Collaborating Like a Total BossPlay by post roleplaying conjures images of people writing stories together. Surely, you wouldn’t have much of an RP if you planned on writing the whole thing yourself. For an RP to get anywhere, Players need to work with each other and the GM. A post may be submitted to an RP, but it’s up to those posting afterwards to incorporate it into the expanding narrative. Roleplaying depends on cooperation. It’s one of the things that makes this hobby so interesting.
It’s no surprise that some players wish to collaborate on a single post, often called a collab. It’;s interesting how divisive the topic of collabs can be. Few players have a neutral opinion about them. Merely whispering the word brings some to euphoric bliss while others cringe in disgust. Like anything in a roleplayer’s toolbox, there are times when collabs work very well, and times they don’t.
I’ve written how to do collabs in the past, but I allowed myself to be affected by the anti-article sentiment at the time. I was afraid of telling people how to write because I didn’t want to be viewed as some know it all who thought that their way was objectively the best way to do it. However, people that feel that way about article writers probably aren’t article readers, and their opinions shouldn’t be considered when setting out to inform others how to write. I think most players understand that these articles are a starting point rather than some strict code that must be followed at all times.
If you care to look at the old article, you can find it
here. It’s recommended reading if you’re totally lost on how to write a collab. But for the article you’re reading now, I don’t plan on retreading old ground. I’m more interested in how collabs pertain to story craft.
It’s not a stretch to say most collabs don’t read right. It’s not that you can’t figure out what’s going on, but you can usually tell something is a collab without being told. There are enough oddities to give it away even if you don’t know who plays which character.
I’m going to show you a snippet from a post in one of my roleplays. It was a collab written by Mate and Ginger, who are two of the best roleplayers I’ve ever had the pleasure of writing with. I don’t believe either of them speaks English as their primary language, which just makes their English roleplaying that much more impressive. They’ve written many beautiful posts, and I wish we could still write together.
Some context: Marianne is a herbalist, Daimyon is a poet. They’re trapped in a killing game, which is a stressful situation. Daimyon lost his notebook, started getting super stressed, but Marianne found it and they got to enjoy a rare sweet moment in hell. This is the tail end of their discussion.
“I also promise to try and help that.” Marianne couldn't help but smile a very peculiar smile at noticing his serene expression. ...he was so vulnerable like this. It was definitely different to see someone relax, in this tense atmosphere. It was...familiar.
Seizing the opportunity, she gently thumbed over his bottom lip before her arms moved around the taller man's neck, and he could feel her body pressed flush against his as she (on her tiptoes) gave him as protective an embrace as she could manage.
“I promise you will not have to be alone anymore, Daimyon Londe.”
His smile was only broken for a moment by a surprised look as Marianne, quite suddenly, hugged him, before it returned to extend on his face wider than ever. His mind failed him this once—he had no idea what made the woman do such thing, but he did not complain. He wrapped his arms around her to answer the gesture, giving her a few gentle pats on the back.
“You see...life is cruel at times, but...it's also a hell of a story writer.”
He let them linger like this for a few more precious seconds before finally breaking away. Daimyon straightened out his clothing with a few quick motions and once again stood up tall, his hands tied behind his back—his signature stance, and the lively smile returned to his face.
“Thank you for everything. In a way, I'm...glad it was you who found it. Now...” He swiped up the opened notebook from the table, closed it and smoothly slid it into his shirt pocket. “...I don't know about you, but I am rather hungry! Shall we head back to the break room?”
“Ah! Most definitely! I find myself quite famished…!” the herbalist replied when the couple’s hug came to a close, her attention being torn away from the corner of a neatly folded piece of paper jutting out of the notebook that just disappeared into Daimyon’s shirt pocket. A kind of heat rushed to her cheeks with a stray thought and made her a smidgen giddy, even as she nodded enthusiastically up at her companion. He had ‘rescued’ her when she first landed in this place. It was only a matter of happy coincidence that she could do something similar for him. “Somehow, in this place, I never seem to be able to have a proper breakfast. Perhaps that will change today. ...after you, Daimyon. May your smile never cease and your silver linings never fail you.”
