HOME | DD

Description
Welcome to Rehab for Roleplayers, a series of articles aimed at helping roleplayers more successfully make the transition into writing fiction.

Part One: Your Syntax Has Been Eaten By A Grue

The term 'syntax' pertains to the rules of grammar and sentence construction in any given language.

I'm starting this series with a discussion of problematic syntax because passively constructed sentences and/or wrenched and unnatural sentence structure are the number one signpost which will identify a writer as having spent a lot of time in the RP world.

Wrenched or passive syntax is also the number one 'crime against fiction' committed by the average roleplayer while attempting to cross over into fiction writing.

I'll now explain the difference between the active and passive "voice" in sentences, and why active sentences are far more desirable in fiction.

An active sentence makes the subject of a sentence the focus of action. A passive sentence focuses instead on the verbs, which can make the subject and its actions unclear.

Example 1: Typical use of passive 'voice'.
"The sword was swung mightily, wielded by the powerful arm of the Xilbian Knight."

Example 2: Here's the same sentence, in an active 'voice':
"The Xilbian Knight swung his sword in a mighty arc."

Example 3: Let's make that a passive sentence again:
"The Xilbian Knight's sword was swung in a mighty arc."

- We need to read all the way to the end of the first sentence to discover who is doing what, and to whom both the arm and the sword belong.

- In the second, we know right away whose sword it is, and the action is therefore more direct and immediate, which generally equals a more engaging experience for the reader.

- In the third example, it's not clear who or what is swinging the sword, even though we are made aware that it belongs to the Xilbian Knight.

Very few successful authors habitually use passive voice. Those who do are very aware that they are doing this, and are making a deliberate stylistic choice. I can guarantee you, though, they've also spent a good deal of time mastering the basics of writing in an active voice before presenting skewed syntax to their editors.

There are three exceptions to the "active voice is better" rule. Here's a list of them, from the website of New York's Empire State College:

1. when the actor is unknown or unimportant:
"Every year millions of people are led to believe they will win the sweepstakes."

2. when you want to draw attention to the person, place, or thing being acted upon:
"John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were all assassinated in the same decade."

3. in writing which requires an impersonal voice, such as scientific writing, which often describes procedures--and not the individual who carries them out:
"The beakers must be filled with the chemical solutions and monitored for three-hour intervals."

Another problem I commonly observe in roleplayer's writing is inversion, or "Yoda-speak" as I like to call it, where people wrench the proper structure of a sentence, usually to make their writing sound "more medieval" or dramatic.

Example: "On the Hill of Doom, they made their stand."

Rather than: "They made their stand on the Hill of Doom."

Now, example one has got a heroic ring to it and really, I wouldn't have a conniption about finding a sentence like that at the crescendo of a major plot arc in a novel.

Let's look, however, at an example of where inversion doesn't work at all:

Example: "In the doorway, on which he discovered arcane and carven cosmic sigils, Lockjaw, the ham-fisted barbarian, stood."

I am sure you can see why this isn't working as a sentence, even though it may have been an exciting RP post. Imagine an 8000-word story - or worse, an entire novel - filled with sentences like that. How tedious would it be to read, after a while?

And look at all those commas! If your own sentences have as many clauses (places where commas are needed) as the sentence above, you can be pretty sure you're writing in a passive voice.

Now, just so you don't think I'm sitting in judgment of anyone, I'd like to offer one of my own really old RP posts up for scrutiny. I have bolded all the obvious "crimes of syntax", including the sentences and phrases which constitute passive writing and inversion. I have probably missed a few, as well, but you'll see my point:

Tenebrae was hovering in the entrance of the crumbling castle gatehouse. Wrapped in shadowy cloth from head to toe as she currently was, all that might be seen of her - were anyone fool enough to come between the hunter and her prey - would be the pale gleam of her smooth forehead, and a pair of intensely pale green eyes that glinted in the pre-dawn's greyish light.

