Bay 12 Games Forum

Well, I am nearly always sleeping...

I feel like this is going to proceed to be the adventure of a drunk dragon lord, who drives all around him insane. Our name actually makes sense.

On a more actual playing note, I do believe that a quick reconnoiter of the area from on high is in order, unless we are still too weak to actually fly.
Afterwards, meditation on words (Similar to Paarthurnax's method) seems like a good idea- Namely Haas

This, then drink more afterward. The fact that we need alcohol to figure out how to break reality is hilarious to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4zc3O4Z7v8

GHK HAVE POST ALMOST DONE

Quote from: Talvieno on March 31, 2014, 07:08:32 pm

Quote from: Knit tie on March 31, 2014, 06:26:10 pm

Quote from: Talvieno on March 31, 2014, 06:07:44 pm

Quote from: Tiruin on March 31, 2014, 12:38:15 pm

Quote from: Knit tie on March 31, 2014, 12:36:38 pm

Quote from: Iceblaster on March 31, 2014, 11:32:19 am

Writing a depressed character.

I can't help but feel bad for him

I always feel bad when I have to play or write a depressed character . And they are always depressed because they have severe PTSD because our gamemaster for this year doesn't like it when we steal the spotlight from his pet NPC and kills half the party in a needlessly gruesome manner on a regular basis so that we have to rely on whatever last survivor of an ancient and glorious race/cult/clan/organisation he currently wants to imagine himself as.

I can't write sad characters because its either my empathy that drives me to tears or a welling feeling of when I re-read to edit, or that I can relate to whatever sad the character is having--regardless of my experience of it or not.

Heh, I know the feeling. Oddly enough, though, the "I can't write" problem for me is the opposite - I do better when my characters are upset for one reason or another. I guess it helps to have a reason to try to pull them out of that mire of misery and despair, something for them to look forwards to and press onwards towards. I can't write happy characters too well because they feel flat to me.

This is a common problem among many people, as far as I can tell, prevalent enought to birth the entire "true art is about suffering" misconception. My advice for when you are writing a happy character and cannot help but feel that he or she has no distinct personality is to try and do what I call "working from the extreme". This is a very common, very basic trick for creative distinctive ways in which your characters act and it consists of, essentially, exagerrating the character's traits and actions to a ridiculous degree while writing him or her so that you have a clear idea of their behaviour, and then toning it down to a believable level.

To illustrate:
John Lobb enters his kitchen. He is angry. What is his most extreme imaginable reaction to being angry in a kitchen? He is impulsive, so he grabs a sledgehammer and smashes the hell out of his stove. So now you have a good idea of what form his actions will take and can tone it down to merely opening and closing his cupboards very loudly and forcefully while searching for salt.

Or, Urist is in the food stockpile. What is the most extreme thing he can do? Hastily grab a fistful of food from every barrel, stuff himself until he cannot eat enymore and then walk roll up to a booze barrel and spill it all over himself as he tries to pour it in his mouth. Tone it down a bit and you now understand that Urist occasionally overindulges and has a poor spatial awareness.

No, no. I mean, happy characters. Characters who are lighthearted and don't have any problems whatsoever make the whole story feel kind of boring to me when I'm writing it. To compensate, I either give them problems, or make them joke around a lot. lol

They can be very useful for relieving the reader's tension between or even during high-conflict episodes. Kind of like R&R in the military. Comic relief. Because what you'll most likely get if you have an exclusively sad, traumatised or dysfunctional cast is a syndrome called darkness-induced audience apathy, when the reader loses the ability to sympathise with your characters because they are boring in the inevitability of their misery. Masterful execution is a surefire cure, as usual, but anything less, and chances are, your story will be left abandoned in the middle because the audience simply doesn't care about it anymore.

I'm sorry, I am ranting about my personal pet peeve here.

Looking at you, GRRM.

My sad or at least my discontent is that whenever my attraction to a person I know (that I won't be able to 'get with' probably ever, or at the very least a significant amount of time) resurges from the usual low burn, I can't sleep. Fuck you brain stop pining over what you can't have I gotta sleep and so do you.

HAAAAAAAAAAANNNNDDDSSSS

IT'S NOT EVEN APRIL FIRST YET IN MY TIMEZONE

I have an appointment to finally get my hearing aid(s) fitted tomorrow.
Eep!

Too many raves?

That said, good luck.