Here’s a link to the full post if you’re curious. It’s not hard to read this snippet and figure out what’s going on. It’s a tender hug in what feels like a pretty shitty situation. But you can tell when someone else starts writing. Not only do we get a shift in the point of view, but time seems to rewind so that we can experience the same events from a different perspective. The order of actions is something like this.
-Marianne hugs Daimyon,
-Marianne speaks
-Daimyon reacts to being hugged
-He responds
-He lets go of her
-He picks up his notebook
-He says something else
-She responds to his response as she is released
-She responds to something else and continues speaking until the end of the collab.
But this is easier to follow:
-Marianne hugs Daimyon,
-Daimyon reacts to being hugged
-Marianne speaks
-He responds
-She responds to his response
-He lets go of her
-He picks up his notebook
-He says something else
-She responds to something else and continues speaking until the end of the collab.
This time travel, or “record skip” as I like to call it, only really happens in collabs. This isn’t the most egregious example I could find, but I feel it’s relevant for our discussion. Mate and Ginger can write better than I do, yet their collab post has this weird out of order flow that is never present even in novice roleplaying posts. This happens because they aren’t as experienced with writing collabs. Each one is treating their sections as tiny posts that are lined up end to end. If it was sevral posts you wouldn’t notice a problem. But the lack of page breaks causes the reader to stumble into the next “post” where both the perspective and timing are different. A different approach is necessary to avoid these errors.
And that’s what this article is based around: methods for minimizing and removing defects in collabs. It isn’t difficult to do once you know how. You just need a cooperative partner who cares about the quality of the writing, or is willing to put up with your standards regarding collabs.
This should go without saying, but talking it over can avoid a lot of headaches. Especially if you aren’t familiar with your collab buddy, and especially if they’re new to writing collabs. You don’t have to go over every point with a fine comb, it’s just nice to get everyone on the same page. I like to discuss how often we plan on adding to the collab, what we’d like to do, and any concerns we may have. We can always talk more about events as they develop, but those are some good points to start with.
A simple and effective way to deal with record skip is to “splice” adds into other people’s adds. I had the pleasure of writing with FroggRFlowR on a magical girl RP. For this scene, we decided to have our characters meet untransformed. My character, Suki, is a delinquent that was trying to break into a storefront. Their character, Sayuri, is a model student. She spots Suki in the act, which sparks this interaction between the two in which Suki tries to explain she left her homework in there and totally isn’t trying to steal anything. This next part is a single add for the collab written by FroggRFlowR.
“I'm sorry," she managed to say between fits of laughter. "I'm a bit uh... tired. I worked late last night," she added with a chuckle. "So, it's like that, huh? Haven't we crossed paths before...? I'm sure I've seen you around somewhere." Sayuri paused to ponder, tilting her head with a finger resting on her chin. Then, she had a eureka moment. "I bet we both go to the same school!" Sayuri's eyes lit up as she came to this realization. With great enthusiasm, she clapped her hands together in triumph before gently taking Suki’s hand. "How did I never notice you before? I absolutely love your outfit!" She expressed her admiration while examining Suki's fishnets and frilly shorts, running a finger along the unique fabric. Suki may have been accustomed to people reacting with mockery or confusion to her goth look, but Sayuri's fascination was entirely sincere. A longer look at Sayuri, and Suki might notice; they were not so different. Sayuri's attire was just as striking, though it leaned toward vibrant colors instead of the dark and gloomy.
This is actually a nice add.When they initially wrote it, they told me that they weren’t sure if they had gone overboard or not. It’s an understandable concern. There’s a ton of points in there where Sayuri does something that should provoke a reaction out of Suki. If I were to just write a response to this, I would have to repeat most of this paragraph just to get all of the reactions Suki should have in there. But in addition to some record skip, it almost feels like Sayuri is interacting with a doll for her parts. It’s as if Suki is waiting for the paragraph to end so that she can rewind time and get her own reactions in there. Most of Suki’s reactions aren’t going to change the trajectory of what FroggRFlowR wrote, and it would be too time consuming to restrict them to only writing up until Suki can respond.
