A guide to writing starters
This blog got quite busy (which I absolutely love) however, I noticed that some people struggle to come up with a starter to call out to my character. When it comes to starters I’m quite picky because I have two ultimate pet-peeves being God-modding and one-liners, and sometimes it can be hard to create something.
Because there are probably many out there who struggle with creating starters I decided to make a little guide on how to create starters along with examples, and why stuff works and why not. This guide can be both used to create open as closed starters.
I’m going to use my character Loki in these examples and I picked a couple of examples that I created for him, and a couple of examples that were handed to him. Yes, I asked those mun’s if I could use them.
So, let’s get to this.
Four foundations
To create a starter you need some foundations. I create my starters mostly on a couple of foundations, listed bellow. Not every foundation has the be used in every starter, you can mix and match but there is one foundation that you almost cannot leave out and that is the first one of this list. The four foundations I use are:
What is my character doing
Scenery
Openings sentence
plot
It sounds simple but let’s take a closer look...
What is my character doing?
This is one of the most important things, and as I said, it’s almost impossible to leave this one out. If you are going to write a starter you should know that whatever your character is doing, it affects the other. On top of that it is very important that you write the actions of your character alone and not the other as well.
You can place small little details on how your character is looking (handsome in a neat suit or bloodied if he just got out of a fight), but also other small things as age, hair, eye color, etc. Just make sure to not barrage the other player with an infinite amount of details because it can get overwhelming, and when characters are in their first meeting you will get there along the way anyway.
An example; gotten from @jester-datshyboi
The young boy, which appeared somewhere around 14-15 walked silent as ever through the dark and gloomy forest. He had absolutely no idea how he got there, or what lead him to the forest, but it was similar to a strong energy pulling him in. He gripped the wooden handle of his butcher knife in his padded pocket, just to comfort himself. He knew whatever beasts would be in this forest couldn’t be harmed by that little dagger no matter what.
In this case it was very important that he stated that his character was a minor, which for a lot of rp-ers changes their behavior towards them (Had I not liked it to rp with a young boy, I could have made him turn away and abandon the post, and because I’m polite I would have contacted the mun to let them know).
Please note how the mun keeps his character's actions to himself. This is very important because what your character does, affects mine even though you have no clue yet how my character is going to respond.
Scenery
A second and very important part of a starter is scenery. It can be abandoned mostly as you will see in the example with ‘openings sentence’, but it makes it more difficult. What do we mean by scenery? Well, any place you can think of. A house, a beach, a forest, a living room, whatever. If it fits and it is a place, you’re good to go.
For my character Loki I have created (like literally in my mind, I made map) a couple of places he resides if I want to create a starter. This way I can create a scenery for someone or can start from my scenery which I know.
An example, written for a Venom I wanted to rp with
Loki walked into the lab eyeing the interior with disgust, the door sliding shut behind him. He really disliked the sterile and white rooms and even more so all the weird machinery and tools.
The God slowly turned on his heel taking in his surroundings, the smell of bleach filling his nostrils. In the middle of the room stood a single chair, the kind where they usually strapped someone into to keep one in control. Glass cabinets were placed along the walls holding various of pots with liquids and there was a trolley with some shining tools placed on them.
Loki wasn’t quite sure what to make of this yet. Would he end up in that chair or someone else? His contract with S.H.I.E.L.D. stated he would not be harmed as long as he worked for the Avengers (even though he didn’t like that one bit and he had been forced to do so), but one could never be sure. There were many who still held a grudge against him and he was certain a couple of them wanted nothing more than the prod and pry at him like some lab-rat.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked coldly.
I created this scenery with a specific character in mind I was going to reach out to, being Venom. Luckily I knew a little about the character and I knew from the trailers that the creature resided in a lab of some sorts, this gave me some pointers. This scenery is very detailed and I explicitly chose to do so because of the other character. In this case the scenery could play a major role where my character could have been forced to sit down in that chair and suffer the horrors from the alien. Or the other could have made the tools rattle or the cabinets explode, whatever they would have liked.
Openings sentence
So, you have decided what your character is doing and you’ve set a scenery, now he/she/it wants to say something to give the other an opening to make the reply easier. Please note, this is optional as you saw in the first example.
I really cannot tell you what your character should say because it depends on the other rp-er you are interacting with (you probably know that character otherwise you wouldn’t reach out). The most easy thing is to ask a question because it is far easier for the other to answer to a question than a statement, but statements would do fine as well.
If you want some inspiration you can search Tumblr for “rp starters” or “prompts”. You will get an endless lists of things your character can say.
An example, written for a Klaus I wanted to rp with
It had taken him quite some time to track the man. The other was smart, quick and didn’t leave many tracks behind but even the slightest detail was enough for the God to eventually close in on him.
The Trickster was sure that the man - if it was a man that you could call him - was aware that he was being followed. But Loki had his own tricks to cover up his tracks and he was sure they had been dancing around each other for a while now.
He crouched down and ran his index finger through a puddle of blood and rubbed his finger against his thumb, a little green magic coming from the tip of his fingers to test it before he cleaned his fingers with the same magic. Then he gracefully raised to his feet.
