Roleplaying style?

[Slavegirl]

When you write, do you come up with a highly developed storyline and THEN set your character down into and try to fit your character to the plot?

Or do you just come up with a basic idea and then let your character lead the way from Point A to Point B, and fit the plot to your character?

Or do you do something else entirely?



Personally, I tend to make a basic outline, and then let my character connect the dots in whichever way he or she decides to drag me through the story. I do plan some, but mostly it's just brainstorming and listening to my characters scream at me (or sometimes whisper, which is quite annoying) exactly where they want to go and what they want to do, and sometimes, whose butt they want to kick. It's frustrating, exciting, and exactly why I'm addicted to this site.

What about you?

[Visla Eraclaire]

I'm an option B writer as well. A vast majority of my stories are simply a premise in which I place my character. There are no foregone conclusions and frequently I'm only able to figure out what will happen as the story progresses and the characters react to one another organically.

The only problem with this is that it ends up with stories which are more realistic but less dramatic. Perhaps it's how things really would have gone, but it's not always something that would interest the audience.

That's why I try to run through the story as a thought experiment before I write anything so that it can look more like a Type A version with all the authenticity of Type B. Occasionally I will manipulate the plot to get necessary reactions from a character by asking myself, "I need Visla to feel or do X, what would make her do that?"

I think that's perhaps an even more extreme version of the second option. Not only are you not shoehorning a character into a preexisting plot, you're forcing the plot to conform to certain desired outcomes of character.

I try to avoid that when possible though, as overuse becomes heavyhanded pretty quickly.

[Logan]

When I first started I was far more a type B than a type A. I rarely planned anything beyond a simple idea, and then let the idea develop from the character and his reactions and responses. For a while I had ventured from that style, and to be honest it was far more draining to do so.

I think some of that, for me, comes from the sense of a bit of an unknown in how things will play out. It is in some small manner the equivalent of reading a book, but one that just happens to be written as I'm reading it.

A well-developed character, I think, is harder to fit into a well-developed plotline or story, than it is to place a well-developed character into a situation or scene. In the latter, you allow the character and in some ways your own self to dictate the ebb and flow of action and story. The plot moves with your character, instead of your character moving to the plot.

[Caden Law]

Improvise. Suddenly and epically and all over the place.

[Duffy]

Improvise. Suddenly and epically and all over the place.

Liar :p

[Caden Law]

Liar :p
I usually have exactly three ideas: How it starts, one randomly epic explosion somewhere near the middle, and then the beginning of the end post. Everything else is basically me angling one way or the other to cause the maximum inconvenience/abuse of my character combined with the maximum property damage to the surrounding area.

Look at most of my past RPs. Evidence speaks for itself. :D