That kind of thing works in novels because it's only one writer. You can have a dialogue section of two characters going back and forth, character A bringing up topics in sequence with character B just giving short responses. But in RP because each player only controls one character, just answering "yes" isn't enough and so you get the problems of tons of pointless info dumped, or multiple conversations happening at the same time.
I'm a little confused how you got short answers like only saying "yes" out of what I said? I just meant you don't have to have your character doing some sort of action (adjusting their collar, crossing their legs, etc) in every single tag, or a paragraph on their inner thoughts.
I think I agree with most of what you're saying. The kind of imbalance, for lack of a better word, is definitely a problem, though I wonder if it really has a different source. I think if people really focused on writing their character, which can of course involve various levels of action or dialogue at different times, it might work better.
Maybe it really is just the fact that people don't actually know how to write well, in general. I'm just trying to articulate this vibe I get, which is that people are trying to play out scenes while imagining them visually, rather than truly focusing on putting them into words properly.
I was thinking mostly about "Even in novels, characters can have long conversations with only occasional references to their actions." In a novel scene, writers don't have to do that because they don't swap character perspectives each time a new character speaks.
Meanwhile in RP, where the perspective does switch every tag, just putting in the conversation part seems too short to a lot of players (especially in prose) and so they cram in lots of actions or thoughts because they feel like they have to make it longer or more interesting somehow.
gotcha. Well, in that case I personally feel like forcing action or thoughts into every tag just to make them look more substantial is the wrong approach. If it's not something notable, or something that gives me insight into the character or something for my character to respond to, then I just think it's a distraction.
I understand why people might feel they need to do that? But there's this weird thing I've noticed in DWRP where length = quality in a lot of people's minds, and that's often not really true.
The length = quality thing is probably an artifact of journal rp's forefather known as ye olde 'literate multipara rp.'
In ancient history, making people write a lot of relatively grammatically correct prose was often one of the few ways to weed out the absolute dregs. It didn't make for high quality RP very often, but it was so much better than dealing with goku29342's I KAMAHAMEHAED AND KILLED U.
The downside is that it's so ingrained that it really damages the fun of roleplaying and generally degrades the quality, too.
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no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-04-07 04:58 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-04-07 05:39 am (UTC)(link)OP
(Anonymous) 2013-04-07 05:54 am (UTC)(link)Maybe it really is just the fact that people don't actually know how to write well, in general. I'm just trying to articulate this vibe I get, which is that people are trying to play out scenes while imagining them visually, rather than truly focusing on putting them into words properly.
ayrt
(Anonymous) 2013-04-07 06:10 am (UTC)(link)Meanwhile in RP, where the perspective does switch every tag, just putting in the conversation part seems too short to a lot of players (especially in prose) and so they cram in lots of actions or thoughts because they feel like they have to make it longer or more interesting somehow.
Re: ayrt
(Anonymous) 2013-04-07 07:45 am (UTC)(link)I understand why people might feel they need to do that? But there's this weird thing I've noticed in DWRP where length = quality in a lot of people's minds, and that's often not really true.
da
(Anonymous) 2013-04-07 07:59 am (UTC)(link)In ancient history, making people write a lot of relatively grammatically correct prose was often one of the few ways to weed out the absolute dregs. It didn't make for high quality RP very often, but it was so much better than dealing with goku29342's I KAMAHAMEHAED AND KILLED U.
The downside is that it's so ingrained that it really damages the fun of roleplaying and generally degrades the quality, too.