Reposted here by the request of the players at my table of "whatever happened to that roleplaying/writing/acting thread you wrote a (long) while back?!" Introduction: My sleepy subconscious theses The best writing advice I ever read, paraphrased: "Your assignment? Write a 100k word novel about anything you like. Done? Good. Now take it out back and burn it. You're ready to begin writing." I write a lot of stuff. In fact, I think I pretty much live in an internal world of characters where people are saying/doing a lot of really weird things that could incite an incident. The problem is, that I take Mr. Eddings' advice a little too much to heart. I'm constantly burning my material (once had about 67 fics on fanfiction.net, many of them over 70k words, now down to 30 something, found one the other day and winced, potentially also on the chopping block now). TTRPG designer John Wick one time said in response to a similar letter "I get a lot of folks saying 'I've been working on my book for 30 years now'. No, you haven't. In 30 years I've designed 28 games. Shit or get off the pot."
So now you know why I am a failed author: one manuscript, over 300 rejections, sitting on the butcher's block with the cleaver sharpened next to it prepared for more drastic surgery. However, in the (redacted) years I've been trying to turn out something that people will actually want to buy and read, I've done a lot of study on a lot of different topics. I know more theory about writing than I do the culture of East Asia (my college major). Today, I'm going to synthesize all that down into 'why Leila can spit out a three paragraph post in about ten minutes, while "I" (undefined speaker on ttrpg forums who first asked "how do you do it?!") spend an hour staring at the screen, get distracted, and leave without ever posting'.
Tabletop and Play-by-Post are theater; if it's going to be any good, it has to be treated as such
So now, onto a(n extremely) abbreviated course on the theory of theatre and literature.
Inciting Action: Shit has to happen If shit doesn't happen, there is no story. This is called the "inciting action", and it sets up every single thing that is ever going to happen to the characters in a 21-year-running manga ever.
Most of the time, the inciting incident is the result of character choice, a decision. Someone acts. Someone does something. Otherwise, they would just be living their lives, doing whatever, nothing to see here. They'd be a background character, the extra in the movie. Now, this is not always true. Sometimes the inciting action is either the hand of fate or sheer dumb accident. For example, Keiichi happened to dial the wrong number, and a goddess showed up. HOWEVER, this is indeed an inciting action, because Belldandy had to show up- something had to happen!- or he would have remained a freshman geek sitting in the dude dorm. Sometimes a change of scenery is needed. A character who would have been a nobody at home and died in obscurity moves to a new place and something begins to happen to them; ex. Yuu moves to Inaba and meets Izanami.
Everything that everyone else is doing is in response to the inciting action; I repeat, when posting or sitting around the table with dice, THERE MUST BE SOMETHING THERE FOR THE OTHER PERSON/PLAYERS TO RESPOND TO. Otherwise, the rest of us are just sitting there staring at you going 'what the hell am I supposed to do with that?'
The problem is when an author spends freaking FOREVER on the background and framing device. Too much exposition is a bad thing. It takes 76 pages for Frodo to leave for Rivendell, and another 90 for him to meet Strider. No wonder "I can't get into Lord of the Rings"- the inciting incidents, the things that make things HAPPEN are more than a third of the way into the book. Nothing happens in LotR indeed! (This from a die-hard Aragorn fangirl.) During meet-and-greet sessions as the players get the exposition out of the way, you will notice Matt Mercer and your own game mistress sitting there taking notes and only half paying attention. This is because nothing is happening. I haven't given anything for you to react to, you haven't given me anything to react to.
When in doubt, DO something. Do something.
Dialogue: It has to have a purpose But the above is not to say "any dream will do". In a webcomic a couple of decades ago, a character comments that "nobody ever just talks about day to day life in a story. It's always deep and meaningful. Every sentence spoken is foreshadowing". The characters then try to have a normal, mundane conversation and trickle off into silence.
That's to be expected. Dialogue always serves a purpose. Always. If Polgara the Sorceress is going to spend 30 pages talking about how to make the perfect soup, it happens off screen. The characters may joke about Polgara writing 30 pages on how to make the perfect soup, but this, too, has a purpose. They are establishing Polgara's character. They are telling you that she's the sort of woman to get sidetracked by her hobby (cooking) and that she's a perfectionist who will spend forever lecturing you on how to do it right.
Queen of Sorcery opens with Polgara talking about the ruined city they're in- this has no plot purpose, so you might be tempted to say it has NO purpose. Not exactly. From this scene, we establish several very important things. 1) We find out Polgara is over two thousand years old, so she's telling the truth about being an immortal sorceress- which is a MAJOR shift in the mindset of our protagonist Garion as he comes to terms with this truth. 2) We find out some very important things about her character and what she values. 3) It humanizes her as we see her grief and loss, making her less of a monolithic invincible institution and more of a woman. 4) Durnik begins to understand the woman he is in love with and that she isn't merely "Mistress Pol". When Garion (and thus the audience) have learned everything they can from this dialogue, Garion walks away and it ends. There is nothing superfluous said.
Awkward conversation that's basically "Hi, how are you, geez you've grown?" serves a purpose. It's telling you that these characters- family who have known each other since literal birth- have some sort of unnatural separation between them. It's telling both the audience and the other characters "this isn't right, something is wrong here" and establishes something about the scene.
If your character isn't saying something important, shut the hell up and move on! Dialogue in an interactive setting (a play script, tabletop, etc), like the inciting incidents we talked about above, must give the other person something to respond to.