So we splice.
All you need to do is type your add directly into theirs and format as necessary. Once I wrote my add, the collab looked like this.
“I'm sorry," she managed to say between fits of laughter. "I'm a bit uh... tired. I worked late last night," she added with a chuckle. "So, it's like that, huh? Haven't we crossed paths before...? I'm sure I've seen you around somewhere."
"Come to think of it, you look a little familiar too.” Suki rubbed the back of her head.
Sayuri paused to ponder, tilting her head with a finger resting on her chin. Then, she had a eureka moment.
"I bet we both go to the same school!" Sayuri's eyes lit up as she came to this realization. With great enthusiasm, she clapped her hands together in triumph.
"There’s only one school around here.” Suki folded her arms. "But that’s probably it, we just- Eh- Ah-” She stammered as Sayuri gently took hold of Suki's hands.
"How did I never notice you before? I absolutely love your outfit!" She expressed her admiration while examining Suki's fishnets and frilly shorts, running a finger along the unique fabric. Suki may have been accustomed to people reacting with mockery or confusion to her goth look, but Sayuri's fascination was entirely sincere. A longer look at Sayuri, and Suki might notice; they were not so different. Sayuri's attire was just as striking, though it leaned toward vibrant colors instead of the dark and gloomy.
"...Heh.” Suki’s pale skin was starting to change to a warm shade of red. "Yea I uh, I don’t really dress like this when I go to school. Uniform codes and everything.” She pulled away from Sayuri and folded her hands over her chest. "But yea! Guess I’ll have to return home empty handed.” She chuckled.
Damn, I think I could have edited this better.The caveat to doing adds like this is that sometimes it can feel like one character is ignoring the other. Though this can be easily rectified by not adding a ton of details or dialog that the other character would respond to. Alternatively, the previous player (or you, if they trust you) can just make a second pass of edits so that their character’s actions feel more natural. However, I feel that not doing that works here since Sayuri is very excited about making another friend and Suki is kind of meek, so getting talked over a little bit isn’t out of character for her.
Though I can also see this being problematic if you are writing a collab with a ton of players. That’s usually never a good idea, but this will really compound the amount of work that needs to be done if everyone needs to react to everything. Be selective about what you respond to. It’s fine to have everyone respond to something together. Instead of everyone individual recoiling from some horror, you can write “The team recoiled” or “Everyone but X recoiled” if you have a snowflake in your midst.
If you’re curious, the full collab is
here. I don’t think it’s my best work. I mean it reads fine and it’s a nice scene between two characters, but we didn’t really talk about whose perspective the collab should be from. So it starts out deep inside Suki’s point of view before switching to a deep Sayuri point of view, before kind of switching back to a light Suki perspective. I think what happened is that FroggRFlowR read my initial add, and mimicked that style with their own add. Then I mentally decided to mute Suki’s inner monolog as much as possible, and FroggRFlowR kind of did the same for their character. Since I was the more experienced collab writer, and because this was FroggRFlowR’s first collab, I should have talked to them about perspective so that we were both on the same page.
On the topic of perspective, let’s talk about head hopping. Something else that tends to happen in collabs is that everybody writes from their character’s perspective. This comes natural to “advanced” writers who can fill half their posts with their character’s personal observations. It’s harmless, and even beneficial when everyone is writing their own posts. However, it can be a little jarring to constantly be thrown back and forth between perspectives in a single post. This also tends to cause record skip, as everything that happens is getting re-explained by other player characters in the collab. Head hopping is a pet peeve of mine so it bothers me more than most players. But it does contribute to a lot of other problems when not used correctly.
