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(08-21-2015, 01:45 PM)Caspar Wrote: Ignacius I think you should read what I'm writing a little more carefully. You're inferring actions I don't take. I moderated a forum like this; I'm no stranger to helping others write better. I was as honest as you were. But where you aim to put someone in their place, I augmented them, because Rp isn't acting to me but group writing, and the group element means you help others achieve the story they want to write as well as your own. We're not performance artists.
There is no "in their place". Â There are simply things that are beyond our ability. Â I will never win Wimbledon, as the famous example goes. Â I'm 30. Â I could start playing tennis now, I could even get good, but there's not a cold chance in Hell of me ever becoming one of the world's best tennis players.
Likewise, you can try to become a better writer, but if you're starting to say, "Anyone can be witty if they try," you're setting someone up to continue making the same mistake. Â It wouldn't be a problem, except failures at wit are something we are intentionally raised to groan at.
Think about it. Â What if I slid up to a woman at a bar and I said, "Honey, did it hurt... when you fell from Heaven?" Â It is recognized, universally, that this is a cheesy pickup line. Â This is not a good way to make a serious attempt at being charming. Â At best, people recognize that cheesy pickup line is a humorous attempt to use that recognition to break the ice. Â At worst, I just tried something I researched on the internet that was supposed to pick up women and it failed.
But, from reading it, you have no idea what my intention is. Â My intention is irrelevant. Â Now, imagine that happening, with someone writing this as genuine, over and over, and not understanding why women aren't fawning over his character.
Yeah, people have limits. Â You have to be witty to write witty lines, and some people just don't have it and never will.
Now, I'm not going to get into the specifics of my friends' issues, but let me be emphatically clear, she was to insightful discourse what that pick up line was to charm. Â It was so bad, people thought she was just trolling them and were freezing her out of conversations I had invited her into.
Is it pretty? Â No. Â I explained it as gently as I could. Â I object strenuously to your characterization of putting her in her place, particularly since you weren't present for the situation. Â But I don't do this just as a forum moderator, I do this with people in bars that other players are ignoring. Â Those are the people who really need the help, and most of the time it's because they've absolutely overreached themselves.
There's only so much you can do, and all the hoping in the world doesn't make it any easier to sit through. Â I certainly can't force people to just take her intention as-is even when the way she wrote her character, at her best, was absolutely not getting her intention across.
I'm alright with being disagreed with in my approach, but for someone to try to say that if you just try hard enough, you'll become as witty as you want, I can't agree with that. Â I've seen people try as hard as they possibly can for a fairly decent length of time and not get better.
At some point, we have to face that reality. Â You have to be able to tell someone that, "I know you're trying, but it's not coming across. Â But you're great at this other thing! Â Look, you aren't any less of a person for not having this trait you don't have. Â What did you get the best response doing? Â Maybe we could focus on that?"
There are better ways to do it than to say, "Look, I know you're trying, but it's not coming across. Â You just need to try harder! Â I'm sure you'll get it." Â Because you can be reasonably sure that there will be quite a few people who we want to retain as RPers, but won't ever get what they're aiming at.