Self-Evaluating

[Eddard]

Something that's evident in pretty much anything that anyone will ever do ever is the fact that getting better at it is a beneficial thing, whether it be playing an instrument, fixing a car, or in our case, writing/roleplaying. This can sometimes come very easily, the person seemingly being born with the ability. Mostly, it's a bit more of a process that takes a good deal of patience. In either case, there's something that's important to actually get better instead of hitting a wall. That is evaluating what we do and acknowledging our faults.

 

Let me start by saying that there is certainly such a thing as too self-critical. Don't go and convince yourself that because you don't do X as well as you'd like that you're simply awful; everyone has things that they can improve upon. Acknowledging faults is hard to do without being discouraging so just be mindful that everyone has their strengths too. At the same time, it's important that we don't fluff our vision of our own performance by focusing how good we are at X while Y is severely lacking. If we don't acknowledge our flaws, progress may not be so easily achieved. Worse yet, not acknowledging faults may cause them to be a seemingly unbreakable habit. Finding the balance between the two can be hard at times, especially if we're coming off of an RP where we feel we dropped the ball or reread a journal entry we now think is infinitely flawed. Once you get it and pinpoint areas you want to see yourself better on, seeing yourself grow will be worth it.

 

So, to the discussion part of the post: How do you go about evaluating your own performance? Do you reread logs of past RP sessions? Do you read articles on writing/roleplaying and compare the points in it to your own style? Do you chill in the Quicksand and simply observe other RPers at work to see how they play out things? Do you have a way of bringing yourself up if you feel you're being harsh on yourself? Any thoughts on the skill, please share. I personally like to do the second one where you read this or that and think of your own style. Doing just that is what sparked this post, this (profanity within, should you mind) article having me reflect on some of my tendencies in a way that I hadn't before, number four being one of them. I recommend the read.

[Aaron]

People haven't blisted, refused to rp with me, slandered me (to my knowledge), and still tolerate me and acknowledge me as a rpers.

 

I like to think either I'm improving or im not at the point I'm getting ignored yet lol. I evaluate myself on stuff like that. Very rarely do I read my old rp or something like that. I focus more on my current state than the past.

[Khoure]

I write more than I roleplay, so I do a lot of reading my older works. Where was my wording awkward? Where was it good? Where did I get stuck in purple prose and where did the action play through too quickly?

 

I don't really go back to make changes, nor do I consciously worry about getting better, but I like to think repeated practice and learning to see past mistakes makes a difference. RP is basically collaborative, real time writing so it will surely get better along with my solo writing.

[Oli!]

I don't do any of that, because roleplay is just for fun and I don't take it as a serious writing exercise.

 

I might be in the minority for that.

[rainichan]

I've been roleplaying a long, long time now, only really got into it for fandom rp on LJ/GJ/DW, etc. If I go back and reread some of the first logs I ever did, I cringe at first, but then it goes to "Wow, I've actually come pretty far in this craft!"

 

For me, because I know that "He said/She said" gets old in a written format (and I did that a lot when I first started out rping/writing,) I try my hardest to use other descriptive words to match the feeling of the scene. Is this character exasperated at the whole ordeal? She's going to say this with a marked heavy sigh to show that. Stuff like that. I'll try to go back over and read what I've written too so I don't do the "Though she did this, though" trap (I still do it on occasion and I mentally go "NOOOOOOOO why did I do that" if it gets late and I'm starting to feel the need for sleep.) Other things are minor like that, mainly, where I try to substitute words here and there so writing doesn't get too stale. I don't abuse the thesaurus, but I do employ it every so often to change things up.

 

It's the little things that I do that make me want to try to be better. If you can isolate your weaknesses, you can improve on them while improving your craft overall. It's a win/win situation.

[Ryanti]

I base my ability to be able to roleplay at a kind of quality standard that is acceptable entirely based on my RP partner(s). Are they enjoying our RP? Do they enjoy my writing? Are my posts entertaining or intriguing to read instead of a chore to?

 

If my partner is not enjoying my RP or let down or disappointed, then I am not doing my job, because I'm usually the one that initiates. So, I usually see it as that I aim to please considering that all of this is a fancy way to ask people for their time and it involves them trusting me enough to make their time invested worth it. I don't want to violate that trust.

 

I have more practical ways of continuing to improve. I'm doing a hell of a lot more editing and grammar checking. It's also important to keep your writing sharp, so I write something at least once a day, no matter how small.