Head hopping is simple enough to defeat. Simply decide whose perspective the post should be from and stick with it. Many times you can still write from other characters' perspectives through subtle cues or careful wording. Your non-PoV (point of view) character might look at a rockface. You may be tempted to write “He knew he couldn’t climb it”, but by writing it as “it didn’t look like he could climb it”, or “everyone knew he couldn’t climb it”, or even “He must have known he couldn’t climb it”, doesn’t frame the narration as the character’s thoughts. It becomes a neutral observation that any character in the scene could have. Alternatively, use subtext. Maybe he anxiously rubs his arms, or scratches his head in confusion. Not everything can be expressed through a non-PoV character, but sometimes that’s okay.
But there is an alternative method to minimizing the damage head hopping can do, and that is to just embrace it as a feature.
I can’t think of a collab that I’ve seen that demonstrates this, but there is a part in the novel “Shōgun“ by James Clavell that’s an excellent example of this. It’s a fifty year old book, but I’ll avoid spoiling it. i haven't finished it either, so you’d better not either.
An English pilot named Blackthorne is captured by some samurai and forced to pilot a ship to some place in Japan. At one point, they weather a storm and lose someone overboard. They make it to land and decide to see if they can recover the body because Blackthorne is making a fuss about it. The samurai decide to appease Blackthorne and many of them leave the ship with them. Among them is a daimyo named Yabu, who Blackthorne doesn’t like very much for reasons I won’t cover here.
The search is narrated through Blackthorn’s perspective. He searches and searches before spotting the sailor’s body off a steep cliff face. During the trip, Blackthorne noticed that the samurai were very protective of him and wouldn’t let him near the cliff edge. Likely because none of the samurai know how to sail, and if he were to perish, so would the rest of them. To test his theory, he looks off the edge and is promptly pulled back and scolded by the samurai.
So Blackthorn gets this brilliant idea: If he makes a big stink about recovering the body, will Yabu be forced to climb down there and get it? The Japanese are proud people, and a daimyo isn’t going to look weak in front of their soldiers. Blackthorne makes a scene and pretends that he’s not going to leave without the body. Yabu offers to go and down he goes. Blackthorn watches him climb down, hoping that he’ll split his head open on the rocks. We could have stayed viewing everything from Blackthorn’s perspective. But instead, Clavell opts to switch to Yabu’s perspective, and this makes things much more interesting.
While he scales down the mountain face, it’s revealed that he is entirely aware of what Blackthorn is doing. He knows Blackthorn had no intention of climbing down, and wanted Yabu to do it to endanger his life. However, he’s chosen to go along with it because he knows that if he is successful, Blackthorne will be forced to respect him as he was able to do something he could not. Also, climbing steep rockfaces like this was something the people of his village did for fun. Yabu wasn’t getting played, Blackthorn was. And we stay with this conniving schemer until he reaches the body of the sailor, only to discover he’s alive. Should he return with him, he knows Blackthorn will have no choice but to respect him.
What happens next? You’ll have to read the book to find out.
Without Yabu’s perspective, we’d have a pretty one note scene with Blackthorn “tricking” Yabu into possibly killing himself to recover a body. However, Yabu’s perspective makes the scene a lot more complex with an interesting reversal. It’s Blackthorn getting played, not Yabu. If you’re going to head hop, do it with purpose. Don’t do it just to show us another take on something that’s already been covered earlier in the collab. Don’t do it frequently. Make sure the information we’re getting is enriching the scene and not just making it longer.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this next one, but it happens occasionally and use to be something I did all the time. I call it “Forum Chat.” I refuse to dig up my posts on an old RP forum, so instead I’ll just write an example here. No context necessary.
“Hey Bill!” Bob said. “How’s it going?”
“Pretty good.” Bill responded. “I got all of my taxes done and I’m about ready to break into a beer!”
Bob laughed. “I’m glad you’re doing good, Bill. I should probably do my taxes too. The end of the year is coming up.” Before he could think about his taxes much further, he shot Bill a glare. “Hold on, beer? I thought you quit that stuff because what it did to ya? Didn’t you beat up a kangaroo?”
