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Okay, what is this madness?

Well, you know what a playground is, right?  It’s where kids meet other kids, get bumped and bruised, laugh, cry, scream, and generally grow up together.

This is that.  But for your characters.

Character lounges are basically online playgrounds.  We each place a character in them and then let the personalities bounce off each other.  The goal is three-fold:

1) Get practice writing.  The writing you do in a character lounge is free.  I won’t end up in a novel.  The zone is judgement free.  And hey, it’s fun.

2) Get to know your character (and his voice.)  I almost always put my characters through character lounges.  The only way I’m able to nail down character voice is by writing the character.  If I do that in a novel, I end up with a few really bland chapters.  Character lounges help you get that development in before your pen hits the important pages.

3) It’s fun, and fun builds community.  We’re hoping to continue to foster growth and friendships inside our guilds, and this is a great way to do it.

OKAY, COOL, so… are there rules?  As a matter of fact, yes.  Obviously, all forum conduct policy regulations apply.  Play nice.  But in addition:

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)).

I don’t know if there are more.  There might be.

But for now, HAVE FUN!