Prime Reading: Writer's Guide + Character Guide

[Amaterasu]

This is a list of tips for those among you who, like myself, have trouble settling on a character and find themselves repeatedly swapping. Remember that each swap entails a pretty huge loss of OM, so if you want to make it up high in the OM rankings list, here's a couple of ideas!

Note: As always I welcome any sort of feedback and ideas to expand on the guide, with credit where credit is due!

Character Selection

Okay, so your account is set up and you're wondering what character to submit to get started. Who shall it be?

1- Don't make a character while riding the hype-wave.
[spoiler]A hype-wave is when you watch/read/play something, especially if it's something new - say a new season of an amazing TV series -, and you're all like "Woah, this is amazing, I love this character! I must make them immediately!"

We all have ridden the hype-wave at some point in time, and it's by no means a bad thing! But, restrain yourself! This is also what Omni notes in the "How to join" post:
"You're going to be writing as them for a long time (hopefully), so you'll want a character you love. I'm not talking about the cool new thing that came out this year - in six months time they'll be replaced. I'm talking about something you've always loved, or an idea you've always wanted to bring to life. Or both!"
It is beyond easy to fall into the hype-wave trap if you have recently watched/read/played whatever thing you now like. Don't give in to it! My advice is to wait for at least 3 weeks to a month before you consider the character. During that time, stay away from that media. Don't go on reddit to talk or read about it, don't watch youtubers presenting their grand theories about the game, don't... well, you get the idea. After that period of abstinence, the hype-wave should have passed and you can consider the character from a more neutral, distanced standpoint.[/spoiler]

2- Consider your options from various standpoints before settling.
[spoiler]This is an extension of number 1, but no matter if you have multiple options or just a single character, consider them first. Why do you want to play them? What "advantages" do they have? What "disadvantages" will you have to deal with? How would they fit into the Omniverse?

Depending on how willing you are to stray from the original canon that you pull your character from, things such as their personality, appearance, quirks and powers may come into consideration, but more abstract things may also pop up: for instance, if the character is from an obscure book, there may be very little art of them online, and visual references are always a good thing to have. On the other hand if they are from a well-known game, you might be able to take great screenshots and find lots of art. And don't forget to take the canon into consideration: are there other characters that you wish to pull from it, to give to your character as Secondaries or NPC Primes?

It's never wrong to have a second or third person give you their opinion - you can always ignore it if you disagree with them they might provide valuable input from an angle that you have never considered. Someone of a different gender, nationality, with different interests or knowledge may have a very different view of a character than you do. Maybe there's a reference or in-joke somewhere that you never understood, or they believe that the footsteps that the character hears are not implied paranoia but character2's footsteps as he spies on them, which is how they later mysteriously know where the character was between 9 and 10PM.
Unless that second person is a troll. In that case, ignore them.[/spoiler]

3- Is love at first sight a thing?
[spoiler]On the risk of getting a mob of angry Omniversians with pitchforks running after me telling me otherwise, I say: love at first sight is not a thing. At least, not the movie cliché where character A sees character B and spontaneously falls deeply in love with them, then marries them and they live happily ever after. That is "heart" love, not "head" love. It's another form of riding the hype-wave (see #1).

What is possible is really liking a character right away and gradually progressing from that first impression (heart love) to a genuine appreciation (head love). As you learn about the character, their personality, behavior, goals and dreams, their past and present and many other factors you gain a more complete picture. Love at first sight, or heart love, is almost entirely based on the appearance and possibly a little presentation of personality.

What does this all mean for you? Well, you should probably watch more than two episodes of that 50-episode-long TV series or do more than watch the trailer of that new game you want to play before you have a good grasp on the character and can say whether or not you like them. They may turn out very different than what you had imagined - plot twists and heel-face turns happen all the time! And it might ruin a character you were very enthusiastic about, or drive you to love someone that you hated before (Severus Snape, anyone?).[/spoiler]

Character Maintenance

Your character was approved, some of those delicious 5000 starting OM are spent on awesome moves and you've written your first couple of posts in the Nexus fountain. Or maybe you're already level 5 and suddenly doubt if this character really is the one for you. What to do now?
If you haven't made a character yet I recommend reading this section as well!

4- Make plans and set goals.
[spoiler]Short-term, medium-term and long-term goals are all super important. Someone (unfortunately I cannot remember the source) once said:
"Goals are very important [in a story]. Frodo had the long-term goal of bringing the One Ring to the volcano in Mordor and destroying it there. Without that goal, he would have just been a guy running around with a piece of stolen jewelry."
Goals are the driving force that motivates the character to go on, what they aim to achieve eventually. Set them.

Short-term goals are things such as small storylines, things immediately in front of you. It could be "win the fight I am in right now" or "complete the quest I'm doing."

Medium-term goals are a bit bigger: they are typically things required to progress towards a long-term goal, and more abstract than short-terms. For instance "become recognized in this verse" or "build up a faction". Medium-term goals are typically made out of several short-term goals.

Long-term goals are where shit gets real. They can be your character's ultimate goal(s), the magnum opus that they aim to achieve, the end of a long, difficult journey, the end of the endgame. Each medium-term goal is just one step out of dozens, possibly hundreds. Long-term goals can range anywhere from "become an established bounty hunter feared by all bountied players" to "become leader of the Underverse, defeat Omni, be #1 on the OM rankings list."

