How to not suck at writing.

[paulWTAMU]

I just wound up deleting a handful (10-15) short stories and a few dozen rather bad poems off my hard drive.  I don't want to publish, I don't care if anyone reads what I write, but I like to write as sort of mental exercise.  And by God, my stuff is weaksauce, particularly my short stories. I can play with visuals pretty well (usually for grotesque effects) but I can't come up with a way to write a decent character. How do I get inside someone else's head to write them?  I'm not even trying to write something wonderful, just something decent...*head meet desk*

[svb1972]

Try doing some online text based roleplaying?
I admit that I've been roleplaying for so long, that getting into someone elses head is pretty straight forward.

[paulWTAMU]

I've done PnP RPGs intermittently for a while, typically old World of Darkness.  It's what made me want to start writing   The same things been an issue for me there too...I can play malks and gangrels and some of the minor clans...but ask me to be a toreador or ventrue or any social clan and I'm lost. 

[TokenRed]

First off, hi I'm new! I've been lurking around these forums for a while, and they seem like fun.
Secondly, I think characters are just a matter of practice. To me it sounds like you're doing all the right things. I find it a lot easier if I write in first person perspective - you pretty much just get in the head of one person. (I'm kind of lazy, so for me this is great )
If your characters all have some kind of reasoning behind their actions and their personality quirks, then they should be believable.
I'd say you're probably being too hard on yourself. It's always easy to be uber critical of your own stuff.

[Mickey Finn]

MUSH.

In a MUSH, it's like tabletop meets improvisational theater. You play your character while other people play thiers, in a room, text-based. So it's like a writing exercise for exactly what you're talking about!

The most popular themes out there are, I think, Amber, Potter, and White Wolf.

[paulWTAMU]

That sounds freaking awesome. I'll try to locate a group here   I'm in hicksville so there may or not be one but I'm hopeful!

[Mickey Finn]

When I get home, I'll try to get the address of two MUSHes I know of. You'll also need a client to interact...SIMPLEMu or...damn, I forgot what I use. Has a lamp as the icon.

(I used SimpleMU for years, switched to this other with Vista.)

[svb1972]

When I get home, I'll try to get the address of two MUSHes I know of. You'll also need a client to interact...SIMPLEMu or...damn, I forgot what I use. Has a lamp as the icon.

(I used SimpleMU for years, switched to this other with Vista.)

Do warn him about the specialness of Mushes
If he's never found them on his own, and never experienced them it's easy to make bad first impressions.  Mush communities tend to be very insular and unforgiving of newbies.  Newbies get labeled as twinks /really/ fast.  That's been true for the last 20+ years.

[Mickey Finn]

When a MUSH clicks, it's golden. When it gets cliquish and stalls, it's frustrating beyond belief.

A MUSH is like a convention...lots of social, kick ass intelligent people mixed with people with bizarre social skills and people you secretly worry about.

[Kali]

And then there's Shangri-La...

[svb1972]

When a MUSH clicks, it's golden. When it gets cliquish and stalls, it's frustrating beyond belief.

A MUSH is like a convention...lots of social, kick ass intelligent people mixed with people with bizarre social skills and people you secretly worry about.

Sometimes it's hard to tell which are which.
Not to mention, sometimes.. they're both.  And you end up having rp/conversations with 2 different people.. who are really the same person.

sometimes the kick ass intelligent people are also the one with bizarre social skills .. or worse.

I gave up mushing because it's just.. too much.  The social politics behind it are troublesome.  And Mushes tend to suffer from either Staff retiring and being replaced by people who are less good.  Or by Staff that never leaves and gets serious god complexes.

[Kali]

Yeah, and they haven't changed in all the years I've been MUSHing.  I tried again recently, on a World of Darkness mu*.  The person who ran the werewolf sphere had been there for a long while.  Everyone who was nice and kissed her character's ass got special consideration.  If you didn't, you got cut out of sphere events, had a hard time getting anything approved, found your character/pack constantly harassed...

I left.  Wasn't worth it.  If you have the patience to find a good game and a good sphere, it can be awesome.  It just takes more patience than I've got these days.

[Cajun Guy]

I am no expert, but  when I have trouble getting into a characters head I base it loosely on someone I know/have heard/read about. Even if I don't entirely understand why someone does something you can reasonably predict what someone would do in a circumstance and often that is good enough. It helps build mystery  Seems to me that if you leave something open it gives the reader room to fill in blanks on their own which can be fun. Heck that's 90% of this forum.

Cajun Guy

[Mickey Finn]

(Ironically, the White Wolf MUSH I'm reccomending is Cajun Nights. While not exceedingly active, it's alive enough and the staff are fantastic at present.)

[Cajun Guy]

I never did the MUSH but I was a play tester for them a LOOOONNNGG time ago. The guy that GM'd our regular game moved to Atlanta and wound up working for them for a long time. Can't stand to see what they've done to the WOD since the company was sold.