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[breakinglight11]

Wrote a good chunk of a character sheet for one of my larp ideas last night. This character came surprisingly easily to me, and early in the process. Still needs work, of course, but I’m pleased to have a solid start on her. Hopefully others will come as well as this one did.

 

I have now decided that instead of the C-store, I am going to patronize the little grocery on South Street in the strip on the other side of the train tracks. Not only is it a shorter walk from the Village, it is considerably cheaper. I’ll bet it doesn’t run out of simple stuff like milk or peanut butter or apples at night when it’s most convenient for me to pick these things up.

Comments

Speaking of process...

[electric-d-monk.livejournal.com]

I'm curious what your process for larp writing is...

Do you go from a high level concept and ideas kicking around in your head straight to rough versions of character sheets, or is there a more drawn out 'make notes on ideas and possible characters and plotlines' phase? If you put together significant notes/concepts before hitting the 'writing the characters' phase, what sort of things do you these notes entail?

Did characters come first, and then the plot/goals/intercharacter history arise from that, or do you work more from the theme/overarching plots are sketched out and the characters are derived/influenced by that? Or some balance between the two?

Alice is a very 'source material' heavy game... Did you find that your research of the source material was front heavy or back heavy, or spread throughout the process? In other words, did you focus on doing your heavy research into the subject matter at the very begining, or after the pieces had already come together, or was it more of a 'throughout the entire process' affair?

Hope you don't mind me grilling you on your larp writing, I'm just trying to get a feel for how this whole business works now.

Re: Speaking of process...

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

No worries, I'm always glad to talk about how I write! Especially fun stuff like larps.

With any kind of writing, I always start with a concept that goes to notes and sketches of ideas. I like to know what I'm going to do before I do it. Character sheets came late in the process for Alice, other than a line or two that I wanted to write down before I forgot them, so I was surprised that I was able to write a good chunk of a character sheet at this very early stage. The notes I write mostly consist of what the characters are like, what they might be doing, who is connected to who, and what plots might they follow.

In Alice, the characters all came first, mostly because I knew I wanted to have a character representing each of the major book characters, but that may not always be the case. It often made it hard to figure out what they were going to be doing when they existed before their plot. Sometimes it's easier to have a plot and then figure out who can be involved in it-- like, I knew I wanted to have a drug deal plot, and from there I decided who I wanted to be my drug dealer. But other times, the nature of the character suggests the plot, such as the White Rabbit's personality saying he should have his hand in absolutely everything, or the Jabberwock's desire to get the sword out of circulation. :-)

Research happened mostly early on-- it gave me lots of my ideas! I found it was much easier to figure out plots when I discovered what the background material inspired me to do. For example, (Alice spoiler here) the cut pages came directly from an adaptation of something in Carroll's biography, and the idea of Tweedledee stealing something from Tweedledum came from the source material, in which the former stealing the latter's "nice new rattle" leads them to fight with each other. But I still would do research throughout, if I became curious about something during the course of the work.

Hope that helps!