because that balance is different for everyone. Some people enjoy their RPs dark, serious, and packed with heartfelt tragedy with very little specks of light and hope. As mentioned before, other people may like to roleplay solely fluffy, gushy romance. Myself, I enjoy my roleplays on the darker side... Not to the point of being outright cynical, but I enjoy putting my characters through a hard time. Regardless of my preference towards a dark nature, every story needs at least a smidge of each element.
If you lose comedy, perhaps your characters will start to feel the slightest bit inhuman... A little unsympathetic or unrelatable. Everyone loves a joke once in awhile, it's human nature.
If you let go of happiness, your universe might feel unrealistic in how gritty and cynical it is. With no hope of better days or a modicum of good through the bad, there would be no real drive to push forward. People can only take so much heaviness at any given time.
Without mystery, there's also not a lot of drive to push forward. If you know every little detail that's going to happen.. you may as well be writing a book. Though, not even that, as many amazing writers are surprised by their own characters, having to rewrite many times before publishing!
Finally, without some amount of darkness or conflict, there's nothing holding your plotline together. Without the dark, there's no real meaning to the light. No motivation. It's just warm & fuzzies for the sake of warm & fuzzies.
Again... Everyone prefers something different. Honestly, there's nothing real wrong with enjoying a solely fluffy plot, a lightless post-apocalyptic world, or a story that plays out like a carefully choreographed dance. Understand that most people aren't like that, however. These are individual elements that appeal to the majority. If you look through a lot of great movies, shows, books, or any other type of entertainment, you'll likely find a little bit of each element in each. The big question is: How much do you prefer?
Knowing how you prefer to balance your roleplays can be extremely useful in finding a roleplay partner. Try to find a partner who leans towards the same balance that you do so you're on the same page about your roleplay. Be sure to communicate. If your partner likes more comedy in their roleplay while you want to stick to the dark & dreary, you may have a problem on your hands before the RP even begins.
How to add these elements to a story...? Well, that's entirely up to you! Each tale is different, it's you and your partner's job to find out what the best way is to go about it, as you should know more than anyone what would work and what wouldn't. This is why maintaining communication between yourself and your partner is important... If you can't properly interact, compromise, or are simply unable to get along, then all of the issues you and your partner have with the story will go unannounced and unsolved... Nothing saps more motivation from a roleplay than that.
I hope you've learned some things from this! This was a neat little lesson I learned a couple years ago with one of my best RP partners. Curiously, we found that whenever one of these elements would begin to slip from our RP, our interest in it would gradually begin to wane. It sucks when your enthusiasm takes a dive for a RP you're in love with. With this knowledge, though, we were better equipped to determine what the issue was with our RP, as well as how to go about fixing it. If this tutorial has served its purpose well, hopefully you'll be able to catch some RPs before they fall away, or improve your experience over all.
Happy writing!
This is just a thread that I'm either going to update once in a blue moon, or perhaps never again, lol! I just thought it would be nice to get some of this stuff in my head out there, perhaps someone can learn something from this.
This is all completely anecdotal knowledge gained from my personal experiences in RP. This isn't professional, nor is it the Holy Gospel of Storytelling
On with the show!The Four Elements
I'd like to start out with a useful little lesson I learned early on that I like to call the four elements. These are key ingredients to any game, in my opinion, regardless of its genre. If a roleplay doesn't have a dash of each of these elements, you're likely to feel that something is off, or you may find your RP slowly growing stale after awhile, despite everything sounding fantastic on paper. Of course, this isn't the only reason a RP could be going stale, but it's something to keep in mind, nonetheless. The four elements are, in no particular order...
• Happiness. This is just what it says on the tin: a cheerful tinge to your roleplay. A lot of people are quick to brush this concept off with the label "fluff", but in reality this element comes in many forms, fluff being only one of the many. So maybe your universe is dark and dreary, but to keep the characters pushing forward, they need a brief scene or two in which they're forced pick each other up and remind themselves what it is they're fighting for. It's a reason to keep going, it's the light at the end of the tunnel, it's the diamond in the dump. The element of happiness can show itself by being uplifting, sweet, cute, heroic, or gently heartwarming, and is useful for breaking up some of the darker moments.
• Darkness. Speaking of darker moments, it's no secret that great stories need some sort of conflict. It's one of the first things you notice about an adventure when you dive into it: An exciting tale needs some type of danger or obstacle to be in the way of the characters' path, whether that's something as giant and daunting as a fearsome dragon, as unsettling and thought-provoking as the dark side of society, or as commonplace and relatable as unrequited love. No one wants to hear about how Joe woke up, brushed his teeth, went to work, and came home to watch Netflix. Well, not unless Joe gets sucked into the TV and has to try and survive in the GoT universe. There's hardly a reason to become invested in a story if nothing is on the line. Darkness and conflict are very flexible in their use of manipulating one's emotions: it can be depressing, frightening, disturbing, dramatic, or as mentioned, thought-provoking. It's also a wonderful tool in-character for bringing your cast closer together, as hearts tend to bond through difficult times.
