How to: make your poses less repetitive
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@coin said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:
I like to ape styles, when I notice patterns, and then try to apply each style to a character.
I do the same, generally, but tailor my style to the player.
SunnyJ poses differently than Auspice, who poses differently than Arkandel, etc. Molding my writing to theirs a little helps with the overall scene's flow. My "chosen" style right now is mostly, and perhaps unfortunately, because I am trying to practice my writing craft.
That said, y'all don't really want me to RP as I write.
"After reading your letter, it is my understanding that your clients have no interest in taking appropriate and reasonable steps towards trying to bring this case to a speedy resolution. My impression is that they would rather remained mired in discovery by making demands which are neither reasonable nor practical. If you wish to bring this matter to the Court’s attention, bear in mind that we will bring up your clients’ discovery deficiencies at that time, so that the Court can see and judge their lack of comity."
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I use RP to aid in my writing after a fashion. The way I do this is such that I use RP to try new things, new styles, new methodology.
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@auspice said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:
You are not going to abuse the word 'says/said'.
There's so much good advice in this thread, thank you everyone! This in particular really stood out to me. I'd been wondering lately if I was overusing that and had started to try and diversify things a bit, but it's interesting to see the take that it really can't be. And that's something I hadn't thought of, that we're so used to seeing it our eyes just move along to the next thing.
I'm a pretty concise poser myself, anything beyond 8-12 lines feels like it's too much. I try to avoid using excessive wording and focus on making what I'm writing impactful or at least being worthy of some kind of response from the people I'm playing with. I don't know that I manage it with every pose, but it's a goal.
Along the line of sharing writing techniques, I know someone who has really great timing with throwing out one liners. I've never been in a scene where they did it and had it derail or stop what we were doing. Instead it sort of... reset what was going on, framed it into a narrower focus and helped push things along.
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@twinprince I'm generally not a fan of epithets in most situation, and this is a good article about good uses and bad uses that I generally agree with. In RP I tend to often find they muddle scenes unless you're literally in a 1:1 because it's really easy to lose who's talking. (Unless you're in a 1:1 or it's literally a situation or a game style where your PC's identity is obscured or whatever, your name should ALWAYS be in your pose.)
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@twinprince
Yes, but using solely descriptors to indicate yourself in a pose is pointless when people neither check @descs nor set @shortdescs for themselves. And if there are six people in the room I have zero desire to spam myself with all of their giant, florid @descs to figure out who 'the dark-haired man' might be. I never, ever use @emit unless posing a puppet or using sphere-specific posing and haven't gotten any complaints for my old-school PC Name-prefixed poses.
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@twinprince I agree with mixing up how you start your poses/emits/whatever, but I always always always (try to remember to) include my character's name in the pose. Anything else is just asking for confusion. However, I definitely like to use other descriptions for my characters alongside my character's name in the pose. In one sentence I'll use the name, and in the other I'll use a descriptor.
I also like to make sure that if I started my last 2 pose/emit/whatevers or so with the character's name, I'll start the next one with a quote or a verb or whatever. Just to mix it up so that not all of the poses look the same.
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@roz I'm fine with them if it's a secondary reference or necessary distinguishing clarification; repeating the name multiple times or drowning in a sea of he/she/they gets to be a different sort of repetitive, and sometimes confusing in scenes where one she is doing something to indicate another she, etc.
Ex: Sarah didn't want Sue to go. She knew she was leaving, but she wanted to make sure she had all her supplies before she went. vs. Sarah didn't want Sue to go. She knew she was leaving, but the attentive teacher wanted to ensure her student had all her supplies before she went.
One's a bit clearer than the other for the fast-paced reaction time required in RP, and avoids getting lost in the pronoun weeds.
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@twinprince I mean, no one expressed that they never want to read a desc. Someone said that they didn't want to have to go through all the descs in the room to figure out who an untagged pose belonged to. You can have read everyone's desc before and still not want to do that.
Anyways, my issues with epithets isn't cultural, it's more generally about writing.
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Exactly. I have no inherent problems reading a @desc. I don't care for having to play a guessing game of who's who in a large scene, and will therefore attempt to use +glance to get at least a general idea. Inevitably, the person refusing to use their name in their emitted poses will also not have a @shortdesc set. Often they won't have a +finger, +info, or a wiki done, either.