One of my favorite plays (actually, thank you girl I hated in theater) is Arcadia. The framing device for the show is a historian and his grad student researching the papers of an estate, trying to figure out what happened in an incident over a hundred years ago. The entire show takes place on one set (the library of the estate) with lighting changes being the only indication of scene shift. Almost the entire play is in dialogue- minimal blocking, minimal action. I can see a lot of people rolling their eyes now… nothing happens. BORING.
Fascinating. You have to tell the entire story with nothing but dialogue. It is told in a series of conversations between the modern historians and flashback scenes with the two characters from the past. We have nothing to go on but the words of the historian, his grad student, the daughter of the house, and her tutor. Are the historian and grad student getting it right? Are the papers even correct? Did someone try to cover up "what really happened"? Was everyone telling the whole truth? If even one word is wasted, if even one sentence is out of place or doesn't pertain directly to the plot, the audience is lost and the entire concept of Arcadia is shattered.
There is no room for idle chatter. If it doesn't serve a purpose (foreshadowing, creating something for the other person to respond to, or establishing character) throw it out. Don't continue a dialogue past the point of no return just because you feel like you have to "post back". Start a new scene or even a new thread. Start a new chapter.
Scene Changes: When nothing is happening, GTFO "I have to post back or I'm not participating, giving someone something to respond to". Well, clearly the other person hasn't given you something to respond to, or you would have responded, ne? There's no guilt involved. So stop feeling pressured. This is a two-way street. I've mostly been talking about taking the responsibility, but they have a responsibility to you, too, right? They should have given you something the way you're giving them something to work with.
If a scene is going nowhere, GTFO.
We're prolonging the conversation because we feel like we have to post for someone. This isn't fun, this is an obligation. If it isn't working, then try something else. Have something happen. Do a time skip. If the scene is flagging, move to a new scene. You're not going to hurt anyone's feelings. Just wrap things up as neatly as possible and start something new and interesting. I've felt many times like I can join "thread killers anonymous" because I've posted something and no one has ever responded- the post has just dangled there for eternity. Oh, well, there was nothing there to respond to, my bad.
So, going back to the scene in the ruins above at the beginning of Queen of Sorcery, we just had IC dialogue where Polgara was talking about moonlit nights with handsome men serenading, the beautiful white towers of the city, and the peacefulness of debating philosophy while sitting on the edges of white marble fountains, and a tone shift when she said "And then the Asturians came". We've established she knew this city well, mourns its death, really is two thousand years old, and holds a grudge against the Asturians. It was a lot for Garion to digest. He said "I'm going to go and have a look around". He didn't need to be part of the dialogue anymore, so he got out of the scene. He went for a walk and encounters two peasants scavenging for food in the ruins, and then a foppish Asturian nobleman. His reaction to these two encounters is shaped by the dialogue he just had, but he wouldn't have had the encounters if he hadn't left the dialogue and moved on to a new scene? Feedback loop! Hooray for continuity!
And no, Mr. Wheedon, adding another character to the scene doesn't add anything interesting. Sometimes it just clutters things up and distracts from what is/was going on. When in doubt, adding another character is like "when in doubt, add another ingredient to the curry". Sometimes you just get Mystery Food X. Just move on. If you really want Black Widow in a scene, write a new scene that adds something to the plot that involves her. Nothing is happening, GTFO.
"If you want, I can take over that character". Nah, it's OK, really. That character isn't doing anything in this scene anyway, so get them out of there and remove some clutter.
Staying in Character… not a big deal, actually "But it takes me forever to post because I don't know how Tamahome would react in this situation".
(Face in hands) Lord God, help me. (Deep breath) OK.
SOMETIMES HUMAN BEINGS ACT "OUT OF CHARACTER". It's OK. If we could all predict exactly what the other person was going to do or say, life would be pretty fucking boring, don't you think? We'd never have to interact at all. It would all be scripted and planned, and nothing would ever go wrong ever.
Here's the important thing you need to take away from this entire lecture: When in doubt DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING! You are creating a situation for the other person to respond to. And sometimes, it's a lot more interesting when someone acts "out of character". It creates opportunities. The quiet character sitting at the computer just made a dirty joke? Wow, we just learned something about her. Nakago unexpectedly showed mercy to Miaka and let her go? Either he's got a deeper motive or there's a slight chink in his armor we can exploit. Harry Potter just broke up with Cho Chang, the girl he's been crushing on for three books? Wow, I wonder where the plot is going with this. Something big is happening! "Out of character" doesn't mean "wrong". "Out of character" means "the status quo has changed". And sometimes, that's the inciting incident we need to push the story along.
Summary-Thank God, she's finally done! Why was every Champions game I ever played boring as fuck? Because I wasn't doing anything. I was sitting there writing a completely different RP with another player, and we were having fun with that. Why were we having fun with that? Because our characters were doing something! We weren't sitting around listening to party chatter and waiting the entire night for something to come up that our characters could respond to! Older, wiser, and more perceptive as I now am, I would have been interrupting the forty-something year old dudes and demanding my chance to play, not simply waiting for "Phase 12, Luna, it's your turn". I would have CREATED roleplaying opportunities for myself. I would go "Oh, hey, I like this NPC- I'm going to interact with them and see if there's a buried plothook I can create". "Oh hey, there's a button-let's push it! Who wouldn't?"
Who wouldn't indeed…