• Comedy. Now, you may be thinking "this sounds an awful lot like happiness". Well, you're not entirely wrong, as those two elements are pretty closely related... But comedy can be used in far different scenarios and for far different purposes. When darkness begins to take over your roleplay, you can't always cut straight through it with warm and happy feels - it might start to feel clunky, preachy, or it may even give you mood whiplash. What you can do, however, is go for the occasional humorous quip! It's like Happiness Lite™. A lot of people cope with things by cracking jokes (myself included!) so it's a good, natural way to lighten the mood (So long as you use it tactfully. Be sure to read the room before throwing in a one-liner). Since kidding around is an organic mood-lightener, you can use it to add extra flavour to the happy moments, too. Comedy is also remarkably useful for making unlikable characters likable. No one enjoys a jerk, but if you make them into a funny jerk, or even allow bad-yet-amusing things to happen to them, it can be a powerful tool of endearment towards your character... it sort of acts as an acknowledgement that you know your character is a jerkwad, and that's the way it's supposed to be. If you want to forge a cast of characters with great chemistry, you have to know how to work with the element of comedy.
• Mystery. Happiness, darkness, and comedy are wondrous elements in a story... but if there's no mystery involved - no intrigue into what happens next - then you may as well be writing a book for yourself. Some people may enjoy that, others may not, but I personally think that a hunger to know what happens next is a great motivator to push a story further into its plot. The truth is that we, as people, are curious creatures. We have a natural desire to discover things; we get a rush from the unknown... especially if we're already invested in the characters and overarching storyline. Why does a character act the way they do? What's driving the villain to destroy the world? Will the lovebirds get together in the end? Who is the secret clique that's seemingly always watching over? Sometimes the best part of asking a question is the hunt for an answer, and that's exactly what the bread and butter of mystery is. The art of this dynamic is a delicate one: revealing just so much often enough to keep the appetite alive, but not so much as to solve the puzzle too quickly. Save that part for the ending... or perhaps not at all, if you're feeling adventurous.
Okay, but why do we need these, and how much do I use?
So those are the four elements. Now this begs the question: How much do we need of each? That's a difficult question to put an answer to because that balance is different for everyone. Some people enjoy their RPs dark, serious, and packed with heartfelt tragedy with very little specks of light and hope. As mentioned before, other people may like to roleplay solely fluffy, gushy romance. Myself, I enjoy my roleplays on the darker side... Not to the point of being outright cynical, but I enjoy putting my characters through a hard time. Regardless of my preference towards a dark nature, every story needs at least a smidge of each element.
If you lose comedy, perhaps your characters will start to feel the slightest bit inhuman... A little unsympathetic or unrelatable. Everyone loves a joke once in awhile, it's human nature.
If you let go of happiness, your universe might feel unrealistic in how gritty and cynical it is. With no hope of better days or a modicum of good through the bad, there would be no real drive to push forward. People can only take so much heaviness at any given time.
Without mystery, there's also not a lot of drive to push forward. If you know every little detail that's going to happen.. you may as well be writing a book. Though, not even that, as many amazing writers are surprised by their own characters, having to rewrite many times before publishing!
Finally, without some amount of darkness or conflict, there's nothing holding your plotline together. Without the dark, there's no real meaning to the light. No motivation. It's just warm & fuzzies for the sake of warm & fuzzies.
Again... Everyone prefers something different. Honestly, there's nothing real wrong with enjoying a solely fluffy plot, a lightless post-apocalyptic world, or a story that plays out like a carefully choreographed dance. Understand that most people aren't like that, however. These are individual elements that appeal to the majority. If you look through a lot of great movies, shows, books, or any other type of entertainment, you'll likely find a little bit of each element in each. The big question is: How much do you prefer?
Knowing how you prefer to balance your roleplays can be extremely useful in finding a roleplay partner. Try to find a partner who leans towards the same balance that you do so you're on the same page about your roleplay. Be sure to communicate. If your partner likes more comedy in their roleplay while you want to stick to the dark & dreary, you may have a problem on your hands before the RP even begins.
How to add these elements to a story...? Well, that's entirely up to you! Each tale is different, it's you and your partner's job to find out what the best way is to go about it, as you should know more than anyone what would work and what wouldn't. This is why maintaining communication between yourself and your partner is important... If you can't properly interact, compromise, or are simply unable to get along, then all of the issues you and your partner have with the story will go unannounced and unsolved... Nothing saps more motivation from a roleplay than that.
I hope you've learned some things from this! This was a neat little lesson I learned a couple years ago with one of my best RP partners. Curiously, we found that whenever one of these elements would begin to slip from our RP, our interest in it would gradually begin to wane. It sucks when your enthusiasm takes a dive for a RP you're in love with. With this knowledge, though, we were better equipped to determine what the issue was with our RP, as well as how to go about fixing it. If this tutorial has served its purpose well, hopefully you'll be able to catch some RPs before they fall away, or improve your experience over all.
Happy writing!
