(08-21-2015, 02:27 PM)Caspar Wrote:(08-21-2015, 02:17 PM)Ignacius Wrote:The heartfelt example was touching, I suppose, but I'm not convinced. In the end, rather than helping your friend learn the skills necessary to sell their concept, you told them not to do it. If that's your approach, I'll decline from following the same line of reasoning. Sure, good feelings alone can't make you succeed in anything, and people have their limits. What does it say to your friend to tell her she's reached hers? I'll be as blunt as I need to, but if prefer to actually inform and structure writing towards a goal, because that is what I actually can offer help with.(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.
I would (believe me, I was essentially a remedial English teacher for a while) but I cannot make her able to respond to a quick quip. Â That's partially a skill, but is absolutely part of a naturally available ability that you can't work out. Â I don't hold her in any less esteem because she isn't the rapier wit of a conversation. Â She just isn't, and isn't going to be. Â That's nothing for her to be hurt or embarrassed about. Â There's no way, unless you believe a few years of Brain Age would help, to make her anywhere near the genius she'd want to play.
Normally, people would just not play with her, which was a shame for the community. Â She was a great player.
Now, the reason I use her is that she's the one person I can say was not personally intelligent and had to scale back a character from a wild genius to a more technically proficient professional. Â The character was far better (and more likable). Â Now, intelligence isn't common.
Now, I do this fairly frequently, but it is NOT about intelligence.  Lots of people playing "geniuses" get away with it not because they can get away with it, but because they never say "genius" and we never hold them to that standard.  They aren't particularly witty; we aren't particularly shook up about it because they don't drop a line unless they're sure about it and it's not that often.  And, to be fair, most of the RPers I've met, if they aren't above average intelligence, are at least average enough to give a good account of themselves.  I'm not sure if it's about freezing out the below-average players until most are gone or if we just attract people with naturally higher intellect, but I rarely find myself having to re-explain concepts to people repeatedly because they just don't get it.
No, this is an issue of mine because of charisma, which is so much more common, so much more damaging, and so much more of an education issue. Â Because someone acting smarter than they are and failing can be a little irritating. Â Someone trying to be funny when they're not is worse. Â Someone trying to be more charming than they actually are is downright infuriating and times and outright insulting at worst. Â If I had to finger-point to the biggest problem facing new RPers, it's walking into a situation with more swagger than they can back up.
It's something that can be increased with some experience, but charisma is something you simply cannot outrun because there are VERY few guides on the internet that will turn you into a stunning conversationalist. Â And while people punching above their wit might get scoffed at and ignored, someone screwing up while hitting on a woman in a bar poorly could get them blacklisted from RP events. Â We do NOT have this pleasant of a reaction to someone punching above their weight of charm.
I approach both the same way; they're part of the same problem. Â People want to play movie characters, who have intelligence, wit, and charm. Â Charm is the hardest to replicate if you don't have it. Â Truly intelligent people can get away with a lot just by being quiet when they have nothing to say. Â Truly charismatic people are only ever judged by what they say.
And, unfortunately, we fail those people. Â If a guy wanders in and tries to pull the stunts on women in a bar that his brothers' friends said they pulled on the women in the dorm in college, we tend to just call those people pigs. Â Believe me, they may not be. Â And people without real personal charm cannot play a charming character, for the exact same reasons as we're discussing.
The only difference between the two is that we're taught to pity the less intelligent and dislike the socially brutish.