Calming the Inner Critic is all about how to be
yourself. When you are writing, you should feel free to write whatever you
want, without the burden of having to make it make sense, or use proper
punctuation, or even spell thing correctly, or anything of the sort. The same
things happen in a role-playing game. If you want to have mushrooms that grow
in midair, go for it. If you want to have a race of creatures that grow out of
rocks, go for it. You don’t have to worry about the logistics, how it looks or
how it sounds. It just is. It may sound crazy at first, but other people get
used to it.
When I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons, the
dungeon master had glowing mushrooms, and I was like, what the heck are you
talking about? I had no idea what Dungeons and Dragons was all about. I thought
it was all real medieval stuff, with no magic. You can imagine how wrong I was.
Dungeons and Dragons is more about creativity and thinking of new ways to
bypass obsticles. In a way, that is what writing is, too. In every book,
something goes wrong, and the main character has to find ways to deal with it.
The same thing applies in a roleplaying game.
Writing should be fun. So should role-playing games.
Both are more fun when you actually immerse yourself in what you are doing. If
you are role-playing, you should be making decisions based on your character’s
personality, instead of your own. The same goes with if you are writing a book.
You shouldn’t care what other people will think about the decisions that
character is making, as long as it makes sense with the character. It takes
focus. You can’t give in to make decisions that you as a person would make. You
need to make the decisions your character would make.
When you are having fun, other people that see you
having fun will have more fun as well. Role playing feels better when every
person in the room is being their character. Writing will be a lot more
interesting both for you and the reader if you are into your writing. You can’t
just write about the character. You have to be the character.
In both RPG’s and writing, the character is what it is
all about. The reader’s won’t care about what is going on in the author’s life,
but they will care about what is happening in the main character’s life. The
people you play games with are usually there to play the game, not hear your
life story. I am not saying that it is bad to put some of your life story into
your character, just don’t make everything about you.
First, Robert, thanks for showing the class how to subscribe to the blogs the other day!
ReplyDeleteNext, I love your metaphors here. You'll find I appreciate metaphor in general, but I particularly enjoyed reading yours. In my mind, metaphor is something of a boundary object. Remember that term--it'll be important later. A boundary object is anything that two different fields/disciplines/people/groups can both use and understand, even if they use it a bit differently. It can be anything that helps to different sides to work together. So, in writing, as you so aptly point out, we are creating our own worlds--and this is true even if we are writing scholarly papers, not fiction. We are trying to create something that shows the audience how we see the world, and when we read, we are trying to see the world through another's eyes. Metaphors build those images so well, create boundary objects, if you will, and you use them well.
I want to challenge something you said--or maybe just add to it, and I'm curious what you think. In your last paragraph you talk about readers not necessarily being interested in what an author is going through in their personal lives. I take your point. But is it even possible to write without displaying something of yourself? The reason someone thinks to dream up mushrooms growing in mid-air is because they are who they are. The character they dream up has its roots in who the author is as a person--even when the author may be trying to create a character that is his opposite. One of my favorite authors as an undergrad, Donald M. Murray, in an essay called "All Writing is Autobiography" claims that, well, just like the title says, that there simply cannot be any writing that is not in some way autobiographical. I What do you think?
Keep writing and thinking!
--Mallory out!