Back when I started off roleplaying, I always saw the Advanced category as something to aspire to. I looked at the paragraphs upon paragraphs that people wrote and was both amazed and intimidated, so I kept to my lanes (free and casual) for a long time. However, as I dabbled in all of the categories and once had a play where my partner and I were averaging around 2000 words per post, I came to a conclusion: I feel like "Advanced" is a misnomer. It brings with it an air of superiority, as though its reflective of the skill level a writer must be at in order to engage in it. But in reality, I believe that it more than anything else signifies how much content a person is willing to put into a given post, which is radically different from how good a post is.
Tell me if this sounds familiar at all: You start writing with someone and you both figure, hey, I've been at this for awhile and so have you, I'm a good enough writer for Advanced and this plot looks sick, let's give this a shot! So after you both write your introduction posts which are rightfully going to have a lot to establish, you get down to the actual interactions and everything grinds to a halt. Posts become slower. Your partner is writing a lot per post, but there's not much you can actually reply to, so you focus mainly on your character's emotions, how their reactions relate to their backstory, etc etc. That is, until, one of you is burned out by the slow pace of the plot and the project dies before clearing a single page. This is an experience I've had many times and one I know is shared by many people. It's the main reason I started thinking about writing this post.
In my opinion, Advanced isn't really conducive to good writing in the context of roleplay. It's one thing if you're writing a story on your own and can control all of the interactions between characters to be as short or long as you need them to be, but it's something else entirely when you have another person there whose responses you must consider. You can't write their reaction for them, obviously, so you find yourself deliberating upon your character's reactions to every minute detail, inadvertently applying pressure unto your partner to match your count so they don't look like they aren't engaging with you. With this exchange, you miss out on subtlety and the ability for you and your partner to engage as "audience" members, as well as a lot of realism considering that people don't often think too deeply when in the middle of action.
To elaborate, I believe that in a roleplay a person is always splitting the role of a creator and audience member. They must create content in order to interest the other person and are then in a position to enjoy what their partner made for them. However, when writing in the long form, the latter role is downplayed significantly. What I mean by this is that it becomes difficult to write mysteries around your character that can get your partner asking questions and being surprised when your character does an action or develops in such a way that they didn't see coming. Both of you know every in and out of your characters' behavior by necessity, otherwise you would find it impossible to meet the criteria for Advanced. Not only does this often lead to a dull experience for reading and especially writing, you mess with the flow of the plot and roleplay alike because even simple conversations must be written around the idea that you need to either elaborate a lot on the simple sentences your character says or have them speak a lot in an unnatural manner to inflate the amount of content you can put into a post. This will obviously consume a lot of time, make it difficult to find motivation to post more often, and potentially lead your promising RP into an early grave.
Compare this to Free and Casual——in both cases, writers are compelled more to focus on characterization as they need only to progress the story forward and give their partner something to bounce off of. This makes it far easier to maintain a healthily flowing plot and write long term as you aren't constantly mentally prepping yourself for a huge slog in order to reach the more interesting section of a story. This obviously different in cases where each player has multiple characters to account for, but I often find that people focus on making an amalgam of casual posts or dialogue in order to achieve this goal.
Now, I'm not knocking anyone who prefers the Advanced category. What I'm more against is the idea that there is any superiority that comes with simply writing more. If you look at the descriptions for Free and Casual, you notice that they're described as places to go if don't "want to have to worry about standards" or want "some depth," whereas Advanced is where you go for "character development and extensive settings/lore" on account of its more extensive word requirement. This is a really dangerous mindset to instill as it builds a connection between quality and quantity. People should write well regardless of how many words they can cram into a post.
Please let me know what you all think, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Tell me if this sounds familiar at all: You start writing with someone and you both figure, hey, I've been at this for awhile and so have you, I'm a good enough writer for Advanced and this plot looks sick, let's give this a shot! So after you both write your introduction posts which are rightfully going to have a lot to establish, you get down to the actual interactions and everything grinds to a halt. Posts become slower. Your partner is writing a lot per post, but there's not much you can actually reply to, so you focus mainly on your character's emotions, how their reactions relate to their backstory, etc etc. That is, until, one of you is burned out by the slow pace of the plot and the project dies before clearing a single page. This is an experience I've had many times and one I know is shared by many people. It's the main reason I started thinking about writing this post.
In my opinion, Advanced isn't really conducive to good writing in the context of roleplay. It's one thing if you're writing a story on your own and can control all of the interactions between characters to be as short or long as you need them to be, but it's something else entirely when you have another person there whose responses you must consider. You can't write their reaction for them, obviously, so you find yourself deliberating upon your character's reactions to every minute detail, inadvertently applying pressure unto your partner to match your count so they don't look like they aren't engaging with you. With this exchange, you miss out on subtlety and the ability for you and your partner to engage as "audience" members, as well as a lot of realism considering that people don't often think too deeply when in the middle of action.
To elaborate, I believe that in a roleplay a person is always splitting the role of a creator and audience member. They must create content in order to interest the other person and are then in a position to enjoy what their partner made for them. However, when writing in the long form, the latter role is downplayed significantly. What I mean by this is that it becomes difficult to write mysteries around your character that can get your partner asking questions and being surprised when your character does an action or develops in such a way that they didn't see coming. Both of you know every in and out of your characters' behavior by necessity, otherwise you would find it impossible to meet the criteria for Advanced. Not only does this often lead to a dull experience for reading and especially writing, you mess with the flow of the plot and roleplay alike because even simple conversations must be written around the idea that you need to either elaborate a lot on the simple sentences your character says or have them speak a lot in an unnatural manner to inflate the amount of content you can put into a post. This will obviously consume a lot of time, make it difficult to find motivation to post more often, and potentially lead your promising RP into an early grave.
Compare this to Free and Casual——in both cases, writers are compelled more to focus on characterization as they need only to progress the story forward and give their partner something to bounce off of. This makes it far easier to maintain a healthily flowing plot and write long term as you aren't constantly mentally prepping yourself for a huge slog in order to reach the more interesting section of a story. This obviously different in cases where each player has multiple characters to account for, but I often find that people focus on making an amalgam of casual posts or dialogue in order to achieve this goal.
Now, I'm not knocking anyone who prefers the Advanced category. What I'm more against is the idea that there is any superiority that comes with simply writing more. If you look at the descriptions for Free and Casual, you notice that they're described as places to go if don't "want to have to worry about standards" or want "some depth," whereas Advanced is where you go for "character development and extensive settings/lore" on account of its more extensive word requirement. This is a really dangerous mindset to instill as it builds a connection between quality and quantity. People should write well regardless of how many words they can cram into a post.
Please let me know what you all think, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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