 

I've been RP'ing for a decade now since July. So I consider myself a grizzly veteran. But you never stop learning. If I look at my posts from 2005 I'd want to burn them. But I've learned and improved more within the last few years than I have in those ten. I blame college. But yes, there is always room to learn, even if you have been doing it forever.

[Dis]

I've been role-playing since before I was a teenager, so I consider myself pretty much a veteran at this point.  22 years is a long time to pursue any hobby.  I don't have logs to look back at any more, but I know how terribad some of role-play sessions were.  My RP partners and I always had fun, but I do tend to sit and go, 'Well, I could do this different, or I could phrase this better, or..'.  I think being critical of ourselves as writers is something that a lot of RPers, for better or worse, do at one point or another in their time as a RPer.  For me, I've been cutting out certain words that I use to death, trying to find different ways to phrase things. 

 

I spent a few years without RP, and it degraded my writing skill more than I like to admit, so I tend to abuse the phrase 'gave a'.  Smile, laugh, grin, chuckle, yep, she gave one.  I've had to adjust the way I type because I was even getting repetitive to myself. 

 

I tend to read a lot of 'how to RP' articles to compare and contrast my style versus others, but at the same time, while I want to improve for myself and to stretch my writing skills back out, I'm not really trying to mimic anything else that I've seen, not to any great degree.  So long as the people I'm RPing with are having fun, I consider my posts a success, same with my writing style.

 

Like Ryanti said though, you never stop learning, even if you're a veteran player.  There's always something more to learn, and that's one of the coolest parts of our hobby, at least, in my opinion.

[I'nhalki]

This really stood out for me:

 

"This is a game. Respect the other players. Respect the story, and act in service of it. Respect that you will not always get your way, and that not getting your way can be interesting."

 

Something I'm constantly criticizing myself about in RP is how passive I tend to be. My biggest fear when RPing is wasting someone else's time. Being respectful of the time of your partner(s) and groups is paramount, especially in MMOs where someone's time may be even more limited due to unplanned play times.

 

I try to remind myself during RP, or before RP: do I have a story to tell? Does my character have a purpose in this? Am I being a lazy role player? These are important questions, because without this structure the RP session ends up reflecting at least one player's whims at the time, or, at worst, becomes blatant self-insertion or IC/OOC bleedy if no one has an idea where the story is going.

 

Sometimes these fears can be really crippling, though! Especially with walk-up RP. But, in the end, I feel it results in RP that is much more respectful of the other player's time and intelligence.

[Jana]

I don't evaluate my roleplay, other people do it for me. If they had fun, then that's a success.

[D'aito Kuji]

I have a habit of going over my City of Heroes RP (a lot).  I've never been better than I was then.  It's mostly because I can so easily immerse myself in that genre.  I haven't revisited my TSW roleplay very much but I think most people felt I was better than I thought I was.

 

I haven't went over my FFXIV RP at all.  I think my RP is okay but there's a lack of passion that's frustrating.  Am I really only good at super hero stuff? Seems tragically limited.

[Glacirus]

I'm very much in the moment when I RP...so I don't save any logs whatsoever to go back and look over. That said, I do think back to some things and see how I've changed/improved from then. I think it's good to remember where I've come from, but if I got hung up on the past then I wouldn't grow better.

[Dravus]

Role-play is, ultimately, a group activity. With that in mind it wouldn't sit well with me to simply go off and do my own thing and expect nobody to ever evaluate my performance. It isn't a job, of course, but you can have fun indulging in a hobby whilst still ensuring that there's some form of critical quality control in place.

 

I often strive to improve myself at every turn since I believe that no role-player ever stops improving. People who acknowledge their own flaws and do not shy away from offering constructive feedback are the same people I admire greatly.

 

It's certainly possible to be too critical, of course, yet in my experience that's a rarity - if anything, there's far too many role-players out there who convince themselves that they can do whatever they like and never, ever be called out on it.

[Hali]

Generally, I self-evaluate through others. If I don't just ask directly, I will talk about my characters or ideas and bounce them off people before doing them, then gauge their reactions or ask for opinions. If all seems well from there, I go ahead and do it. No bad reactions in practice? Good. All is well. Yes? Ask people where the problem is and how it may best be improved.

