The Golden Tether

Alis Dee · Patron Joined: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Australia

The FURCer's Guide to Do Rite More Guderer
or, How to RP Like You Mean It

I admit it; I'm a consummate RP eavesdropper. There's nothing I like more than to kick back, sit myself in a public place, put on a movie and eavesdrop on other people's RP. At least, in theory. Too often I find my voyeuristic enjoyment of someone else's drama ruined by shitty fucking writing. You've all seen it -- some of you probably do it -- so you all know what I'm talking about; whether it's pronoun avoidance, obtuse purple prose, bad tenses or incomprehensible run-on sentences.

I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that the vast majority of the bad writing I see around the place is the result of people simply not knowing any better. So, as part of my ongoing and mostly futile effort to spread better writing practices around furc's RP community, I present to you a short guide.

Because they're a handy-dandy teaching aid, I've tried to illustrate each of my points with live examples of bad writing pulled right out of my own furc logs. All names have been changed to protect the guileless, of course, and if you recognise someone, keep it to yourselves (unless it's you). And before someone asks; what gives me the right to re-write other people's words? Editorial comment. I'm no Hemingway or nufin' but -- false modesty aside -- I know I'm a damn sight better writer than most people that will be reading this...

Let's begin, shall we?

Rule #1: Purple Prose != Erudite Writing
Let me introduce you to a little friend of mine. His name is purple prose and he's a literary criticism used to describe writing that is overly extravagant to the point of distraction. If the style of your writing -- generally over-use of adjectives, archaic words and melodramatic pathos -- makes it difficult for a reader to make sense of the substance of what you're trying to say, you're guilty of purple prose. In furc, this kind of writing most frequently manifests itself as over-use of ridiculous pseudo-archaic words (auds and occulars are everyone's favourite examples, but things like 'pon, 'neath and tresses also count) and an overly formal writing style. I most often see it in descs. It comes about, I think, when people who -- let's face it -- aren't very skilled at writing attempt to sound Ye Olde Worlde; like Tolkeinesque high fantasy medieval noblemen. I'm going to state this simply; it doesn't work. In fact, very few professional fantasy authors manage to pull off this style of writing.

So how do we avoid it? Well, for starters, stop using all those fucking dumbass words. If you need to make a choice between tresses and hair, for godssakes say 'hair'. Nine times out of ten black is a perfect substitute for the word 'black'. Things are on and under. This is one of those walk-before-you-run things; we all love creative writing and whatever, but you need to learn to write in a way that is simple and readable before you can start throwing around inventive adjectives and wordings.

Believe it or not, I actually had a hard time finding a suitable example of purple prose in my logs; which might go to show that this sort of writing is less common than the number of people who rant against it might suggest. Either that, or I just can't find an example in between six straight days' worth of chat in *ooc (logging off is for noobs k). Anyway, after much scouring I eventually came across:

Itai · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 12:53 pm Post subject:

Tenses are even more fun when you RP in past tense and your partner RPs in present tense. Especially when one or the other starts getting their tense mixed up because of reading the other's post. I think that accounts for a small percent of Furcadia's tense-hoppers, myself included.
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Alain · Mascot Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 578

I love you.
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Xxys · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 4:39 pm Post subject:

I can never come to understand a sidelined implicative post anyway, unless it's posed as a forebearer for a possible continuitive or future reprisal should the means and necessity occur.
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Anafiel · Forum General Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 173

*whimpers* I'm not perfect grammatically, lord knows I'm not the best speller. I check all my posts in word before posting them to make sure they are spelled correctly and don't sound idiotic but I don't know if I follow all the rules you have put forth here. Guh! Now I'm going to go nuts making sure that I do XD

Alis Dee · Patron Joined: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Australia

Heh, I think the main point is just to always be conscious of what you're doing. Like, I use stupid words sometimes (I still cringe at the phrase "belie the countenance" which I have a habit of abusing) and have a tendency to occasionally switch tense (usually because I started writing in present and realise it's awkward) and make typos, but all the while I'm conscious as to what I should be writing. I honestly think simply being aware of what is 'good' written form goes miles and miles to making people better writers. I had a really hard time, for instance, looking for an example of bad punctuation/pacing; most people at least have their commas and their full stops in reasonably the right places, because people are aware that this makes their writing easier to read.