The object of her scrutiny was a shadow himself - a rather short, rotund shadow shuffling from foot to foot and slapping his arms in a bid to keep himself warm, now and then stepping forward from the roadside onto its packed-earth surface to peer toward the west. His breath plumed white in the ill-lit morning as he heaved a sigh. The coach was late, and the merchant had important business to tend to in the markets. If he missed the boat, surely the whole deal would fall through, and cost him and arm and a leg in the process. Rubbing the back of his hand across his balding brow to clear it of the misty damp gathered there, the man scowled and trundled back to the grassy verge not far from an unkempt path that led to the remains of a mage's arcane keep. And, like a trapdoor spider in its lair, the necromancer was waiting.

Ivory fingers appeared against the door's edge as she pushed it open. A looming creak from the rusty jamb had her grit sharp, white teeth - surely the man had heard, and the jig was up? But no, he was safely oblivious, intent on his warmth-seeking foot-stamps and arm-slaps. The subtle noises of the world were not something the coarse businessman was prone to paying heed to anyway. So it was that Draggard the Merchant was very surprised to find his airway abruptly obscured by the passing through it of a diamond-dust coated garrote, wound tightly about his fat neck and torn backward with the brutal strength possessed by his vampiric nemesis.

Tene was glad the garrote's method, along with Draggard's overfed body, afforded her shelter from the arterial spray of blood which arced from his throat to spatter the pale clay of the road. It wouldn't do for her to be dripping gore if she should chance to meet up with her Cap'n now, would it? The merchant's body fell heavily to the ground. The necromancer side-stepped his gurgling carcass as it dropped, and wasted no time in rifling through the man's belongings. Clearly, it wasn't a feed she was after. The slender black box the vampiress 'liberated' from a pouch inside the former Draggard's cloak was the prize she sought.

Fact: I would wholeheartedly cringe were anyone to critique this post as part of a piece of fiction. But you know – as an RP post, it isn't all bad. It was certainly fun to write, and my RP partner enjoyed responding to it.

It is not, however, a good piece of fiction, or even an example of decent writing. It is certainly evocative, though, which is what you want from a roleplaying experience.

But then, roleplay is not the same animal at all as fiction, and operates under a completely different set of circumstances.

(.In Part 2, I'll be exploring various structural differences between fiction and typical RP-style writing, as well as some general problems roleplayers face when starting out as fiction writers.

Description
Welcome to Rehab for Roleplayers, a series of articles aimed at helping roleplayers more successfully make the transition into writing fiction.

Part One: Your Syntax Has Been Eaten By A Grue

The term 'syntax' pertains to the rules of grammar and sentence construction in any given language.

I'm starting this series with a discussion of problematic syntax because passively constructed sentences and/or wrenched and unnatural sentence structure are the number one signpost which will identify a writer as having spent a lot of time in the RP world.

Wrenched or passive syntax is also the number one 'crime against fiction' committed by the average roleplayer while attempting to cross over into fiction writing.

I'll now explain the difference between the active and passive "voice" in sentences, and why active sentences are far more desirable in fiction.

An active sentence makes the subject of a sentence the focus of action. A passive sentence focuses instead on the verbs, which can make the subject and its actions unclear.

Example 1: Typical use of passive 'voice'.
"The sword was swung mightily, wielded by the powerful arm of the Xilbian Knight."

Example 2: Here's the same sentence, in an active 'voice':
"The Xilbian Knight swung his sword in a mighty arc."

Example 3: Let's make that a passive sentence again:
"The Xilbian Knight's sword was swung in a mighty arc."

- We need to read all the way to the end of the first sentence to discover who is doing what, and to whom both the arm and the sword belong.

- In the second, we know right away whose sword it is, and the action is therefore more direct and immediate, which generally equals a more engaging experience for the reader.

- In the third example, it's not clear who or what is swinging the sword, even though we are made aware that it belongs to the Xilbian Knight.

Very few successful authors habitually use passive voice. Those who do are very aware that they are doing this, and are making a deliberate stylistic choice. I can guarantee you, though, they've also spent a good deal of time mastering the basics of writing in an active voice before presenting skewed syntax to their editors.

There are three exceptions to the "active voice is better" rule. Here's a list of them, from the website of New York's Empire State College:

1. when the actor is unknown or unimportant:
"Every year millions of people are led to believe they will win the sweepstakes."

2. when you want to draw attention to the person, place, or thing being acted upon:
"John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were all assassinated in the same decade."

