[MUD-Dev] story vs. screenplay

[ghovs]

On Tuesday 05 February 2002 20:45, Nicholas E Walker wrote, among
other things:

> Most people seem to roleplay in the style of a narrated story.
> They emote what they are feeling, but often try to limit the
> autonomy of the response of others.  Speech emits are embedded in
> lines of descriptive text.  A lot of people consider this real or
> good roleplaying.

> But people don't talk like that.  People don't compose their
> thoughts and emotions in that way, and the only way people have to
> influence the thoughts/emotions of other people is through the way
> they act.. not through how they write prose.  Does this make any
> sense?

While it's true that some people (very) richly lard their text-based
RP with comparisons of epic nature, deep musings and flashbacks, it
also contains a very detailed description of expressions, movements,
mode of speech and other visible signs of emotional states.

I find I can imply a pretty exact emotional state, and sometimes
even drag the other player along in how my character would deceive
others, or just simply leave them puzzled.

That part isn't, in my opinion, excessive embellishment, and the
part which is, is often styled to make the other people involved
grin, or laugh. The whole goal is different, which in my eyes
justifies the different approach.

> The point/thesis of this all is to bring up the difference between
> prose storytelling (short stories, novels, fiction or non-) and
> screenplays.

It's big :)

> With prose storytelling, the author is narrating the story.  A
> single point of storytelling.  The author picks a point of view to
> narrate from, and perhaps even switches around.  But there is
> always a single point of view.  (I may be wrong, but I don't think
> I have ever read anything for which this is not true--except maybe
> Finnegan's Wake? But that's aside from my point..)

> Most important with prose storytelling is that the author gets
> inside the head of the characters of the story.  Emotions,
> thoughts, beliefs, childhood, any of that is fair game to be
> explored.

Now you're muddying the line between novels and RP. Usually, with
RP, the player has a very set idea of what their character is like,
which needs to get negotiated with just about anyone they might run
into.

This means that (almost) every character in a scene will be from
their own unique perspective, which often has to bend a little to
fit in, or just changes as things progress. This as opposed to a
single-authored story, where the whole can be constructed from one
single viewpoint on the world in question.

And, ofcourse, like I mentioned above, the goal is different. It's
much more about amusing the writers than captivating the audience,
when doing text-based RP. Sometimes stories evolve in very messy
ways, or you have the ueber-leet prose poster of death (something
like 50+ lines each pose :) work together with people who just
haven't a clue how they would write 50 lines without falling asleep.

So unlike with an essay, or novel, this form of RP can leave you
with very mixed (mismatched?) styles, and sometimes no coherence at
all.

> The crux of the screenplay, the -huge- difference from
> story-prose, is that we use the dialog, the actions to get inside
> the head of the characters.  There is nobody telling us what they
> are thinking/feeling, we have to either observe the character on
> the screen, in the theater, or if we are reading the screenplay,
> in our head.

While that's a very interesting exercise, and I can really see how
you could simply enjoy reading a screenplay, its main attraction is
that it doesn't go over all the nitty gritty details as much,
leaving a lot of how the characters look, sound, and 'feel' up to
you.

It's a little cruder than a fleshed-out story.

> I've come to enjoy reading screenplays as much as any other form
> of writing.  Reading them is almost a refreshing difference from
> reading story-prose.  It requires directing the movie in one's own
> mind.

> So I just wanted to bring up the difference between acting/RPing a
> part in a movie/play, and acting a part in a novel.  There's a
> reason books are rewritten as screenplays before acted out...

Mostly becuase books tend to be much longer than any producer could
afford, both in terms of money and in terms of having their audience
fall asleep.  You can't expect them to sit at the theater for 73
hours straight.

That, and you need something concise to work with when rehearsing a
part.


rgds,
ghovs
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