grimmmy
holy work
I hate writing sign-ups, the appearance/personality/background variety. Any tips on making the process actually fun, or at least blowing through them?
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Advice/Help Making signups fun, or at least tolerable?
- Thread starter grimmmy
- Start date
nerdy tangents
One Thousand Club
Elevator pitches. If you have to describe your character in 200 words or less what do you add?
I do them exclusively for CS, you get the basic bits down (name, age, etc) and you leave a space for a visual but the meat of the CS is like two to three paragraphs just describing them.
I do them exclusively for CS, you get the basic bits down (name, age, etc) and you leave a space for a visual but the meat of the CS is like two to three paragraphs just describing them.
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grimmmy
holy work
I'm going to go from there
nerdy tangents
by imposing a limit on how much I'm writing. Unfortunately, I can't write my sign-up free-form, I have to stick to the A/P/B, but I can always make the paragraphs flow into each other. I think there's just too much information that I feel compelled to write right now. Feel like I'm with you that an "elevator pitch" approach trumps a lot of detail.
nerdy tangents
by imposing a limit on how much I'm writing. Unfortunately, I can't write my sign-up free-form, I have to stick to the A/P/B, but I can always make the paragraphs flow into each other. I think there's just too much information that I feel compelled to write right now. Feel like I'm with you that an "elevator pitch" approach trumps a lot of detail.
nerdy tangents
One Thousand Club
Oh yeah ironically enough I learned about elevator pitches in a group roleplay and never looked back. So much of the long form CS is useless filler it just stresses me out.
if it helps maybe try to write it in the first person perspective? I always found it at least made the process more fun when I treated it like an interview with my characters literally answering questions.
Dont know as it helped slim down content tbf.
if it helps maybe try to write it in the first person perspective? I always found it at least made the process more fun when I treated it like an interview with my characters literally answering questions.
Dont know as it helped slim down content tbf.
kibou
ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ̀ˋ
You must make a different, more fun litmus test to determine who, and their ocs, are suitable for an rp and popularize it to the point more people use it than the traditional cs format.
Do you dislike the character creation process itself, or just writing it all down in that format? Personally I love creating and developing characters, so I might be able to help with that, but character sheets are little different. I understand why the most popular format is the way it is, but they are a pain sometimes when trying to figure out how much I want to say and how, especially when the gm asks for a certain word or paragraph count that's larger than necessary and you feel the need to pad it out a little with useless fluff.
If its just the cs itself, maybe it'd be more easy to make it more tolerable than fun, and think of the bare minimum info other characters would receive about them after knowing them for like... 2 weeks maybe? Appearance never needs to be long or have a ton of info- just body/face type, skin/hair/eye color, hair length, and anything else that might be noticeable at a glance like lots of scars or tattoos. Maybe a sentence about their general fashion style. I don't think gms care if appearance is short and sweet because they're not judging whether or not your oc is suitable based on their appearance. Personality I mainly stick to how they act outwardly. Not how others perceive them, because that's not up to me in a collaborative writing project, and not their inner thoughts because it's a good way to avoid metagaming and I think it's fun to discover each others character's deeper aspects as we go! Maybe the excitement about choosing what to reveal and then show off later will help somewhat, I find that fun. Leaving non-public aspects out might cut down on some length. And from there, for backstory, other than basics like giving a vague sense of home life focus on the stuff in the backstory that connects to why they're where the rp is starting. Gms just want to know your ideas make sense and fit in with their environment, and that you're not going to be a problem player that learned how to write a week ago or wants to take control of what's going on or god-mod/make a mary sue and etc, so as long as you fulfill that, the cs does not need to be a masterpiece or even the same level as how you'd describe someone in a novel.
Sometimes when I struggle and my brain just won't do writing, I make a bullet point list of just facts about what's happening or in this case, a list of personality traits/background events/physical traits, and then from there fluff it out a little/make it sound nicer.
If you want the paragraphs to flow better you could connect their appearance to their personality and then use the backstory as an explanation about their personality, since that's basically what it is and they lead into another- maybe mention their clothes are raggedy in appearance, and in personality say it's because they're a penny-pincher and are determined to wear them until they're falling off, and in the backstory it's all to save money for, uh, their sick dying daughter's treatment, which is also why they're at the hero academy so they can learn fighting techniques to defeat the mafia loan sharks coming to collect their dues.
Appearance doesn't have to have strictly appearance info if you actually prefer writing more- you can mention "her clothes are raggedy as a result of her penny-pinching" right in there, and I don't think it would stick out. Same thing with all the other categories, as long as it makes sense to mention it.
Do you dislike the character creation process itself, or just writing it all down in that format? Personally I love creating and developing characters, so I might be able to help with that, but character sheets are little different. I understand why the most popular format is the way it is, but they are a pain sometimes when trying to figure out how much I want to say and how, especially when the gm asks for a certain word or paragraph count that's larger than necessary and you feel the need to pad it out a little with useless fluff.
If its just the cs itself, maybe it'd be more easy to make it more tolerable than fun, and think of the bare minimum info other characters would receive about them after knowing them for like... 2 weeks maybe? Appearance never needs to be long or have a ton of info- just body/face type, skin/hair/eye color, hair length, and anything else that might be noticeable at a glance like lots of scars or tattoos. Maybe a sentence about their general fashion style. I don't think gms care if appearance is short and sweet because they're not judging whether or not your oc is suitable based on their appearance. Personality I mainly stick to how they act outwardly. Not how others perceive them, because that's not up to me in a collaborative writing project, and not their inner thoughts because it's a good way to avoid metagaming and I think it's fun to discover each others character's deeper aspects as we go! Maybe the excitement about choosing what to reveal and then show off later will help somewhat, I find that fun. Leaving non-public aspects out might cut down on some length. And from there, for backstory, other than basics like giving a vague sense of home life focus on the stuff in the backstory that connects to why they're where the rp is starting. Gms just want to know your ideas make sense and fit in with their environment, and that you're not going to be a problem player that learned how to write a week ago or wants to take control of what's going on or god-mod/make a mary sue and etc, so as long as you fulfill that, the cs does not need to be a masterpiece or even the same level as how you'd describe someone in a novel.
Sometimes when I struggle and my brain just won't do writing, I make a bullet point list of just facts about what's happening or in this case, a list of personality traits/background events/physical traits, and then from there fluff it out a little/make it sound nicer.
If you want the paragraphs to flow better you could connect their appearance to their personality and then use the backstory as an explanation about their personality, since that's basically what it is and they lead into another- maybe mention their clothes are raggedy in appearance, and in personality say it's because they're a penny-pincher and are determined to wear them until they're falling off, and in the backstory it's all to save money for, uh, their sick dying daughter's treatment, which is also why they're at the hero academy so they can learn fighting techniques to defeat the mafia loan sharks coming to collect their dues.
Appearance doesn't have to have strictly appearance info if you actually prefer writing more- you can mention "her clothes are raggedy as a result of her penny-pinching" right in there, and I don't think it would stick out. Same thing with all the other categories, as long as it makes sense to mention it.