A sly smile formed on his lips as he felt a presence behind him. “It is truly a pleasure to meet you,” he said with a velvet voice and turned a little.
I was struggling with how to introduce the other character to mine because I very much wanted them to meet but their universes differed very much. The sentence in this was the inspiration to build the scenery and Loki’s actions around it. I choose the difficult way in this to start with a statement instead of question.
As you can see there is barely any scenery in here, just a puddle of blood somewhere. I left it open for the other to fill in or not, in this case it really didn’t matter.
Plot
In my opinion is this one of the most difficult things to create especially when your characters aren’t even introduced yet. Usually I don’t put in plot with first meetings, this can wait until characters know each other. Plot is nothing more than a problem or a challenge for a character.
If you really wish to incorporate plot but you can’t come up with something, just google ‘dnd plot generator’. There are tons of websites which give you a random one-liner plot which can be used as inspiration for your rp.
An example, gotten from @dr-stephen-v-strange
So we did some research and apparently you can duplicate or something, so we don’t really know whom to contact or who is trustworthy (Thor is not acting like a reliable source). But we are kinda getting desperate. Mordo has been killing off magic users and with the Sorcerer Supreme gone, we could use someone with a bit more experience than the novices who keep creating portals to random places and then walk through them into walls or falling down hundreds of feet.
Well, I guess it’s pretty clear on what we are going to do even though we haven’t even met; we are going to hunt Mordo!
Another example, gotten from @xsimpletrashx
Lastly I have another example from a starter I got and I’m going to break it down for you a little and put my comments and thoughts in there in bold and you’ll see why.
The plan was simple. Loki had to stay at Stark tower to compensate for the damage he had done during the invasion of New York.
Okay, so I’m being forced to be stuck in a tower? Let’s see where this goes.
The tower has already been repaired and equipped with one of the best security systems in the US.
Scenery, awesome, I can not escape if I wish so.
Not that they needed much security with those enchanted handcuffs around Loki’s wrists anyway. They were separated, not to confine him too much, but still capable of restricting any kind of sorcery and godly strength.
Wait what? You are restricting my character? wha-?
In those cuffs, the trickster was basically human, at least that’s what Thor said.
Ah good, a fail-safe that almost neutralizes all that has been previously stated! If I don’t want to be restricted I can denounce it because Thor said something that could have been a lie. Good!
Tony was delighted when he heard the news, much to his teammates’ dismay. The genius was simply intrigued with things that were… new. The god was new and Tony yearned to know what made said god tick. To learn about his magic and use his thousand years old knowledge to defend the earth, who wouldn’t want that? …maybe he was also pleased to get a little payback for all the people who died during the attack. Well, nobody could blame him for that.
Good, this gives me some information about the other’s character and his motivations (plot).
“For all it’s worth, my dad didn’t give a shit about my problems either but here I am.” Tony joked halfheartedly as he led his new guest into his workshop.
Openings-sentence meant for me. I can respond however I like. Good!
Of course, he was still wary of being around the god without his suit on, handcuffs or not, especially since the last time that happened he got thrown out of the window, but that never stopped him from running his mouth.
More plot and character insight.
This particular example is very tricky because it borders a little on god-modding. Luckily for the both of us Loki has been restricted and whatever not for his past so many times in so many fics that I was willing to roll with it - heck! It even made sense! But had another character - for example Jester from the first example - forced this upon Loki, or had Loki forced this upon another character such as Klaus from the thirds example, than things might have turned out very differently.
What not to do
Well, of course you can do this but as I told at the beginning, god-modding is my ultimate pet-peeve and I know I’m not the only one. For example if you send me this I will not answer:
Loki had been reading a book in the corner when he suddenly heard a voice. “And who might you be?” she inquired, breaking the silence making Loki jump out of his boots by the unexpected sound.
Why I don’t like this? First of all, you are forcing my character to read a book. Good thing he loves his books but maybe he doesn’t want to read at this point, that is a decision for me to make. Then we get some scenery which is incomplete. Where are we? Home? Library? Beach? Just pick a place and try to fit it to your character. Then there is a sentence (which is fine), followed by how my character reacts to breaking that silence. Again, you decided how my character reacts (startled) which goes against the nature of my character because it takes a lot for him to jump out of his boots.
As you can see this starter is short but that doesn’t really matter. Let me give you an example on how you could write this differently.
She walked into the library silently, her footfalls barely disturbing the silence until she noticed the man. “And who might you be?” she inquired, breaking the silence and startling the other occupants of the room.
The difference here is that you kept your actions for yourself and haven’t forced any on mine, he can be doing whatever he wants. You created a scenery (a library and a silent one at that! Yes, could have been that there was a riot going on!) You created an openings-sentence, a question even which gives my character a reason to respond, and you even used some npc’s to create a reaction you EXPECT from my character as well but you didn’t force me.
TL;DR
In any starter just stick to the following things: what is MY character doing or saying? What is the scenery, aka, where is my character and is it logical for the other to be there too? What do I want to say? Can I insert some plot? You can mix and match these in any way you like.
I hope this was useful and if you want to add some things, please let me know. Also, this is my humble opinion on how I create starters and on how I love to see them, there is not rule to play by, my words aren’t chiseled in stone. ;-)
