How Text-Based Role-Playing Made Me a Better Writer
By: Franko French
Tags: Startup Lessons, Writing Tips, Writing, Roleplaying Game, Improvement

How Text-Based Role-Playing Made Me a Better Writer

Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

Every single one of us, especially us fiction writers, started writing somewhere. Whether you started writing short stories in your notebook, writing poetry on loose pieces of paper at school, or finding somewhere to post online. All of us, at one point or another, had made the decision to sit down and actively write something.

For me, I started writing online on both Fanficiton.net and play-by-post text-based roleplay forums.

What is text-based role-playing?

Text-based base roleplaying is a role-playing game between two or more people that uses a purely text-based platform with exceptions of images and GIFs. Some of these platforms include Tumblr, text-based roleplay dedicated websites, online web forums, Discord and practically any other kind of digital messaging system.

The world of text-based roleplay is vast and is typically favoured by writers that wish to write their own stories and interpretations relating to a particular fictional world or fandom. But at the same time, as it is still fiction you’re creating, there is no limit or scope as to what you can produce. There are varied genres of online text-based roleplaying, which include: fantasy, drama, horror, anime, science fiction, and media-based fan role-play.

Play-by-post roleplaying?

The text-based roleplaying games that helped me improve my writing are commonly known as play-by-post text-based roleplaying games. I’ve used some of the above-mentioned platforms in the past, with my personal preference being RPNation, a dedicated website to roleplay. It was here that I found my writing really start to flourish.

Play-by-post roleplaying plays by your other roleplay partners and yourself, taking turns to expand the particular story you’re all telling. This story format of play requires that the character’s actions be mentioned, including the surroundings and a general description of what is going on in an articulate and descriptive way so that it reads like an actual story.

For example:

By Serris, f-22 “raptor ace”, LettuceBacon&Tomato, the Gang of Five forum — http://gangoffive.net/index.php?act=Print&client=printer&f=38&t=4340, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21550644

But how did this make my writing better and how can it potentially help you? Well, let me explain.

Character

One of the most fundamental aspects of a story is its character. If your tale is lacking a weak and ultimately uninteresting character, then your readers are probably going to have a bad time. One of the biggest character struggles I faced when I first started writing was getting into my characters state of mind and trying to write about how they would react to particular scenarios.

Through roleplay, I got much better at this, courtesy of the fact that when you play, it’s more about the characters and often times very little to do with any kind of plot. I dived into the role of my character, often giving them particular verbal ticks or characteristics which I found, when implemented with my other writing, added a lot more depth to my characters and made them come alive on the page.

World building

Roleplay really helped me with the world-building of my stories as well. When it comes to fantasy fiction writing, one of the hardest tasks is trying to build a world where your story is going to take place. You need to determine towns, cities, religion, politics, ecosystems, social rankings and past lore, then somehow figure out how your character is going to play in all of it.

What helped with roleplay was that I wasn’t having to do the world-building on my own. When you’re roleplaying, you discuss with your partners how you want the story to progress and what other features you want to add in the story to make it more interesting. Having another person or even a group of people bounce ideas off is a blessing that I’m thankful for to this day. I’ve got quite a lot of notes thanks to my old roleplay partners and the ideas we threw around together to create interesting and diverse worlds where my characters can get into all sorts of mischief.

Dialogue

Dialogue, in any story, is an important component and something often tricky to get right. Trying to create a conversation by yourself might make it difficult when you’re trying to write something that sounds natural and free-flowing. Through roleplay though, because you’re writing with other people, your characters are actually having a conversation as it’s someone else writing another character's response and not yourself. This creates a more normal conversation dynamic and a great source of inspiration in future stories. You begin to start understanding conversational mannerisms a lot more when you write them with other people, which then makes it easier to put into practice into your own future stories.

Commitment

Arguably one of the most important parts to all forms of writing if you wish to even get competent with the craft is your commitment. Regardless of whatever it is you’re trying to pursue, whether it be a new hobby or a new skill, you need to give a certain level of commitment to make it worthwhile. This obviously goes with writing as well, and roleplay is no different.

As you’re creating something with someone else, you need to give them the time and effort you’d want and expect in return. If you don’t, what you make may never really take off or just end up fizzling out into something that would have been better off if it was never started in the first place. It’s a well-established rule in a roleplay that when you start a new game with someone, you commit to it. Or at the very least communicate if you no longer want to continue on.

A rule I’ve established with my own writing these days. I’ll be sure to see one project through before starting something else. Or at the very least, if I do want to change my project. I make sure to tell someone else my intention so I can get their thoughts on it first and help me determine if I’m just being lazy or not.

Enjoy writing

And the most important lesson I’ve learned through roleplay that really helped me improve my writing was to take writing all the way back to my roots and remember why I wanted to start doing it in the first place.

Because writing was fun.

I know I’m still just starting out on my writing journey but what I love about roleplay is the fact that writing becomes a game. A game that I was creating with my friends that produced incredible stories. Stories that I wanted to share with other people.