How to convert a roleplay into a book?
My partner and I usually enjoy role-playing together in free-form. I was thinking perhaps we could convert one of our role-plays into a book and publish it online. I wanted to ask if there are any guidelines I could use to do so?
For more information, my partner and I usually make 100-200 word posts each and role-play in third person.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/38733. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
The core novels of the Dragonlance series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman started out as this - a D&D campaign. You might find it useful to take a look at their work. In some scenes of Dragons of Autumn Twilight (the first novel) in particular, you can see the heavy D&D influence; for example, the story starts with all characters meeting in a pub. Other elements belong in a novel, but you would not usually see them at the gaming table; for example, characters' thoughts.
When adapting a book to a movie or a movie to a book, changes happen, because each medium is good at expressing some things, and not so good at expressing others. Roleplay is yet another medium, even though, like a book, it uses text. So adapting your adventure into a book is an opportunity to add elements, but other elements would have to go.
Having said that, what are some differences between the two mediums, something you would need to account for?
- As I've said above, characters' thoughts. Things they would like to say, but choose not to. Characters' memory, characters' personal history.
- Foreshadowing. While playing, you do not necessarily know how the story would turn out. With a novel, the occurrences are already before you so you can foreshadow events. In the same vein, you can hide information that the reader can notice, but your characters won't.
- Character arcs. Part of roleplay is character development. But you cannot always predict right from the start how this development will go, what a character's arc will be. Writing a novel, you can tighten this, shape the story so there's a clear arc.
- An element of roleplay is "what would be fun right now". This does not serve a novel. Those "fun" elements can be incorporated, but they need to serve the story, not just a momentary whim.
There are more differences. One key to many of them is: a roleplay game is a story unfolding. A novel is the same story finished, and neatly arranged. In some ways, it is like making a documentary of unfolding events; first you get on film the events, then, when the unfolding is done, you go back and arrange everything so it makes a unified narrative. Some things you throw out, because they don't serve the narrative. Other things you find you have to add, because the narrative needs a backdrop.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads