Literary Role Play

We’ve all heard of online role play games, role playing in a job environment or with friends. But, there’s another kind of internet role play that is lesser known to the world. This is role playing for creative writers, and it all happens in chat rooms, instant messeges and messege boards. Unfortunately, this form of role playing is often mistakened for the likes of DnD (Dungeons and Dragons) or World of Warcraft. It is not a program or a game! It is run solely in individual people and their ability to write. It would be easier to distinguish it from these other forms of role play if it had a unique name of its own, but as of yet, it doesn’t. So, for the sake of clarity in this article, I’ll refer to it as Literary Role Play since… well, that’s what it is.

For those of you who know about this kind of role playing, you may be one of those who thinks, “My God… Get a life!” In some cases… I would agree. As with everything else, there are people who discard real life and do something to excess. However, if you would get off your Ignorance Horse, you’d see that literary role play is one of the best forms of creativity. It offers the writer practice as well as a chance to learn from other writers. It strengthens the thought process for creating plot for stories and development of characters. Many literary role players have had characters for over a decade. That’s a long time to make your character grow!

While many people create their very own characters, it is far from unusual for people to play canons (characters from movies, books, shows, etc). I have seen people play characters from Wolverine to Doctor House to the Phantom of the Opera. I had even seen such a variety of characters played in one place, interacting together in such a way you would never see in the movies or on tv. And when the writer does the canon enough justice, the experience is entertaining and fun.

Literary role play has plenty of its own unique terminology and style. Role players gather together in groups suited for their style of writing or genre. These groups are sometimes called guilds, if they have a meticulously organized group, or looser groups called storylines, where the plot and characters are the priority. Becoming part of a group opens up the opportunity to meet like-minded people. Many roleplayers have taken what they’ve written with other people and have published them into books. (Hopefully with the permission of the other writers.)

For those of you who have an avid passion for writing and you’ve never given this form of role play or writing a try, maybe you should. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see that it is actually quite addicting and extremely educational. And who knows, maybe it’ll lead you to write the next bestseller.