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Roleplaying From Specific RL Experiences


Uaithne
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I decided to write a guide about how to roleplay traumatic events because my site is kind of based upon a town that's undergoing traumatic events.  But as I'm doing research, I'm seeing all this stuff about how it's good that people write about their traumas as part of the healing process.  (It took me awhile to slog through these sorts of links before google gave me the sort of stuff I was actually requesting, so there are lots of people who believe in the importance of writing about one's trauma.)

 

As writers, we incorporate the world around us in much that we write about, sometimes without realizing that we're doing so.  We base characters off traits of people we've met, or we assume things about the environment, or we incorporate some of our subtle experiences into the things we're writing about.  But what about doing it intentionally, and focusing on a specific event or person?  I'm not talking about, "I grew up in Buttsville, New Hampshire, so I'm going to make my character from Buttsville, as well."  But more of a "Once when I was in Buttsville, I had somebody throw potatoes at me from a moving vehicle while I was walking down the street.  I'm going to write about a character who gets potatoes thrown at him."  You actually use the specific experience as a major foundation of a plot, event, or character.

 

Another example would be if your parents divorced when you were a kid, and you decide that you're going to give your character divorced parents because you remember the things you went through, and you want to incorporate some of those things into your character.  (Rather than just giving your character divorced parents and briefly mentioning it in history but not really having it factor into your character in a major way in the present.)

 

It doesn't have to be traumatic, either.  You could want to make your best friend into a character because it would be awesome, or you give your character the same type of car as you and end up incorporating the way the car smelled that very first day you got it.  Or you could have your character get a new dog from the shelter just the same way you went to the shelter to pick up your dog 10 years ago.  Maybe it's the same dog, even, or you write about the people you've met.

 

So it's more than just "writing from experience" in the sense that we normally talk about it.  It's focusing on a specific person or place or thing and then intentionally incorporating that thing into your character's world rather than writing about a violinist because you have experience with the violin and know what you're talking about.

 

Have you done this?  Would it be something you'd want to do?  Do you think I'm just crazy and this post is confusing?

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I've done this before. For some reason strangers approach me a lot in public. I don't know why. So I end up having a lot of weird and funny (to me) interactions that I like to stick into my stories if the opportunity presents itself. They are like little inside jokes for myself.

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Yes. This is one of my favorite things to do. When I create my characters, someway, they all have a little piece of me. Whether it's having gone through a similar experience, or if they have the same insecurities, maybe compliments make them uncomfortable, or they dislike of warm pickles on a burger. It might be really minor or really huge. 

 

I think it's sort of a way of taking 'write what you know' to its best potential. 

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I do it all the time, even if the experiences described aren't exactly 100% the same as they had happened. And many of my friends and relatives could recognize themselves in the characters of my stories. I like it. It gives depth and believability to the story.

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One of the most charming things about role play and fanfic is any odd moment that is packed with detail, because it screams of the writer having had that experience. 

 

More generally, I extrapolate off of my own experiences all the time. For example, I think this is how I react to X, but I react that way because of this character trait. Since my character doesn't have that trait, they would probably react this other way. 

 

More specifically, there was a character I wrote who was basically all my teenage and young adult self's insecurities, fears and self hatred personified into one small ball of absolute outrage. She was for a wanted ad that was essentially, I want a subordinate who likes this character somehow (not necessarily romantically)  but he doesn't even like them - just puts up with them. No one really likes them. So I figured someone who overreacts (and is rude, aggressive and given to simply running away from emotionally fraught scenarios) because she's so frigging hurt would fit the bill. 

 

Turns out that this highly reactive everything on their sleeve character is good for RP. Something happens in every single one of her threads. 

 

So she wasn't about some kind of healing through writing. She came about simply because it was more interesting to me to make a character who behaved in unlikeable ways because of her hurt and insecurity, rather than someone who was simply an asshole. And I had my own antisocial insecure past to draw on, so I did. 

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I do it all the time. Both with my own experiences and other people's life stories. For some reason, people tell me their life stories all the time, in great detail. Part of it is my line of work (customer service), and people just tend to find me approachable and share stuff.

 

So, I store those and do use them to help shape my characters into realistic people - though I don't disclose which ones are my own experience, because that would be very awkward. XD

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Oh yeah, I do this all the time.  I think everyone does this to some extent - you gain an understanding of the world and of interactions through what happens to you, and I think most writers' characters have a little bit (or more!) of themselves in there.  I'll pepper my roleplay with a bunch of things that are specific to me - certain mannerisms that I have, or what I think when I'm in an awkward situation.  Flirting is another one.

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'souls | no wc | character-driven | werecanines | open & active since 2001!
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I'm honestly not sure that I do this... o_o; Unless you qualify like "Christmas Thread at Christmas Time" to be doing this. 

 

Mostly, I use characters to explore things that I can not (or don't want to) experience myself. We might have a similar trait (frustrating fathers; competitive streaks; rescue pets; etc.) but I can literally not think of a time where I had a character who had even vaguely the same experience as me... 

 

For instance, when I started RPing (I was... give-or-take 9?10?) and my character was a 16 year old alcoholic elven mage who had a cat familiar that had the personality of a probably 60 year old judgmental uncle. (I had never had alcohol; owned a cat; had a close/caring uncle; etc.)

 

My second long-lived RP character (I was maybe 12?) was a 21 year old pirate captain who had severe hallucinations of his father's voice telling him to kill people plus paranoia for fun. He had watched his father be executed when he was four and never really got over it. O-O;  (My father is alive; I don't know how to sail; I had never seen--even on TV--a public execution; I certainly don't have anything similar to paranoid schizophrenia; etc.)

 

So nope~ I have no experience with this; and I probably never will -- but all power to those of you who do. <3

Edited by Thyme
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I've been though a lot. Many of my characters have at least one instance of something I've dealt with, though not all are trauma, many are. Most are slightly different from me in the trauma they've dealt with. I've also played the villain/abuser character for my friends instances of this. Honestly, I think that this is one of the most cathartic mutual writing experiences I've ever felt, sharing that with someone.

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I try extremely hard to keep me out of my characters. There are character traits (and I guess you'd call me hidebound since these dominate almost all of my guys and gals) that crop up over and over: Sense of honor, justice, strong sense of right and wrong, etc. These are things that I hope I embody, but am sure I don't have them to the degree my characters portray. 

 

I am lousy at playing villains! I will only write them as NPCs. I simply cannot wrap my head around having a bad guy or gal as my main character.

 

Edit: I roleplay to not be me!

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Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

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