To Fic Or Not To Fic:
By Yva | April 27, 2009
That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of a chatlog, or to take arms ag . . .
(Right, done now).
I generally know ahead of time which bits of RP I’m going to be ficcing. I know other roleplayers work more fast and loose – they take their best random chat logs and run with them like naked babies frolicking on a beach. That is not my particular strength, though. Certain characters (usually Yva, though Seylon/Skyborne is my latest example) always have a bigger story arc going on, and the rp sessions in game will usually in some way contribute to that story. If said RP progresses the arc, if it changes it or simply sends an important point home to someone following along, I make sure it’s posted.
Thanks to Fells, I’m a big user of WoWScribe now. I log my in-character channels, guild chat, whispers, party chat, say and yell. It’s always on, too, so every rp interaction I have is on the record. This means I can pluck the gems of any encounter and twine them into a story. The main reason I like it? Everyone I bloody know in game talks funny and I can’t get their accents right otherwise. Thanks to WoWScribe, I don’t have to pretend to know what Tarquin does to make poor into puir and . . . well, you catch my drift.
So what’s the rule of thumb for me regarding ficcing a conversation versus just posting the log? I ask one very simple question: Can this log on its own tell the whole story? I think it speaks to the quality of the people I roleplay with when I can say – truthfully – ‘yes’ a lot more than ‘no’. I may have to insert a sentence here and there if the characters move from one location to another, but when that’s the only ‘touch up’ I have to do? The log is more than adequate.
Lately, I’ve been saving fiction for the posts where my characters do something game mechanics won’t allow them to do. Yva, for example, abuses her magic something wicked, so I can’t exactly go and chatlog a fight with an npc Eredar. It has to be a story. I’ll also fic out back story, character history that happened before in-game time, and “nefarious schemes by npc’s”.
I know everyone produces fiction at different rates, so I’d be curious to hear what inspires other people to write fics? Is it how you visualize something in your head? Do you fic everything? Is it only life changing events? Enquiring minds want to know. Ta!
4 Comments
falconesse on April 27, 2009 at 4:46 pm.
I tend to fic the things that can’t be done in-game — backstory, chats with NPCs, Davien with her niece and nephew, or Threnn and Anna talking. It seems like a lot of those stories are less about action and more about interaction, if you will. One character’s trying to work through something that has happened or is about to happen, and those conversations get them from one point to another in their decision-making or overall character development.
If I have a good chatlog, I’ll sometimes flesh it out as a fic when there are things going on in the character’s internal monologue that doesn’t come across in the emotes. There was actually one night Anna and Fin talking that was interesting to fic out — neither of us realized that we were writing from the same chatlog until we posted. It was really cool to see the same scene from two different points of view.
Ficcing stuff out has also worked well for Bricu and Threnn RP — since his in-game RP time is limited, we’ve been able to take care of story progression through talking about plot stuff on gtalk, then writing it out and posting.
Itanya Blade on April 27, 2009 at 5:05 pm.
Like Falconnese, I tend to fic things that are more difficult to do in game. Lots of conversation between my characters or with someone else’s multiple characters just can’t happen in game.
On the other hand, I also tend to add things to some of the stuff I do with certain players, like Keltyr. He’s not entirely comfortable with ficing (though he bloody well writes small viginettes well.) He’s an in game kinda person, so when it comes to sharing the stories about kel and Dorri with a wider audience, I do tend to take the chat logs and fluff them with actions and/or descriptions.
Personally, I don’t like to see bare chat logs. They’re hard to follow and they don’t always flow.
Shaemon on April 27, 2009 at 6:16 pm.
When I post RP–which isn’t terribly often–I tend to prefer to fic it. Like Pill, I find that chatlogs are often hard to follow. I like prose to break up the dialogue. And, usually, there’s a lot of the conversation that isn’t core to the story. It’s not an easy task, no, to look at a log and ask “What’s -essential- here? What moves the story? What doesn’t? What doesn’t but was REALLY AWESOME and I want to include anyway?” Logs are good sometimes, but usually I find that improv requires a crafter’s hand to make it work for people who weren’t involved. And sometimes for myself as well.
Also, I’d like to note that I’m the one who made Fells start using WoWscribe. /preen Though I think I found it out because…Delial? I think it might have been Delial who was seeking an updated version after BC came out. It was a godsend. Though I still miss my original chatlogger, which used to break things out into individual logs per character. The addition of the internal logger borked it, and I spent months cursing the dratted thing.
Illi on April 27, 2009 at 7:45 pm.
I tend to use prose writing to fill out Illi’s (and others’, but less) RP, usually her (their) solo stories. Homecoming was a good example of that – entirely Illi based exposition, it by necessity had no interaction with anyone else. I still don’t get muuuch ingame interaction with Illi outside of IC channel discussion and conversations (Aussie-to-US playtime differences contribute to that), so chatlogging wouldn’t be terribly useful.
However, logging everything via WoWScribe or another add-on may be an idea – if everything’s being logged, then nothing can be lost. I wish I could have retrieved that argument and associated fall-out with Laz the other night. It was golden.