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Post by Avalikia on Jun 8, 2013 0:40:17 GMT -5
Open threads are threads that anyone is allowed to join, assuming that they can come up with an excuse for their character to show up at that place and time. These can be very useful if you want to give your character something to do but don't have any specific ideas about who they should interact with. Given the number of characters sitting around in the forum who could use more things to do at any given time, it's a good way to hopefully pair up with someone in the hopes of giving both of you something fun to do.
However, there's a bit of an art to starting an open thread to make sure that it ends up being something that other people want to join and turns into a fun thread, rather than sitting there with no replies. But it can be a lot like fishing; if you use the right bait you increase your odds but even the experts sometimes come up empty, and sometimes even a newbie manages to catch something with bait that the experts are certain would never work. So either way, you sometimes just gotta keep trying until it works.
Nevertheless, I do have quite a few tips for starting open threads that should help increase your chances of open thread success:
However, there's a bit of an art to starting an open thread to make sure that it ends up being something that other people want to join and turns into a fun thread, rather than sitting there with no replies. But it can be a lot like fishing; if you use the right bait you increase your odds but even the experts sometimes come up empty, and sometimes even a newbie manages to catch something with bait that the experts are certain would never work. So either way, you sometimes just gotta keep trying until it works.
Nevertheless, I do have quite a few tips for starting open threads that should help increase your chances of open thread success:
- Remember the main character types - good guys, bad guys, and civilians - and expect that someone wanting to join your thread could be any of the three. For example, if you have a villain character you can write about them robbing a bank, expecting one of the good guys to come and stop you, but it's even better if you make it possible for someone to also join the thread as an unlucky civilian who happened to be there, or as an accomplice to your crime.
- Set the thread at a time and place where there's a lot of people. The dockyards in the middle of the night is not a good place. The rooftops at sunrise is not a good place. The park in the middle of the day is excellent. What this does is make it much easier for someone wanting to join your thread answer the question 'So why would my character be there?' Locations that are usually deserted are deserted for a reason - nobody has a reason to go there.
- Cause a scene. If your character is just sitting there quietly in a cafe reading the paper, anyone around them is probably ignoring them and has no reason to interrupt them. And neither would any character joining the thread, so it would be hard for anyone to join your thread to figure out how to make it interesting. It's better to provide the interesting stuff yourself - at the very least you could have your character spill their coffee all over the floor, as that would give someone replying something to react to and a reason to interact with your character.
- Place the other character in your thread if you can. This is a tricky thing to do, but it makes it really easy for the person who is joining to know what to do with their character. Make your character accidentally bump into someone, for example. Or maybe they bumped into you? (Heather met Jon when I started an open thread where someone rear-ended her car!) The important thing to remember while doing this is to leave the person you're interacting with undefined: don't say if they're a man or woman, old or young, or that they were doing anything unusual when your character interrupted their day.
- Pimp your new thread once you've posted it - but not too much. While you're waiting for someone to join your thread, be proactive by trying to determine who may be looking for more threads to be in and suggesting that they join your open thread. But don't be obnoxious about it - remember that a lot of the other players may not be joining it because they're already too busy and you need to respect that.
- If someone says they can't join your thread, this may a good opportunity to better your open thread skills - ask them why. If they say they're busy, their character is tied up in something else (perhaps literally), or something like that, that can't be helped. But if they're saying that they'd like to join but can't figure out why their character would be there or what their character would be doing then take that as feedback on things you need to try to do better the next time you start an open thread.
- Don't attempt to see how many people you can get to join your thread - most successful threads only have two characters in them, maybe three. The more people in a thread, the more likely one or more of them will be very slow with replies and everyone else will lose interest while they're waiting for their next turn. Threads with many characters in them are better if they're planned by all the people who will be in it first.
