Sunday, June 13, 2010

Post #9 - How Roleplay Makes You Better

My practical experience in writing draws from a solid foundation of more than fifteen years experience being a gamer. I have played, written, edited and developed many RPGs out on the market now, and I use a lot of those skills to explain and illustrate my writing.

Roleplaying is more than the rolling of dice in a basement while a Zeppelin album blares in the background. It is essentially theater, as you take notes and material you've developed and bring a character to life. This is no different than what you're writing in your novels and short stories, only the material comes from different sources, and there's no dice dictating that you have a 16 Strength.

I have outlined here some points on what makes for good roleplay. Roleplay is essentially the expression of a developing character (as no character is truly finite and complete, because they're always gaining experience), so apply these rules to either your 7th-level outlaw or the protagonist of your man-versus-robot-snakes story...or whatever you happen to be working on.

I. Characters live because of conflict -- This is also called "motivation", and it can be summarized on micro and macro levels. The micro level deals with the immediate moments like what the character is doing now, in this second, in response to action X. The macro level deals with the larger overall goals and plans of the character, involving actions X Y and Z and long-term plans.

When you have a character, before you can give to them any sort of powers or nuances, you must find their conflicts. Why are they doing this? ("this" is whatever you have them doing) What do they want out of this?

It does not need to be so obviously stated, and to actually state it openly makes your character weak and transparent. But the audience should be able to follow along and understand the "why" based on the actions.

Example: Larry baits a trap in the forest.

We need say nothing else for the moment as to why Larry is baiting a trap, we can conclude that you bait a trap for the purposes of catching something. Any specification I give the character had better be more immediate in nature, otherwise the character will appear weakly designed. See here:

Bad Example: Larry baits a trap in the forest, because baiting traps is what orphan outlaws do when they've spent ten years on the run.

This is a bad example because the explanation that follows the action is macro in nature. Baiting a trap is just....baiting a trap, it is not a sufficient reason to explain being an outlaw or an orphan or spending a decade running. I have rushed this vital character knowledge, given it away too soon, and as a result the character looks weak.

Good example: Larry baits a trap in the forest, hoping that the seventh try is the charm. The rumbling of his stomach reminds him only of his previous failures.

This is the better example because the scene, the more immediate action is better described. The audience is brought next to Larry without delay, and the specific knowledge they gain about Larry is actually more sympathetic and connective. The audience may not understand the plight of the outlaw, but they'll easily understand being hungry and feeling possible frustration over failing to catch food.

The conflict the writer/actor brings to the character always has to be more immediate (because that's what the audience sees) rather than broader (because you want the audience to take the immediate actions as pieces of the greater whole).

The nature of the conflict does not have to be aggressive, against other characters. Sometimes, people act because of a lack of something, or because of a desire to change current circumstances...but that conflict arises and propels the character through the scene. Finding the conflict can help you ground a character when you get lost in a group of other characters or complex actions. When in doubt, come back to the conflict.

II. Characters have multiple levels -- No character is ever one-dimensional. If a character is coming across as flat, as if they're only focused in one direction, that's the fault of the writer/actor. Even if the written page only makes use of a certain set of adjectives and verbs, the writer/actor may take the inverse or opposite (essentially the unwritten set of facts) to help build the character.

If Larry the outlaw is escaping the sheriff, and he is afraid that he'll be hanged, we can reason that he wants to stay alive, even though the text does not say "Larry wants to stay alive". Because Larry engages in multiple actions, we see Larry in different contexts.

These shifting contexts are what deepen a character. We see Larry rob, flee and hunt and love and fail....all these actions generate responses in Larry that allow the audience to grow closer AND learn more about him.

Larry would die on the page if we only saw him hunt, and everything he did was lensed/displayed through the context of hunting. Yes, Larry may use hunting-language to illustrate his actions, but Larry does more than hunt. He also eats, and sleeps and does a ton of other actions.

The goal of all these actions is not to just fill up pages and take up time, the goal is to make Larry as close to alive as possible. It does not matter whether Larry is an American Indian, a fantasy creature, an accountant lost in the wild or a ghost. The idea of Larry is represented across multiple "channels".

