Character sheet bildungsroman

[letterblade]

LARP writing process post/discussion starter.*

So I am currently in the mad throes of Writing A Game In Way Too Much Of A Hurry--in other words, trying to crank out a couple of character sheets a day, that sort of madness. And I tend to be a pretty, um, thorough writer these days. Meaning wordy. Meaning random other shit.

I find it very difficult to start a character sheet at any point in the character's life other than earliest childhood memory.

(Admittedly, a bit of this may be due to the first sheet for the first game I wrote--Celena Schezar in The Treaty of Pallas--starting in early childhood for very valid reasons, as her toddler memories are plot-relevant. Probably some early conditioning that didn't help.)

This is viable for young characters. Teenagers. Even if their childhood isn't directly plot-relevant, it's still very near and dear to their consciousnesses, especially if they lost a parent or something. No, where I have a problem with this is with older characters. Parents with children of their own, for example. I have to sit hard on my urge to go into every detail of their lives, which could make twenty-page sheets full of irrelevant information. But I do badly with summaries. And.

Ayy.

Any of my fellow LARP-writers out there have this sort of problem? The urge to make character sheets into bildungsroman? How do you deal with it, and go about pruning sheets?

Also, my brain hurts from writing overload. But that's neither here nor there.

* Because, honestly, with the amount of different crap I use this journal for? I'm beginning to think I should label posts like that. -.-;;

Comments

[sixthbrightest.livejournal.com]

I'm not a LARP-writer, but I play in online RPGs and write character sheets for those. What happens is I produce a massive initial document full of notes that help me track the initial formations of the character, which can range between 5 to 8 pages if I'm lucky. Then I try to corral it down into what's sheet relevant, and try to keep that 3 pages or under. Then I try to make the notes into a nice expanded sheet which I can use as a bible to refer to. Sometimes I have to fic about it too, to flesh out critical scenes. Most of this is done before I submit the charsheet.

When I'm working on novel or otherwise original processes, it's even worse. For that I really need to use Scrivener, because otherwise my "Backstory" folder for that project balloons heavily. Before I got a Mac and Scrivener, I'd have at least 2 bio docs per char, then docs on history, language, religion, geography, politics...I'd have folders with upwinds of 50 documents. It was ridiculous. So, uh, as you can tell, I appear to write way too much backstory. For everything.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I used to do this for my important NPCs in tabletop games. I'd work out whole genealogies for them so I could tie them into the PCs' backgrounds way back sometimes. I would fill notebooks with backstory and links and other NPCs and worldbuilding and... yeah.

Probably the only reason I don't do this now is because I don't have the time or attention span any more. I miss it, though.

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

I'm not a LARP-writer either, but I've definitely had the problem of unnecessary background data in my fiction (both fan- and original). I usually just run with it, and then - like sixthbrightest said - cut it down in the rewrites. Because a starting point is a starting point, and even the information that you don't end up using can help point you in the right direction toward content that might be more relevant. I don't know how much revising you're going to have time to do for this particular game, but it's something to think about for the future.

Good luck!

[rigel.livejournal.com]

I have this problem with a vengeance, enough that I've had co-GMs criticize me on the length of my sheets. Thankfully, the game in which I'm most prone to do that is one where most of the characters are teens, so it's not as problematic, but still.

I find it cropping up most with characters who I find nuanced in a way that I strongly prefer to convey in writing rather than tell the player OOC. I feel like I need example after example to reflect that nuance, which leads to ungainly length.

[lisefrac.livejournal.com]

I find myself doing the same thing, which is less than productive for character sheets for 4-hour games *sigh*

[natbudin.livejournal.com]

I have this exact issue too. In The Labor Wars, I've been attempting to work around it by starting each sheet with a non-sequitur, then writing until I've figured out how it makes sense as the beginning of a character sheet.

Actually, I've found that to be a useful technique in general: purposely put something nonsensical on the page, and then write yourself out of that corner. At the very least, you never end up writing anything boring!

[matt_doyle]

I tend to start with motivation. Why are they here, what do they want, what sort of means are they willing to use morally/ethically to get it... but for the most part the people I write for are not habitual LARPers or actors, and so I'm trying to keep focused on the event. If I were writing for a smaller group, or for specific people I knew, I'd probably work on biography more.

And it's also true that I may have avoided that problem because for one LARP, I had almost two years to edit and refine, and for the other, editing wasn't an option, as I wrote twenty-four (I think, maybe more) characters in four to five days.