If your character has no goals they will last you less than a bag of Doritos thrown into a room full of hungry CoD players. Make a list, decide on what goals your character would pursue in the Omniverse. Even if those goals are wildly out of reach and might take you years to achieve.[/spoiler]

5- Write with people.
[spoiler]The Omniverse has an amazing tool that not all roleplaying forums have: the Chatbox. You can meet people that are online, talk to them, find out what they are doing and socialize. And you can ask people if they want to set something up! But why is it so amazing? Other forums have "looking for group" threads as well, right?

Well, the CBox is a live-chat environment. People who are online didn't post 2 days ago and are so rarely online that it takes you a month to set something up, by which time you've grown bored and moved on to RPing on twitter. When you are both online you can exchange information rapidly almost as if on a conversation, not through snail mail. The experience is far more direct and intense.

CBox is love, CBox is life. Use it.

Furthermore, why are you in the Omniverse and not writing a novel that you could sell to become the next Tolkien or Rowling? Because the Omniverse gives you a community. Seriously, you aren't alone in the game. Find other people to play with and you'll get way more fun out of it.[/spoiler]

6- Create conflict and problems, get rivals.
[spoiler]No, I don't mean that you should go into the Chatbox and start insulting everyone, that'll just get you banned. I mean IC conflict.

Let's say, for just a second, that you are watching two TV series. One is about this couple who fall in love, they really like each other, they share all sorts of interests, every day is sunny, they are rich and happy and they live forever together. The other is about a couple who fall in love but then the girl's mother doesn't like the guy and there's tension, and she wants the girl to marry this ugly rich kid and ends up hiring a hitman to take out the guy, who has to escape the country, leaving the girl heartbroken but still loving him. Which one would you rather watch?

If your answer was "the first one", then you probably don't have much fun in the Omniverse. Why is the second one better? Because there is conflict. There are problems. The characters don't fit together like two puzzle pieces, there's issues that need solving, external forces that influence them, there is risk of something happening. And nobody wants to watch a TV series where nothing happens and everything is okay.

Conflict does not have to be fights and disputes. Your character might just disagree with another character. You might both want the same artefact or you might be gunning for the winning spots in an event. Sure you could bash each other's heads in and the loser and their entire family and friends get banished - that's the nuclear option. Or there could be an ensuing rivalry. The losing character later assaults the first character's base and tries to retrieve the artefact in the vault. Or they are later forced to work together and refuse to cooperate because they're enemies.

Remember point #4 - Make plans and set goals? Why not make it a goal for your character to defeat/get revenge on/surpass their rival character? Now that's some great motivation.

Again: IC conflict doesn't necessarily mean OOC conflict - and frankly it shouldn't. You can be great friends with someone while your characters hate each other's guts. Enemies are just as important as friends when it comes to motivation and goals.[/spoiler]

7- Moves and powers are of secondary importance.
[spoiler]"But Ammy, I am playing Goku and he would be nothing without his Kamehameha and his Super Saiyan powers!" WRONG!

Because of how moves and powers are balanced on the site, far from all characters can be copy-pasted into the Omniverse. As a result, characters won't work the same.

The main things you need to consider for a character are their appearance, personality, goals and so on that you want to carry over from their canon. Their powers and abilities are of course important, but far more replacable. Sure you might trigger some DragonBallZ purists, but there is no rule in the Omniverse saying that you aren't allowed to make Vegeta with medieval plate armor and a katana and then give him Albus Dumbledore's spellbook. Any character can have any move and any power if they meet its requirements.[/spoiler]

8- Don't live "paycheck to paycheck".
[spoiler]This is more of a trick to keep things interesting, but your Spent OM doesn't have to be equal to your Earned OM at all times. Don't sink each point that you just earned with your latest post into a new move or power. Think about it: do you really want that move/power/proficiency/item? Or maybe you could save up for something bigger, more fun? Plus, you'll save a lot of OM from potentially refunding moves later down the line.

One great trick to accomplish this is to have your character acquire their new power or move through its own storyline or in some other form. Instead of suddenly having a new lightsaber, why not visit Coruscant, go to an exhibition about Jedi and learn about the weapon, then have your character summon one? Or maybe they do a quest for some guy and are rewarded with the lightsaber for it.

If it helps, make a wishlist. List what you want and in what order, and stick to it.[/spoiler]

9- Create a Writing Calendar
[spoiler]If you do a quest or you join a saga or an event, you might find yourself surprised at the amount of time it takes up in your life. Two months to complete a quest? Dante's Abyss this year takes 3 months? You want to play with someone who is absent for the next 3 weeks?

A Writing Calendar is great to keep track of the bigger picture. You can also note down how many words you've written, if you recieved bonuses and so on, to track the quality of your writing and in the case of quests with word requirements see how long it'll take you to write the amount that you need.[/spoiler]

10- Use support characters - Credit goes to Alex for this one!
[spoiler]The Omniverse allows its players to summon or otherwise include secondaries and NPC Primes and has a whole roster of Site NPCs available for players - these options should be used! Characters thrive with interactions and relationships: there's probably not many books or movies out there that are completely about one single character that never interacts with other people. Even Robinson Crusoe meets someone else after a while.

Having other characters also allows you to play "different" personalities, characters that have different goals and interests, if you feel like switching it up (which is why a lot of us swap). You can look at a situation or individual from a different angle and create a more living, breathing world around your Prime.[/spoiler]


If you managed to read this far, have this!