With A Little Help From My Friends
I have to admit, not all my writing is original thinking. I like bouncing my ideas off friends; we often work out story ideas together.
It began with my son, The Snail, and bedtime stories. We began storytime the same way every time. I'd say, "Time for bed." and he usually got ready quickly. I'd lay down next to him and we'd work on relaxed breathing together then I'd ask, "What do you want to hear about?" When he was younger he'd want me to tell stories about him in different situations, like riding a dragon or being Superman's friend but, when he was older, we worked out more elaborate stories that went on for weeks. One of the characters we worked out is now a character in one of my books.
I took a creative writing course in college and was told that my dislogue was unrealistic and needed a lot of work. I didn't go forward at that point. I got too busy with work and family life, but I rediscovered my dream to write in an unexpected way, online role-playing.
I learned a lot about character development playing with other characters and talking to them out-of-character (OOC). For example, one player taught me that my characters had to be vulnerable in some sort of way, even if they were immortal or god-like, otherwise they would be no better than cartoons.
The people I role-played with stressed realism so I learned how to accurately describe things and be quick on my feet in order to react to situations around them. There were times, when we were playing combat scenes, that I would physically act out scenes in order to respond realistically.
We stressed conciseness so I learned to describe things quickly with as few words as possible.
The three main characters in my book, The Thrall Wars, were developed online. Some parts of the novel arose from scenes we played out, chat logs that were converted to prose, and posted parts of the storyline.
Role-playing my characters got me the dialogue and story development practice I needed. The immediacy of online role-playing did more to teach me writing than any creative writing course I took by giving me feedback as soon as I wrote something and by the continuous refinement of my characters and their stories as I interacted with different, sometimes unexpected, characters, and reacted to different, sometimes unexpected situations.
It began with my son, The Snail, and bedtime stories. We began storytime the same way every time. I'd say, "Time for bed." and he usually got ready quickly. I'd lay down next to him and we'd work on relaxed breathing together then I'd ask, "What do you want to hear about?" When he was younger he'd want me to tell stories about him in different situations, like riding a dragon or being Superman's friend but, when he was older, we worked out more elaborate stories that went on for weeks. One of the characters we worked out is now a character in one of my books.
I took a creative writing course in college and was told that my dislogue was unrealistic and needed a lot of work. I didn't go forward at that point. I got too busy with work and family life, but I rediscovered my dream to write in an unexpected way, online role-playing.
I learned a lot about character development playing with other characters and talking to them out-of-character (OOC). For example, one player taught me that my characters had to be vulnerable in some sort of way, even if they were immortal or god-like, otherwise they would be no better than cartoons.
The people I role-played with stressed realism so I learned how to accurately describe things and be quick on my feet in order to react to situations around them. There were times, when we were playing combat scenes, that I would physically act out scenes in order to respond realistically.
We stressed conciseness so I learned to describe things quickly with as few words as possible.
The three main characters in my book, The Thrall Wars, were developed online. Some parts of the novel arose from scenes we played out, chat logs that were converted to prose, and posted parts of the storyline.
Role-playing my characters got me the dialogue and story development practice I needed. The immediacy of online role-playing did more to teach me writing than any creative writing course I took by giving me feedback as soon as I wrote something and by the continuous refinement of my characters and their stories as I interacted with different, sometimes unexpected, characters, and reacted to different, sometimes unexpected situations.
Posted by RevrendZ - 5/04/2010 06:52:00 AM
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