Role Playing for Fun and Profit

Posted on 22. Apr, 2010 by Melanie in Writing

Today, I’m excited to present a guest post from my friend, Bryan Allain. (I think we’re “friends,” although I’m not sure, because the one time I think I met Bryan was about ten years ago. So I could be confused. In any case, a Twitter friend is a “friend,” right?)

Bryan is an awesome humor writer, which requires that I be jealous of him, since I’m terrible at writing laugh-out-loud funny stuff. Nevertheless, despite my jealousy, I maintain a grudging admiration for his wit.

ROLE PLAYING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
By Bryan Allain

Admit it. Some of you, when you saw the words “role playing” in the title of this post, got a glunch look on your face. Chances are you thought of:

a) using your imagination to spice things up in the bedroom, or

b) video games where you walk a character through a story that involves dragons, warlocks, and princesses with cleavage.

But there’s a third, and decidedly less kinky way to think of role playing, and it’s something that will absolutely help you as a writer.

A few months back I planned on sharing an excerpt from the book I was working on with my blog audience. I was 20,000 words into the book, and chose a short passage that I thought my readers would enjoy. But as I took one last look through the piece, something strange started to happen.

This part of the book, which I had written and re-written a dozen times before, suddenly seemed inadequate. There were lazy word choices, yawn-inducing sentences, and jokes that needed to be completely uprooted like a dead terebinth tree with a nasty blight.

I couldn’t figure out why something that seemed perfectly fine the first 20 times I had read it suddenly seemed sub-par. And that’s when I had my “Oh Jingo!” moment.

The reason I was picking up on new things in my book piece was because I was reading it through new eyes. Every other time I had edited those pages I had been thinking like an agent or a publishing house editor (which, to be honest, I am completely unqualified to do). But this time, because I was about to post the passage on my blog, I was reading the piece through the eyes of my blog readers. And wouldn’t you know it, I held my blog readers in much higher esteem.

Mediocre jokes that I was okay submitting to an agent weren’t good enough for my blog followers. Lazy word choices that I figured would go unnoticed in a 60,000 word manuscript needed to be improved upon for a 600 word blog post. In fact, the writing voice itself just wasn’t as funny as my blog readers were used to, and I was afraid they’d call me out on it.

In the end I posted the book excerpt after making some changes to it, and while it was well received, it didn’t set the world on fire. But that was fine with me, because I walked away having learned 2 important lessons.

1. One more round of editing never hurts. Sure at some point you’re gonna have to ship your work off, but sometimes when you think you’re finished…you’re not. Maybe you need to put the piece away for a week or two. Or maybe you need to read it through the eyes of someone else to see what’s lacking.

2. Know the audience you want to write for and write for them. For humor writers this might mean trying to write things that will make your funniest friend laugh. For romance novelists, maybe you have your sister in mind, knowing how much she loves reading sappy love stories. For some folks this means writing for themselves, trying to craft the best piece they can. Just don’t write for some nebulous entity. Write with purpose for a specific audience.

That’s how role playing has helped me become a better writer. I hope it can help you too.

So grab your sword and your laptop, and go slay your writing dragons.

(Bryan Allain writes about the humorous side of life, faith, pop culture, and living among the Amish every day at his blog, BryanAllain.com. You can also find him on The Twitter at twitter.com/bryanallain.)

Tags: Writing