“Hey! You still have time to do your taxes! I’ve got an accountant that can help you out if you need it. Her name’s Stacy, and that girl has me in stitches every time she tells me one of her farm jokes!” He turned the bottle of beer over in his hand. “Yea, I stopped drinking because it made me hate the outback. Too hot, those kangaroos always looked so stupid. But then I found God, and it’s a lot easier to control my anger now.” He sighed. “But between you and me? That kangaroo deserved it. Everybody forgets that he almost punched out my son.”
“I could use some help doing my taxes. But I would need to find my missing receipts first. I think I left them in your truck.” Bob smiled. “That Stacy girl sounds like a hoot! I don’t suppose she’s available, is she?” He raised an eyebrow. “You only hated the outback when you were drunk? That sounds kind of weird, I’m not sure if I believe you.” With a resigned sigh he added. “And that kangaroo wouldn’t have punched your boy if he wasn’t a jerk. As far as I’m concerned, he got just what he deserved!”
“Yea, I think you did leave your receipts in my truck. They got left in there after the move and I haven’t had a need to drive anywhere.” Bill raised his glass and winked. “You bet Stacy’s available! She can be a little elusive though.” Bill fretted his brow. “And hey! You didn’t use to live in the outback the way I did! If you had my life, drinking would make you hate it too!” Then he got even angrier. “And my son didn’t deserve that crap! You take that back, you son of a cow devil!”
I’m not sorry.
But yes, Forum Chat. You likely noticed that Bill and Bob were discussing multiple topics at once. Kind of like how we chat/debate on forums. Nobody talks like this in real life, and it feels unnatural. It tends to come about when players respond to multiple points in a single add.
This is one of those cases where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. While you can go in there and edit things, it’s much easier to just not let it appear at all. If you need to react to multiple points in a discussion, you can always splice if you don’t think your character’s reaction would warrant another reaction. You can also just ask whoever you’re writing with what direction you’d like to take the collab in, or offer to circle around back once a particular thread has been explored. Though this is the sort of thing that if you know about it, it tends to just not happen.
Not really a collab error, but here’s a way to address a headache regarding collabs. In my old article I caution against staging collabs in big spaces where a lot of characters are present. The only reason why I advise doing that is because it’s easy to “cheat” players out of reactions that they could have. But there’s actually a way around that if you write your collabs on a pad/doc and trust everyone on your discord server. You can drop the link there where everyone can access it. This lets you write your collab while letting everyone else keep up with it. They can give you pointers and have their characters jump in momentarily if needed. Once I had a character do a presentation in front of all the player characters and it was fun to have them jump in and out of the collab as it went on. Just remember who the collab is primarily with. You shouldn’t be waiting for everyone to react to your every add, otherwise your pace will slow to a crawl. You only need to consider players that are actively participating in the scene.
Your last line of defense against collab errors is editing. Once everyone is done writing, everyone involved with the collab should look over it and make any changes they deem necessary. Unless everyone trusts each other, make sure to talk to everyone involved before editing something big or someone else’s part. I find that editing is typically left up to one person, and they usually don’t want to step on their partners toes. As a result, they will only edit their own parts. Most people I’ve written with are perfectly okay with allowing you to correct typos and rearrange things so that they read better. Just don’t go overboard to the point where you’re totally re-writing their parts. Without their permission anyway. Communication is important, you know.
If you pay attention to how everything flows, you edit carefully, everyone involved is happy with the outcome, the stars align and the old ones accept your offering, then you’ll have a great collab that everyone will enjoy reading. Don’t forget to get a post in for next week.
At this point, I imagine some of you are thinking something like: “That’s very interesting, Sir. However, while I would love to try employing some of these ideas in my next collab, I don’t think I could get my collabing partner(s) on board with it.” To which I would say something to the effect of: “Ok.”
Collaborations require cooperation, and sadly, that’s not something you’re always going to get out of your partner. Even sadder, a lot of people are afraid to even make suggestions because they don’t want to be told no or just don’t think it’s worth the hassle. Let me tell you a story.
I once wrote with someone I’ll refer to as Mr Long. Mr long was a fine writer, posted swiftly, and was a social butterfly that was always in the mood to talk. If there was a negative to Mr Long, it was that he could be high strung at times, and it wasn’t always clear what was going to set him off. We wrote a collab together, and I will not soon forget the experience.
