Post by Tout-Perd on Dec 18, 2015 11:49:55 GMT -5
While not necessary, I've found that changing your tone and style depending on character can really help readers get a feel for them. So how do you guys manage it?
For me:
-Zebedee: I mostly stick with my generic voice, with one exception: Zebedee tends to sneak in little bits of humor, quips, and sarcastic observations in parentheses. I kinda want his idealized voice to sound like a generic heroic paladin type, provided you ignore everything between ( and ). It's tricky to convey a holy trickster type just right, but I think LaDC has gone a long way in distinguishing him.
-Thyra: Thyra eats exclamation points and all-caps. I've only *just* began experimenting with this, but I think having her posts completely devoid of exclamation points, instead relying on boldface font and itallics to carry the emphasis gives a good feeling for how level her tone is. Thyra is RP's big rock, the most steady and reliable of personalities on the side of good, and I want to convey that.
-Natalie: While it slips my mind on occasion, with Natalie, I try to play up animalistic words for her actions. Pounce, lunge, snarl, roar, etc. I really should focus more on it, because it's cool imagery, and it helps distinguish her from my other action girls.
-Blaise: Miss Euler's abundant verbosity has a distinct tendency to osmose from her verbalizations into the text itself.
-Kendil Booker: Kendil has a massive tendency to impulsively jump the gun. As such, she's my one character who has shades of an unreliable narrator; she'll judge people or things and commit to that definition until somebody forces her to reconsider. I'd kinda love to run her in an RP with an established character, have her misjudge who they were and spend the whole topic calling them by a nickname, only for the character's true nature to be revealed in the last post.
-Almudena: I've been trying for a very tactile, sensory feel with Almudena, lots of drinking in the world around her and emphasis on small actions and sensations and the way she moves. On top of that, she peppers her posts with Spanish, on a level of foreign language integration that's pretty much unmatched by anybody but Renard.
-Garth: I tend to write Garth like a Kevin post- very heavy on imagery and spectacle and pretty things... which occasionally slips into Garth being a notably pathetic figure. I'm trying to deliberately create a contrast between how intense and miraculous his powers are, and how Garth is a scared boy whose superpowers are killing him.
-Emily: Emily's voice is pretty easy, and more about actions than tone. I like to pepper everything she does with little disconcerting asides (if the focus is on her talking, disconcerting actions, and if it's on her actions, disconcerting talking). Reading Emily should be like having a conversation with somebody juggling lit torches effortlessly; they're not really concerned, but the fact that they're doing so should keep you going "Uh, what the heck?" the whole time.
Characters who I don't really have a distinct voice for are as follows: Miko, Maude, Achenes, Helen, Nopcsa, and Didn't from my A and B listers. I have no idea what to do with the first three, and the other three I've got ideas, but they feel waaay too obtrusive.
These ideas are as follows:
-Didn't: I'm kinda torn on Didn't. Her powers are really super unique, and I kinda want to play with that using time travel tense trouble, but I feel it'd A. Make it hard to follow her posts clearly and B. Infringe on Rhometer's deal. I mean, it'd be kinda fun to say,
"I think I'm going to sit this one out," Didn't said, acting as if she was putting her yo-yo away. However, as we will see in the next paragraph when she uses it to blindside Zagaroth, this was actually a bluff on her part.
But you know, it seems a little self indulgent. The other idea is going super-enthusiastic with the text itself, to convey how over-the-top enthusiastic Didn't is, but I feel that could come across as amateurish and juvenile instead of making the reader feel like they're along for the ride.
-Helen: I feel like I should have a heavier emphasis on rhyming, alliteration, and other such things, play up her showmanship, but again, I feel like it could be distracting.
-Nopcsa: I really, REALLY like the scrolltext as people's train of thought, but it's kinda gimmicky and really doesn't carry through to any print format for releasing our works, so I don't know where to go with him.
For me:
-Zebedee: I mostly stick with my generic voice, with one exception: Zebedee tends to sneak in little bits of humor, quips, and sarcastic observations in parentheses. I kinda want his idealized voice to sound like a generic heroic paladin type, provided you ignore everything between ( and ). It's tricky to convey a holy trickster type just right, but I think LaDC has gone a long way in distinguishing him.
-Thyra: Thyra eats exclamation points and all-caps. I've only *just* began experimenting with this, but I think having her posts completely devoid of exclamation points, instead relying on boldface font and itallics to carry the emphasis gives a good feeling for how level her tone is. Thyra is RP's big rock, the most steady and reliable of personalities on the side of good, and I want to convey that.
-Natalie: While it slips my mind on occasion, with Natalie, I try to play up animalistic words for her actions. Pounce, lunge, snarl, roar, etc. I really should focus more on it, because it's cool imagery, and it helps distinguish her from my other action girls.
-Blaise: Miss Euler's abundant verbosity has a distinct tendency to osmose from her verbalizations into the text itself.
-Kendil Booker: Kendil has a massive tendency to impulsively jump the gun. As such, she's my one character who has shades of an unreliable narrator; she'll judge people or things and commit to that definition until somebody forces her to reconsider. I'd kinda love to run her in an RP with an established character, have her misjudge who they were and spend the whole topic calling them by a nickname, only for the character's true nature to be revealed in the last post.
-Almudena: I've been trying for a very tactile, sensory feel with Almudena, lots of drinking in the world around her and emphasis on small actions and sensations and the way she moves. On top of that, she peppers her posts with Spanish, on a level of foreign language integration that's pretty much unmatched by anybody but Renard.
-Garth: I tend to write Garth like a Kevin post- very heavy on imagery and spectacle and pretty things... which occasionally slips into Garth being a notably pathetic figure. I'm trying to deliberately create a contrast between how intense and miraculous his powers are, and how Garth is a scared boy whose superpowers are killing him.
-Emily: Emily's voice is pretty easy, and more about actions than tone. I like to pepper everything she does with little disconcerting asides (if the focus is on her talking, disconcerting actions, and if it's on her actions, disconcerting talking). Reading Emily should be like having a conversation with somebody juggling lit torches effortlessly; they're not really concerned, but the fact that they're doing so should keep you going "Uh, what the heck?" the whole time.
Characters who I don't really have a distinct voice for are as follows: Miko, Maude, Achenes, Helen, Nopcsa, and Didn't from my A and B listers. I have no idea what to do with the first three, and the other three I've got ideas, but they feel waaay too obtrusive.
These ideas are as follows:
-Didn't: I'm kinda torn on Didn't. Her powers are really super unique, and I kinda want to play with that using time travel tense trouble, but I feel it'd A. Make it hard to follow her posts clearly and B. Infringe on Rhometer's deal. I mean, it'd be kinda fun to say,
"I think I'm going to sit this one out," Didn't said, acting as if she was putting her yo-yo away. However, as we will see in the next paragraph when she uses it to blindside Zagaroth, this was actually a bluff on her part.
But you know, it seems a little self indulgent. The other idea is going super-enthusiastic with the text itself, to convey how over-the-top enthusiastic Didn't is, but I feel that could come across as amateurish and juvenile instead of making the reader feel like they're along for the ride.
-Helen: I feel like I should have a heavier emphasis on rhyming, alliteration, and other such things, play up her showmanship, but again, I feel like it could be distracting.
-Nopcsa: I really, REALLY like the scrolltext as people's train of thought, but it's kinda gimmicky and really doesn't carry through to any print format for releasing our works, so I don't know where to go with him.