3. in writing which requires an impersonal voice, such as scientific writing, which often describes procedures--and not the individual who carries them out:
"The beakers must be filled with the chemical solutions and monitored for three-hour intervals."

Another problem I commonly observe in roleplayer's writing is inversion, or "Yoda-speak" as I like to call it, where people wrench the proper structure of a sentence, usually to make their writing sound "more medieval" or dramatic.

Example: "On the Hill of Doom, they made their stand."

Rather than: "They made their stand on the Hill of Doom."

Now, example one has got a heroic ring to it and really, I wouldn't have a conniption about finding a sentence like that at the crescendo of a major plot arc in a novel.

Let's look, however, at an example of where inversion doesn't work at all:

Example: "In the doorway, on which he discovered arcane and carven cosmic sigils, Lockjaw, the ham-fisted barbarian, stood."

I am sure you can see why this isn't working as a sentence, even though it may have been an exciting RP post. Imagine an 8000-word story - or worse, an entire novel - filled with sentences like that. How tedious would it be to read, after a while?

And look at all those commas! If your own sentences have as many clauses (places where commas are needed) as the sentence above, you can be pretty sure you're writing in a passive voice.

Now, just so you don't think I'm sitting in judgment of anyone, I'd like to offer one of my own really old RP posts up for scrutiny. I have bolded all the obvious "crimes of syntax", including the sentences and phrases which constitute passive writing and inversion. I have probably missed a few, as well, but you'll see my point:

Tenebrae was hovering in the entrance of the crumbling castle gatehouse. Wrapped in shadowy cloth from head to toe as she currently was, all that might be seen of her - were anyone fool enough to come between the hunter and her prey - would be the pale gleam of her smooth forehead, and a pair of intensely pale green eyes that glinted in the pre-dawn's greyish light.

The object of her scrutiny was a shadow himself - a rather short, rotund shadow shuffling from foot to foot and slapping his arms in a bid to keep himself warm, now and then stepping forward from the roadside onto its packed-earth surface to peer toward the west. His breath plumed white in the ill-lit morning as he heaved a sigh. The coach was late, and the merchant had important business to tend to in the markets. If he missed the boat, surely the whole deal would fall through, and cost him and arm and a leg in the process. Rubbing the back of his hand across his balding brow to clear it of the misty damp gathered there, the man scowled and trundled back to the grassy verge not far from an unkempt path that led to the remains of a mage's arcane keep. And, like a trapdoor spider in its lair, the necromancer was waiting.

Ivory fingers appeared against the door's edge as she pushed it open. A looming creak from the rusty jamb had her grit sharp, white teeth - surely the man had heard, and the jig was up? But no, he was safely oblivious, intent on his warmth-seeking foot-stamps and arm-slaps. The subtle noises of the world were not something the coarse businessman was prone to paying heed to anyway. So it was that Draggard the Merchant was very surprised to find his airway abruptly obscured by the passing through it of a diamond-dust coated garrote, wound tightly about his fat neck and torn backward with the brutal strength possessed by his vampiric nemesis.

Tene was glad the garrote's method, along with Draggard's overfed body, afforded her shelter from the arterial spray of blood which arced from his throat to spatter the pale clay of the road. It wouldn't do for her to be dripping gore if she should chance to meet up with her Cap'n now, would it? The merchant's body fell heavily to the ground. The necromancer side-stepped his gurgling carcass as it dropped, and wasted no time in rifling through the man's belongings. Clearly, it wasn't a feed she was after. The slender black box the vampiress 'liberated' from a pouch inside the former Draggard's cloak was the prize she sought.

Fact: I would wholeheartedly cringe were anyone to critique this post as part of a piece of fiction. But you know – as an RP post, it isn't all bad. It was certainly fun to write, and my RP partner enjoyed responding to it.

It is not, however, a good piece of fiction, or even an example of decent writing. It is certainly evocative, though, which is what you want from a roleplaying experience.

But then, roleplay is not the same animal at all as fiction, and operates under a completely different set of circumstances.

(.In Part 2, I'll be exploring various structural differences between fiction and typical RP-style writing, as well as some general problems roleplayers face when starting out as fiction writers.