The collab was an awkward thing to craft. Regardless of what I wrote, Mr Long would reexplain everything through the lens of his character. At one point I wrote a multi-paragraph description for how a location looked, and then his character observed every detail with their very next add. Record skip was unavoidable. He didn’t believe in splicing, and they insisted on writing deeply from their characters point of view. Even if there was nothing worthwhile to contribute, they would dedicate a paragraph to their character looking something over, only for the character to realize they didn’t have any idea what they were looking at. I wanted to talk to him about this, but he kept bringing up how it was okay for me to turn his character into a human trafficking victim
and all that entailed. It made me uncomfortable, but he doubled down and told me how much he would enjoy it if we went through with it. I was going to call the collab off, but “fortunately” we had a third player present. They were not part of our private discussion, and Miss Short more or less made it impossible for Mr Long’s character to befall the fate they were hoping for. By that point I just wanted to finish up before Mr Long discovered a way to course correct.
This was a nightmare to edit, largely because of Mr Long’s additions, but Miss Short also liked to write from her own character’s perspective and didn’t splice her adds. I ended up removing a lot of what I wrote just so that anyone reading didn’t have to read Mr Long and I explain everything twice. My feeling was that nobody could get upset if I only deleted my own writing, as I didn’t feel like getting Mr Long’s permission to edit his parts. It would take far too much work to have the collab reach my typical standards, so I decided to release it after making only basic edits. It didn’t get any praise, but nobody complained either. I called that a win, but rather than triumph, I only felt relieved that it was over.
At a later date, Mr Long brought up the collab again in the RP’s community discord. My feelings regarding the collab had mellowed, and I felt like I could talk about it in a semi-public space without it getting weird. I mentioned that I thought the collab was a little long because of how much was reexplained by the characters. Mr Long responded, in too many words, that they like long posts. That it brings them joy to see the most pointless details take up paragraphs on a page. Quantity
is quality to Mr Long.
I didn’t bring up Mr Long to dunk on his writing philosophy or degenerate fetishes. I bring him up to illustrate two points. One is that a partner you can communicate with is worth more than a “good” writer, and also that good writing is a subjective thing. Yes, through storycraft you can make your writing appeal to the masses. But at the end of the day, how important is that? If you’re writing a 1x1 RP with someone in PMs, is your primary concern the unwashed masses, or the only two people who will ever read it? The answer to these questions will be different for everyone.
And even different depending on the situation. As someone who’s basically a “Forever GM”, I’m constantly trying to keep my players motivated. That means keeping to a strict posting schedule that I expect everyone else to follow. There are times when things are good, but could be great if I had just a day or two longer to look over what I wrote. When these situations arise, I do not let the perfectionist in me win. I punch him in the face, along with the post button.
That said, I will always strive to write the best stories I can under whatever constraints I have. It’s just important to realize that not everyone is as excited about storycraft as I am. I wrote a lengthy set of articles on it after all. That doesn’t mean you can’t grow as a writer or have fun with those less serious about the hobby.. Accepting that everyone enjoys different aspects of this hobby is necessary to making great collabs. Ultimately, This is a social hobby and you’re not going to get very far writing all by yourself.
And with that, we’ve come full circle.
Collabs are not easy. They demand attention to detail, teamwork, and a situation that allows them to be practical. But when done right they can be very rewarding. Over the years I’ve had a few good posts, but when I think about the highlights of an RP, my favorite posts are almost always well written collabs. Nowhere else are you going to see duels between rivals, political intrigue unfold, or friends turn to lovers, all without interruptions in a single post. I try not to turn down an opportunity to write one. So strive to write excellent collabs. Because if you can master that, you can master the rest of this hobby.
That took a little longer than I wanted it to. Was it worth the wait?
This is the planned end of STORYCRAFT. I may add more topics down the road but I’m going to call this series finished for the moment. Thanks for reading along, and don’t forget to post in an RP this week.
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