KYU's topic for tutoring fellow role players.
I've noticed that many people need help in the arts of role playing, whether it be combat or simply understanding how to rp on a higher level, I will help you. I can take on about 3 members at a time.
Now I'm not trying to say I'm better than anyone. That's not my message. I'm trying to say that there are people who struggle to rp but don't want to give up. Those people who don't have a mentor or a teacher guiding them can easily fall between the cracks of a forum, forgotten by time. Writing is to say exactly what you want visually, but for most people (even me [allot of the time]) they can't put what I want to say into words easily and their posts suffer as well as the character suffers. No one sucks at role playing; they know their character far better than anyone else, but no one is perfect at expressing their character. Naturally people would need to learn how to characterize their writing with style in order to express a character better. I'm not the god role player, but I can write pretty well in my own opinion. What I will do (if you want my help) is identify where your writing lacks proper description.
Often people will think that they don't need to describe much to role play and they only want to fight, only want to gain stats, and they only want to be the very best shinobi in the world. Well I'm going to tell you that's flat out wrong. It's disgusting, horrible, deplorable.
Role playing is living the life of someone else. One does not simply write their character's future to become the strongest. They need to plan out the future by reason and logic. How a character feels about his future is another thing altogether. Let's say I wanted to be Rock Lee. I write a role play sample for him and it looks like this:
"Lee woke up on his bed. He didn't remember his dream, but didn't care. Lee dressed himself and ate breakfast. Lee went outside and started doing push ups with his left hand holding the rest of his body up. He didn't get tired. He didn't need to take a break either. Lee stood up normally then started running around the village. He ran all day nonstop. He went back home and ate dinner. Lee went to bed."
Where should I begin? I can see that Lee is very strong and long lasting because he works out all day, but that's it. There isn't any flare in the character. He's very boring; there isn't a single thing that tells me who Lee really is. In fact if I changed his name, he would be recognizable as Lee.
"John woke up on his bed. He didn't remember his dream, but he didn't care. John dressed himself and ate breakfast. John went outside and started doing push ups with his left hand holding the rest of his body up. He didn't get tired. He didn't need to take a break either. John stood up normally then started running around the village. He ran all day nonstop. He went back home and ate dinner. John went to bed."
See, if john does the same thing as Lee than we can't tell them apart as a person. To solve this problem, Lee does more than work out; he talks, he thinks, he has an opinion about things, and most importantly he
reacts to the world around him rather than just affecting it. So How about we slow down on our actions and go back to him waking up and then go from there. Let's start with "Lee woke up on his bed" and rewrite it so it's not plane as Jane action with descriptive words that make him feel like the real Rock Lee.
- Spoiler:
Waking up, Lee could see the room of his apartment. He didn't leave it in the same way that he saw it; the room was a mess. Lee didn't remember his dream either. He thought for a moment, What happened while I was asleep? But Lee could clean his room, so he didn't care if it was in a messy state.
Ignoring the piles of crushed wood, Lee dressed himself in his green, spandex jumpsuit with the orange weights around his legs. Lastly he tied the red genin headband around his waist. He always dressed like that, it was all he could wear.
His stomach rumbled and Lee was driven to eat breakfast before his body exploded into a hungry rage. Inside his refrigerator were three prepared meals for the day. His pulled out what looked like breakfast, a large bowl full of fresh and nutritious greens. I love vegetables! They are so good for people, in fact vegetables are so important that I will one day tell the good people of what they are truly missing in every meal! He sat at the makeshift table in his apartment while eating the bowl of vegetables with great thankfulness that he was free to do what he wanted.
With breakfast eaten there was only one thing to do! Lee hopped out of his house with a spring of youth in his step. Outside was his dojo, a small wooden building bigger than a shack. In there he could train for countless hours to grow much stronger like his sensei. First he started with single hand push ups. Lee bent over and place his right arm on the ground. He pulled his body up and balance onto his right arm. Then he let his elbow fall lower and then he raised himself up. With his feet dangling in the air, Lee concentrated on his body to keep his balance while also working out the muscles in his right arm.
Lee did grow bored of using only his right arm however. He balance his weight onto his left arm and then started his count over. Lee was of course well adapt to his own training course, so new routines were more than useful to keep his body toned and fresh for combat. In fact he had an idea for a new part of his all day session. Lee then pushed off the ground to volt himself up and into an aerial somersault. He landed on both of his feet perfectly as if preforming professionally for an audience of young academy students aspiring to learn taijutsu in the devoted way that Guy-sensei taught Lee.
"I know exactly what new routine I can do to liven this very easy training!" The chuunin waltz out of the dojo and into the streets of Konoha. He started running as fast as he could through the village, to the gates even. When he arrived there he was breathing heavily from the fast sprinting. The journey hadn't taken him more than 52 seconds. The trail of dust behind him was not settled, but when he turned around he discovered that it lead all the way back to his dojo. It looks like I created allot of dust! I better not run inside the village; I do not want to cause an accident!
"I will begin now! But to warm up I will do an easy 500 laps around the village! The the green colored shinobi started going around the village in a fast jog. He didn't push himself too hard at first; he wanted to save energy for his new training. Within three hours of warm up Lee finished with a little more than heavy breathing and minor fatigue in his legs. He stretched his body by bringing on leg up above his head while standing straight. He repeated with the other leg. "It is now time for me to test this new training. I will go all the way around the village while doing five consecutive back flips and then walking on my hands for a full lap. The I will repeat it with five consecutive front flips and then walk on my hands backwards around for another lap! Once that is complete I will double the amount of consecutive flips! It is absolutely perfect! Guy-sensei will be proud!"
I'll stop there. As you can see what was one very simple and boring paragraph of nondescript actions became 743 words. [However I'm willing to go further with more than description added] Now this was a rather large step between simple to descriptive. It helps allot to be descriptive, even if you have to start from a very detailed paragraph. Now I know it's not everybody's cup of tea to be descriptive or for some people description isn't the problem, so this tutoring process is different for everybody. The very extended example above was only affected by description. The other areas of characterization can lengthen that example well into the thousands.
- Combat:
Combat is another area altogether. I'm not going to give an example of combat because it's very subjective based; some people insist that superior stats will always win and some think that one must trick the other into falling for a trap that was not explained very well by the person who set up it. I say combat is a plot more than a contest. It's a plotted course of actions by both contestants to write something that sounds realistic rather than ending in an argument about who is wrong. I can't makes rules about combat, but I can tell you I'm not the fighting type; I'm the type of person who coordinates the events of two characters in a way that is combative because it's an IC contest not an OOC contest.
I will help people learn about combat topics if they want it. However it's a very different process than learning characterization. In my opinion it's the choice of the two contestants how the battle should be fought and how it ends.
As I said earlier in this post, I can help three people at a time. All you have to do is pm me that you want to start learning and you're willing to work for it as well as correct yourself once you learn something new.
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by Hagoromo Otsutsuki Fri May 16, 2014 2:52 am
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Subject: Need help with the Art of Role Play? Tutoring here. 