Your character is not defined by one action, no matter how intense the action may be. There remains a total of all actions, combined over the course of actions and reactions that defines Larry. The individual actions Larry does (he may kill the wrong man, for example) only illustrates Larry's potential -- we know that Larry can do these things, but it is the RESPONSES to those actions that help us discover Larry. If he kills the wrong man, is he remorseful? Excited? Unsure?

Remember this: Actions show potential, Reactions show depth and generate feelings (for both character and audience)

III. Characters exist in a universe -- No character lives in a vacuum. There are always consequences, results and changes brought on by their actions. If Larry kills the wrong man, he may feel guilt, but his actions may also produce anger in the family of the murdered man. If Larry robs because the taxes are too high, the baron who levies the taxes may respond. This exchange between the character and the world around it (other characters included) is what solidifies the depth of the character as well as the existence of more or on-going conflicts.

The trick here is knowing the scope of that universe. If Larry kills a man, without a good reason, I should not see an increase in the number of zebras born. Even if Larry possessed godlike powers, there is still a framework that creates boundaries for the character.

The scope of the universe is relative to the position of the character at the time of action and consequence.

If Larry kills a guy, Larry's focus is on that act, and those ramifications. Even in absolute insanity, Larry won't be thinking about shoelaces intentionally as a response to the murder. (Too many times, insanity is developed as strange responses to actions. It isn't. Insanity is the inappropriate response to the action)

This is strange (not insane):
Man #1: "Larry, you just killed a man!"
Larry: "Shoelaces!"

If I have thus far established Larry as being something greater than a mentally damaged savant, then what I've written makes Larry either retarded or I've just cheapened Larry's impact on the audience. It is not credible.

This is insane:
Man #1: "Larry, you just killed a man!"
Larry: "He won't be laughing anymore. No more sunny days."

Note the difference here - Larry's response to the action is not ignorance of the action, he's not denying he did it...he is qualifying his response to the action as being out-of-place. This is unsettling, and therefore compelling for an audience.

But not all characters are insane, so let's return to normalcy.

Larry can impact that which is immediately around him, and can only impact those things as great as his abilities are at the time.

A great example of this is in Star Wars. In A New Hope, Luke is able to fly the X-Wing and launch two torpedoes via the Force. At the time of the story, as far as Luke has developed, this is the extent of his powers. Although in later stories and canon, he many be able to wield an array of powers, at the time he's in the Death Star trench, all he's got is flying.

Harry Potter is another series where this holds true. The knowledge of later books is not available for Harry, so while he slowly educated in magic, he will not come to see it's full scale use until later in the series.

Characters evolve over time, and that evolution is not limited to the acquisition of power or knowledge or material benefit. It is through the passage of experience that grows a character - the powers gained are not proof of experience, the character still has to use them and react to them in order to grow.

IV. The secret to characters is not their intensity or volume, it's how closely the characters act like the audience. Whether you've built a superhero, a vampire, a naughty schoolgirl or a drugged-up musician, your character will lose all sense of balance, credibility and understanding if they aren't in some way or another, like the audience.

The audience isn't full of heroes, vampires, or whatever you build. It's full of people projecting themselves into those characters. This is a sympathetic bond, because as they project themselves onto the characters, you (the writer/actor) bring the audience (the human, the non-hero, the translatable element) out in the character.

So you may have a great wizard, and the audience wants to live in that world of magic and spells, but you don't want them getting lost in the spells and trappings of the world, you want them to FEEL for the character, and we create feelings by sharing common experiences and reactions. This great wizard may be able to conjure gold with a wave of his wand, but perhaps he's lonely, pining for one woman from afar.

This returns us to the talk of conflicts. If we've selected conflicts that the audience can relate to, we are humanizing the character. The audience may have no idea what a Deodanth outlaw on Khaas is like, they may have zero understanding of a pirate sailing in outer space, but they can entirely relate to themes in their own lives: loneliness, anger, passion, etc.

Selecting the conflict is not difficult, although the number of potential conflicts is huge. Don't be discouraged. Pick two or three of the most emotionally-stirring, or the ones that you (writer/actor) feel you understand the best. (I always pick feelings of loneliness, misunderstood genius, rebellion and vengeance for example)

Roleplay isn't about the fancy character in fantasy, it's about having a new way, a new perspective, to illustrate what you think or feel.

Give it a try. Roleplay your way through characters and watch them fly better than if you objectively dispensed information through them.

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