[LadyRochester]

I encourage criticism from others, as I fear my self-evaluation is inaccurate due to bias. When I do it myself, however, I tend to be extremely critical of myself and actually wonder how some people can tolerate my rp. I have improved a lot, but when looking at old logs, I cringe. I have never had any complaints as far as my rp goes, except for "you do a lot of typos/type too fast", "your character is kind of a bitch" (Which she is.), and "you sometimes seem inattentive/not engaged" All which are true. These are all aspects I'm working on, IC and OOC. As far as flaws I see for myself, I can easily recall times I failed to meet my won standards spectacularly due to anxiety/general disengagement. I sometimes RP to humour others, which leads to rather poor-quality RP. It's why I try to refrain from doing so when I no longer feel like it, as I feel it is unfair for my partners and for my character (whom I roleplayrather poorly when I'm not inspired.)

[Bearclaw]

I don't do any of that, because roleplay is just for fun and I don't take it as a serious writing exercise.

 

I might be in the minority for that.

 

I about agree with this as well. If anything, an argument could be made that roleplay is bad for writing and thus critical evaluation isn't helpful. It enables a lot of bad habits such as uncertain actions, narrow-minded perspectives, and is incredibly constraining with text limits and limited styles of posts. Self-evaluating yourself might only hurt your actual writing abilities. I sort of feel like it's how using your own self-evaluating for novel writing wouldn't help you for writing for a comic, as the mediums require different styles of writing and pacing.

 

If you've been having fun and other people have had fun with you, that's about all the self-evaluation you need. I just roleplay like a social hobby though, akin to tabletop games with friends.

[Leggerless]

When push opportunities turn into pull opportunities, i'll know i'm doing well.

 

Until then, i'm only RPing because its a form of entertainment.

[Alaire]

I don't do any of that, because roleplay is just for fun and I don't take it as a serious writing exercise.

 

I might be in the minority for that.

 

I about agree with this as well. If anything, an argument could be made that roleplay is bad for writing and thus critical evaluation isn't helpful. It enables a lot of bad habits such as uncertain actions, narrow-minded perspectives, and is incredibly constraining with text limits and limited styles of posts. Self-evaluating yourself might only hurt your actual writing abilities. I sort of feel like it's how using your own self-evaluating for novel writing wouldn't help you for writing for a comic, as the mediums require different styles of writing and pacing.

 

If you've been having fun and other people have had fun with you, that's about all the self-evaluation you need. I just roleplay like a social hobby though, akin to tabletop games with friends.

Honestly I could just as easily argue the opposite. RPing is an exercise in writing that makes you write 'on your toes' so to speak. You have to be thinking from not the perspective of 'how do I want to convey this planned story' to 'how can I write this character in a way that is realistic for their backstory and a situation that wasn't planned out'. It's different than writing alone, not necessarily pointless as a writing exercise or even outright bad.

 

I've found that over the years writing in a group setting has drastically improved my ability with characterization as well as in general the speed I can make myself write - something I struggled pretty heavily with until I roleplayed a lot more actively.

 

-

 

Roleplay is a form of entertainment, that is for sure, but I don't think that striving to improve in any way takes away from it being 'just for fun'. Ultimately, learning to think in a more critical way about things such as 'is this the most realistic way my character would react?' or 'am I falling into a cliche trap and would something different be more interesting for myself/my rp partners?' aren't a chore but ultimately lead to more entertaining roleplay and a lot more personal enjoyment out of it for myself and others - which is really the goal.

 

After having rped for a long time, looking back at characters/situations/rps I wrote years ago, I often know I could have done a better job expressing them now or maybe even made the entire experience of that rp more interesting for me and people I rped with because of how I've grown over time. I think that's great and a wonderful measure of improvement! I also think that continuing to critically look at both character and writing really allow for that improvement to flourish.

 

I'm not pushing to improve my writing or characters or anything like that for the sake of other people's criticism, but over the years I've found being able to convey my characters and the situation's they're in in different, more multi-faceted lights as well as to create more dynamic rp and situations that I might've struggled with before.

 

 

This is about personal criticism and critique, though, not others. Ultimately if you don't like what someone's doing with rp (and honestly, I think people are perfectly allowed to feel this way) just don't rp with those people if something really bothers you.

 

Elitism isn't really in play here - or shouldn't be - when talking about self evaluation. Nobody's ever done growing as a writer and nobody should be in some ivory tower above less experienced players.