Roleplaying 2

It's been a long time since I last talked about roleplaying. When I first brought it up, I talked about how it provides a good challenge for a writer, to work within a story where they are not the sole prognosticator, to have to react to characters that they do not control, and to have to understand how their own characters would react to things that are not fully planned in advance. It's a magnificent way for someone to learn to better write, though there are of course problems associated with it, such as not being the one who plans the majority of the plot and letting yourself be carried from scene to scene.

However, what I do not believe I talked on as much was how roleplaying can be a fantastic way to learn about a person. I've talked a few times about how writing can be both a good and a bad way to learn about the person who is doing the writing, and while I will continue to say that you should not judge a person solely on the things that they write, I will also say that there are few better or more interesting ways to learn about someone. The way that a person writes a character, or describes a scene, or creates tension can explain a lot about the ways that they think. The ways that they react to the things that you write can also say a lot.

I have seen in many personal experiences the ways that people insert themselves into the characters that they write in a roleplay, sometimes without even thinking about it. Sometimes they will even write about the people around them, also without thinking, and the relationships that they create with these characters and the ways that they have one character talk about another says a lot about how they think about the people around them.

The specific details that they choose to respond to in each and every reply speaks to the things that give more value to over others, or things that understand better than others. I know that in many ways I am much better at dialogue than most other sections of writing, and so what a character says is something that I much more likely to respond to than, say, how they are dressed.

Much of this all is subconscious, and may not even be something that the person wants to admit to when confronted about it. Especially because, as I have said multiple times, they may not even realize they are doing it. It's something I've seen people get embarassed about, try to play off as not being their intent or not even being what happened, but there's nothing wrong with writing what you know. It's what many people say you should do, and not something that I would disagree with. If anything, if someone were to point these things out to me, I would think more about it, and thus hopefully improve myself as a writer.

But perhaps this is something that I simply notice more because of the fact that I am a writer. In the same ways that people notice the way music rises and falls and take things from it, or looks at a painting and is able to discern more from it than simply what is being shown. But it's certainly something worth considering, and if you like to write and have never tried roleplaying, I highly encourage it. You can learn a lot about both yourself and whoever you do it with.