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Hi guys! So I was chatting with the other guild masters the other day and Brandon shared with us something they do in his guild, and gave the rest of us permission to use it. So I thought I’d pass it on to you.

A character chat is kind of like a role play. I’ll give you a setting to start out in, and then you introduce a character from your story and turn them loose in this setting to interact with others. This gives us writing practice, a chance to develop our character’s voice without writing a lot of fluff in our actual manuscripts, and it’s fun and builds community.

Heres a few rules. I didn’t write these, I copied them from Brandon.

1. Never move another person’s character. Don’t put words in their mouth. Don’t move their sword to parry. Don’t think thoughts for them. Just do you’re character. (This INCLUDES dying. You can shoot another character, but the character’s author should decide if you missed, injured, or killed.)
2) Don’t ignore other (active) characters. Don’t just write a post so long and contrived that the other characters basically become passive bystanders. Many short posts are better than a few long ones.
3) Play fair. Your hero is your hero but everyone else has a hero too. Don’t make yours seem superhuman. Remember, weakness builds better characters than strength.
4) If you’re ever referring to another character by a pronoun and it’s not clear who you’re speaking too, put the character’s name in parentheses. That just helps clear things up. Example: “Someone (Wesley) darted across the far side of the clearing.”
5) Because of how life works, at some point some characters are going to be left behind. We get busy and we can’t always keep up. THAT’S OKAY. Just kind of move on without them, and when the author comes back, pretend like they were never gone. It’s not always perfect, but it works.
6) If you ever need to make a comment/talk to another person OUTSIDE of the storyline, ((do it in double parentheses like this)).

 

Sound good? Ok, I’ll start to give you guys an idea, but since my phone is still destroyed I won’t be be on much and keeping up with you guys, so don’t feel the need to wait on me. The setting is a smoky pub on the waterfront (have fun figuring out if this is contemporary, fantasy, etc)

 

Name: Malechi, but will also answer to Malec, or Hatter (though he’ll grumble about it)

Age: Centuries, but for simplicity, he looks about 25.

Looks: wears a tophat, and his wardrobe is an odd mix of goth and hippie. He’s about 6 feet tall, and slim and wiry. Black hair.

Pertinent info: He’s fae, insane, and a master of illusion.

 

Malechi: I walk into the dismal looking pub and take a moment to shake the rain off my hat. I glance inside it to be sure everything still looks in order, then set it on my head. I wonder what the odds are this place serves a decent cup of tea? Probably about 1 in 856,293. Odd numbers, you know.