On the other hand, certain memes get spread around when it comes to using ridiculous words and the passive voice. I say memes because the only way I can imagine that they spread is memetically; one person sees another person (generally someone they perceive is popular or talented) using passive voice or a fancy word, then they copy it, then someone sees them and so forth until enough people are doing it that it becomes an ingrained norm. People aren't conscious of it as being somehow odd, and they also don't have enough exposure to grammar/good writing/writing theory/whatever to deconstruct what they're doing.

All so-called rules of creative writing are there to be broken and all that, but you need to at least be aware of the fact that there are rules (and why) in the first place.
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Zexnon · Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:30 am Post subject:

There is no such thing as a perfect roleplayer.

I am happy about that.
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Faedriel · Barfly Joined: 12 Jul 2006 Posts: 59

Alis Dee · Patron Joined: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Australia

Adawolf · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:59 am Post subject:

I like my flowery words thank you very much! And I like to use adatives(SP?). I write short stories often, with the use of spell check, and I think that replacing a few words or adding a few words really helps. Although I HATE the words 'Auds' and 'occulars'.
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Faedriel · Barfly Joined: 12 Jul 2006 Posts: 59

Alis Dee · Patron Joined: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Australia

@Adawolf
I'm kinda curious as to where you got the impression that I was telling people not to use adjectives. There's nothing wrong with adjectives, or even descriptive sentences. What I am cautioning against is using archaic or obtuse words either just for the sake of it, or in the mistaken belief that it makes someone look like a better writer. The cruel fact is that it doesn't. I'm not just making this stuff up for the fun of it, either; the term 'purple prose' comes originally from Horace (Roman poet from the first century BCE), so writers have been thinking about it for at least two thousand years that we know of. I mean, feel free to think you're a better writer than Horace, but not even I'm that egotistical (and I doubt it was what you're implying).

So why is it really bad? Why does flowery prose instantly scream "INEXPERIENCED WRITER"?

Well, first off; if you look through the examples from other people I've given above I think almost all of them use words incorrectly or in an awkward context. English is very flexible; just because something is a synonym for something else in one context doesn't necessarily mean that it is in every context. If we look at Xxys' post above, we notice s/he uses a really, really odd word; sidelined. It's not archaic or overly formal like the rest of the sentence. It's a common word but the context is odd. If you go look it up in a thesaurus (like I did, and like I assume Xxys did since it's Google's first hit) you'll see that it can be used as a synonym for 'lame'. Ah, makes more sense now! So, instead of sidelined implicative post we can read this as lame implicative post. ('Implicative', incidentally, means "to express indirectly" and is the adjectival form of 'imply'.) But wait a sec, 'sidelined' is also technically a synonym for 'dormant'. Dormant implicative post doesn't really make a lot of sense. Neither does abandoned implicative post. How about going backwards from 'lame' again? Handicapped post? Sore post? Hamstrung post? Remember that while we use 'lame' colloquially as a generic pejorative term (ie. we use it to describe things we think are stupid), originally if something was lame it meant it had some kind of difficulty walking. If I broke my leg, I'd be lame; in both contexts, some would say.

The point is that just because you see something in a thesaurus doesn't mean that it works directly as a replacement word. Unnecessary 'thesaurus humping' by people who don't really understand the contexts and meanings of the words they're using is awfully jarring to anyone who does.

The other part of this, which is also evident in the examples in my original post (and yours, in fact) is that when people use unfamiliar words they're much more likely to fall victim to 'near-enough-is-good-enough'. It's not just a case of bad spelling. I'm an atrocious speller (thank you, Firefox spell check), but I know that 'additive' and 'adjective' are two different words. The same with 'diluted' and 'dilated'.

With English, like everything else, you really need to learn to walk before you can run. I used to play the trumpet, and anyone who's played the trumpet will tell you that middle C, G and C5 in a basic scale have the same key-combination (no keys depressed); but they're certainly not the same note. If I decided that they were, and played a middle C every time that the music called for an C5, I'd be chucked out of band. Similarly, if I decided that a C# was close enough to a C, and that I'd play that every time instead I'd meet a similar fate. The difference between C4, G and C5 is all in the embouchure, and I had to spend a lot of time learning to be able to play the difference before I could move off scales and onto the national anthem. It's the same with writing; I need to learn the blues and the opens before I can move onto my azures and my dilations.

For those of you who are saying, "This chick's an idiot! I totally know what blue means!" Well. If you can't pick the mistakes out of the example posts I've given (and you can be honest, no-one's watching)... sorry, you really don't. That's okay, though; you've got plenty of time to learn and you're a lot further ahead than all those people who are refusing to admit there's anything wrong at all.