These are also often the same players who won't read the desc of the room that they're in and therefore pose inappropriately for the space. Or use tabletalk. Because everything is all about paying attention to them, and their shenanigans. They will also complain that they didn't know about an +event, in spite of there being three separate locations where the information for said +event is listed. They only want you to read their shit, they don't care about having to work at anything themselves.
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Okay, let's keep this focused on the original topic. We're starting to dove tail into gripe territory here.
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On the "said" business: you probably don't even need to do that much. You're already sticking it in the middle of a pose that is identified as your PC.
I do try to do the same in prose writing. Like,
Zed wrapped her arms around her stomach, eyes staring at the ground. "I, um. Ate Cody," she said.
Vs
Zed wrapped her arms around her stomach, eyes staring at the ground. "I, um. Ate Cody."
It's still clear who's talking, and I get to end the paragraph with the wham line. The value of "said" is that it doesn't call much attention to itself while identifying the speaker, and if the speaker is clear, you don't even need that.
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I find that a thesaurus is most helpful when trying to describe crystalline orbs of cerulean, or anything else related to equine activities.
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@insomniac7809 said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:
Zed wrapped her arms around her stomach, eyes staring at the ground. "I, um. Ate Cody," she said.
Thenomain's brain is forcing an aneurysm on itself when he noticed the mixing verb tenses was happening.
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@roz said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:
I'm generally not a fan of epithets in most situation, and this is a good article about good uses and bad uses that I generally agree with. In RP I tend to often find they muddle scenes unless you're literally in a 1:1 because it's really easy to lose who's talking. (Unless you're in a 1:1 or it's literally a situation or a game style where your PC's identity is obscured or whatever, your name should ALWAYS be in your pose.)
As an alternate opinion, I've found that mixing up capitalized descriptors and nicknames helps spice things up. For example:
Wes looks at Cumani with a cackle, eyes alight with mischief. "Is that so?" He looks to his left, and then to his right. "Why, how could that be? For it seems to be, as you well know, that but for what words come out of my mouth, whoever else could I be?" As if that meant everything -- his final answer -- Wes winks.
That could be re-written as:
Wes looks at Cumani with a cackle, eyes alight with mischief. "Is that so?" The Hierophant looks to his left, and then to his right. "Why, how could that be? For it seems to be, as you well know, that but for what words come out of my mouth, whoever else could I be?" As if that meant everything -- the Seven of Words' final answer -- the Acolyte of Madness winks.
Mind, Wes had, like, eleventy billion nicknames for himself, but I think the second example, even in a crowd, reads a lot better than the first.
It helps if your character has other attributes or nicknames to differentiate him or her from everyone else. Clarice, for instance, is the Murder Mouse, the Winter Soldier, the Icy Waitress, and so on. Erin was the Aquarian, the Scientist, and the Trash Panda.
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I'd prefer repetitive actions/words than a pose that is hard to read. You should always strive for a pose that:
- Is easily digested
- Gives your partner something to work with
Another thing that I upvoted but can't upvote enough is that it is so important to show and not tell. Granted, you can't always get away with it -- sometimes you just need to outright tell. But if you're in a position where it makes sense to show? Do it.
It's also worth noting that our characters are (probably) people too. They get tired. Sometimes they're easily irritable. Maybe they skipped lunch. Maybe they're upset because they stubbed their toe. Or perhaps they're doing great because they've been blessed by a good doggo who brought them a stick earlier on in the day. Even if you're meeting the same old person for the same old bar RP, you can totally play it different starting from the first pose.
@Ganymede I do this a lot too! The title can even be contextually aware, such as "the taller woman," or "the knight with a limp." Just make sure that you preface that with your character's name somewhere in your pose. The earlier the better.
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@twinprince said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:
As to not having descs set and/or not wanting to read a desc... Something about the fact that the entire type of game is based solely on reading and writing really leaves me unsure how to fix someone... Not wanting to read.
I don't want to go off into a 'to desc or not to desc' tangent, but I prefer a more organic way of incorporating peoples' descriptions than a traditional static desc. I think this is also a nice way to shake up your poses, so it's on-topic here.
I mean, think about when's the last time you were reading a novel and it just paused in the middle to give you a paragraph-long dump of how the character looks. It just doesn't happen.
Instead you get these morsels doled out over time. So if you pose something like "Mary brushed her long red hair back behind her ear as she took a seat at the bar..."or "Mary removed her leather jacket and draped it over the back of the chair as she sat..." - not only is it more interesting than "Mary sits at the bar" but it incorporates important details about her description. Then it doesn't matter so much whether someone read your @-desc.