Finally, the other other reason purple prose is bad is because it's really fucking distracting to what you're writing. If I'm paying more attention to a dictionary than to your writing, you've got a problem.

But by all means don't just take my word for it. Instead, how about the words of the 2006 winner of the annual Bulwer-Litton Fiction Contest, Jim Guigli:

Zexnon · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 5:21 pm Post subject:

Alis Dee · Patron Joined: 30 Nov 2006 Posts: 13 Location: Australia

Wow, um okay. Usually I'd reply to such a long-worded post but there's so much vitriol and ad hominem here that I just don't really know what to say. You seem to be fairly personally aggrieved which is a little sad; I really wasn't trying to attack anyone directly. I like good writing, being a teenager does not make you stupid or incapable of good writing, grammar really isn't taught adequately in schools any more (I certainly wasn't taught it -- the first time I'd heard of a 'dangling participle' was playing King's Quest -- and it's a major public debate in my country) and I'm talking about writing form not roleplay plots. I agree; you don't have to be a good writer to be a good storyteller, but it's much easier to get other people interested in your tales if you can express them clearly.

I also know that I write like an arrogant, egotistical fucknut; I say it outright a couple of times (and make fun of it at least once) and, well, it's a deliberate style choice believe it or not. People generally either love this 'persona' or hate it, which is the point; it gets people's attention. It certainly got yours. It's effective writing; even if you don't agree with me, you're still thinking about what I've said.

Roleplay is a kind of collaborate storytelling told through writing, and writing is an art. Like it or not, all artistic endeavours have 'rules'; be it my example about the notes on my trumpet or the use of perspective and colour in art. Most masters of avant-garde arts (be they the early Impressionists or the Beatles or whomever) will likely admit that in order to successfully break the rules, you need to know they exist (and why) in the first place. Even the Sex Pistols -- and despite urban myth to the contrary -- knew how to play their instruments. I'm not saying no-one should ever experiment with language or all write in the equivalent of a Stephen Hawking robot voice (good writer, incidentally); of course I'm not. You don't have to write like anything. I can't make you, and I don't really have any interest in doing so.

However -- and as strange as this may seem -- I really, really honest-to-gods do just love writing as an art. In case you couldn't tell by how goddamn loquacious I am (before I was Alis I was Loqia, which came from Loquacia) I enjoy producing prose in the same way other people -- including myself, incidentally -- love drawing or coding or playing video games. I also love reading eloquent prose; I read books not just to get through a story, but to study the written form and the literary techniques used by the authors.

It strikes me a bit odd that places like deviantART are absolutely littered with tutorials on How to Draw/Colour/Ink/Make Cool Light Effects/Port, yet those artists don't get attacked or accused of 'beating dead horses' or 'pointing out flaws'. Less talented artists are constantly doing fanart for more advanced artists and no-one that I know of panics about the latter 'judging' the gifts given to them by the former.

Maybe it would help to think of what I'm saying in that context; as a kind of tutorial. You don't have to take it as gospel, just like I don't have to use a consistent lighting source in my art despite every single colouring tutorial ever made telling me it's a good idea. (It really does make your art look more professional though.)

If just one person walks away after reading this and suddenly finds themselves thinking a little more about the art behind their writing, then I haven't been wasting my time. Believe it or not, since putting this up I've had a few people deliberately track me down and try and engage me in roleplay just so they can get a 'critique' of their style (um, it's very flattering and all but not just a little bit uncomfortable!); the interesting part is that everyone who's done this has actually been a better than average writer to begin with. I guess anyone who cares enough to track down criticism of their work (even from a posturing hack like yours truly) is obviously constantly looking for ways to improve; and it shows. The truth is, everyone is always subconsciously judging everyone else's writing/rp; the only difference here is that I've had the audacity to put it into words. How dare I! I must be such an ogre!

... and yet, I've tried very hard not to publicly insult anyone. Sure, I've taken other people's words but I've done my damnedest to de-identify them (I went over each passage several times to make sure I hadn't left anything too incriminating in). My own writing is freely available if people want to read it. If people want to self-servingly rope me into RP just to see how I play, they can do that too (and I'm fairly certain some people already have; incidentally, I think I'm a pretty good writer but a bit of a mediocre roleplayer). I'm not hiding anything, I just like talking about writing.

If that offends anyone, tough.

(There we go, I started out a bit shaky but I knew I'd get the words in by the end!)
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Xxys · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:49 pm Post subject: