Hello Fellow Mizaharians!
Keeping with our tradition, the Founders Circle and Regional Storytellers are proud to announce that the Featured Contributor of the Month of September 2018 is Kynier! Once he joined the site, it was well known that Kynier wanted to reach out and help in whatever way he could. His method of madness at his level was grading. Kynier has graded near and far. He's also super helpful and incredibly nice to the new folks in chat, answering questions and offering assistance. So please join us in welcoming him to the elite club of Featured Contributor! |
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The Interview!
1. When you first found Mizahar – since you are a relatively new person to the site – what caught your interest and what kept you coming back?
The most interesting quality that had caught my interest was that the lore, the setting, the races, and the monsters were of original design. Also that there was no direct usage of anything from either pop culture, literary cannon, or mythology. Mizahar was completely unique from the foundation up. To say that you're a fantasy role play forum and don't include dragons, unicorns, demons, anything from the Tolkien verse, etc. seemed so bold that it was worth looking into.
As for why I kept coming back, when I joined I had been suffering from a significant dry spell in my writing habits. It felt so good to be writing again. A few days after signing up I had my character sheet submitted and approved. The next day I pumped out over three thousand words in one sitting and it felt great. But what really got me to keep coming back was getting invited to a thread by one of the other players. The thread was so much fun! Soloing is great, but the unpredictable collaborative storytelling is what has gotten me hooked.
2. Why did you decide to start contributing? Were there factors involved or are you simply just that sort of person?
There was a responsibility that no one was accepting and it was only getting worse. The task was daunting, and I didn't want to do it either. But then I realized that I could do something that I had wished others would do for me when I didn't have the ability. Since then I've found that I enjoy the responsibility. Grading gives me a reason to stop and read other author's material.
3. Interacting with new people is sometimes not the easiest thing in the world. You do this a great deal however. How do you normally handle helping a new person with Mizahar?
Writers are skittish creatures, so making them feel welcome is important. New authors are often very excited about their newfound creative impulses and can be very eager to discuss them. So I listen to the answers they give to the multitude of questions that they're asked and try to give them some advice on how to make that feesible on Mizahar. Often, I feel I'm playing the bad guy, because I try to tell them things that may hinder their aspirations but are still important to know. It's better they get told before the fact rather than afterwards and feel that they're getting scolded for something they weren't aware of.
4. Some of the best contributors take lessons from when they first joined Mizahar and apply them to handling the game from then on out. In your early days of Mizahar, what things did you find incredibly intimidating or incredibly easy? Compare and contrast!
It is incredibly easy to give someone a grade. The hard part is being sure that the grade is fair and accurate. Skills are the easy end of that spectrum. Looking for what the character actually does and how much they elaborate on it is pretty easy. That comes in the form of a sentence or even a couple of paragraphs. What intimidated me was trying to understand what to award for lores. So I looked to the grades that other authors had given me as a reference. Once I did that it felt easier because I knew what question to ask when reading through an author's thread. "What is the character learning from this?" The answer to that is often a small sentence or vaguely hinted at in the whole thread, which makes it more difficult to find.
5. How do you make grading easier to accomplish? Do you simply just love reading other people’s threads or do you find their processes interesting?
Reading the threads of other authors is almost always enjoyable. Exposing myself to see their style and follow the story they're making can sometimes be inspiring. Which then improves my own writing, as selfish as that sounds. As for the times when I don't feel like I'm in that mood I just tell myself that I need to grade threads from three other people before I can grade any of my own.
6. Contributing to Mizahar isn’t always about grading and greeting new folks or even donating money. Can you give us some examples of ways people might contribute they may not realize are important and meaningful?
For those that don't feel comfortable with grading or don't really feel comfortable greeting new people, there is one thing I can recommend that makes a big difference to the new people. When their character has been approved, or at least reached a point where they can play, send them a message and ask about starting a thread together. No one comes to Mizahar to do only solos. If a writer wanted to write a character by themselves they wouldn't bother coming to Mizahar at all. They'd be working on their novels.
New people come to experience the collaborative storytelling and expose their writing to the challenge of another author. So sending that invitation will help tremendously. It helps them to find their character's voice and style. Perhaps even give them new goals that they wouldn't have considered before. Whether your characters get a long or not, you can help just by having that interaction.
7. Plot devices and moving plot forward is incredibly important. I won’t know if you site this as an example in the above questions, but I know that without a doubt contributing to a storyline in a thread is really one of the single most important things people can do to contribute to the site. What ways do you move plot forward? Can you give us some examples?
There are two different type of plot that one can contribute to in their thread. First is the personal plot, which can be as focused as something involving only your character and perhaps another player's character. The second would be setting plot, which would be what your character does that may have an influence on the city or even the world. The short answer to both is Conflict.
Personal plots develop by trying to tackle the disagreements or trying to find the common ground and expand on them. Using items can be just as important as using dialog. Items could be gifts or conversation starters. Setting plot requires a bit more thought on the author's part. I recommend that you select a location, an Non-Player Character (NPC), or a [url=http://www.mizahar.com/lore/Category:Factions]Faction
[/url]. Then decide whether this person, place, or thing is something that your character has a positive relationship with or not. From there you can decide courses of action to take that could have minor or major effects on Mizahar.
8. Since you are a contributor, I’d love to know (in case any ST’s are watching who oversee your PC) what your favorite all time “If I could do anything with my PC, I’d….” thing is. Maybe someone sometime would have time to throw something together for you!
Epic tales are things I love to work towards and watch unfold. When my character has a stronger skill set I would love to undergo a plot where my character severely undermines or directly challenges a god or a Fragment. Something that upon success or failure is something that is still an event worth mentioning.
9. Is there anything you’d like to see players or STs get more involved in? Why?
I see plenty of players in chat being helpful to newcomers and giving advice. From players I would like to see more of the seasoned veterans making contributions, even if they're minor. It could be proposing edits to existing lore, suggestions to helping to improve the site's organization, or even grading one thread a week. Any sort of contribution is good, because it let's others know that you care about making the site better.
From the STs, that's hard to say. But when I think about it there is something that comes to mind. For several of the creative writing challenges the players make submissions for various things. Books, locations, monsters, etc. I think it would be awesome to see those submissions begin to be used as part of quests or events. Seeing player made locations added to the cities was an awesome thing to see, and I would like to witness more occurrences like that.
10. As a Player (yes I know this is a contributor interview but I’m digressing), what is the best and worst thing you have done to your PCs?
Best thing I have done to my character, is expand on things that are outside his comfort zone. Which usually is to establish personal connections when normally they are very detached. Worst thing I have done is nearly kill them. But the truly terrible things are still in development and will be seen in future seasons.
11. This next question is your soap box. Use this space to talk about whatever it is that’s on your mind. People actually read these interviews so know that this section will get noticed.
Receiving a Featured Contributor award is very gratifying. But there are certain individuals that don't receive this award that really should. Those individuals being the Founders and the Storytellers. If it weren't for you guys Mizahar would hit a standstill and be full of ego-measuring players like you'd see on other roleplay sites. So thank you guys! You may not receive many thanks, and may stomach a lot of negativity that you don't let on to the rest of the community, but you guys also deserve a shout out! I encourage the player based community to offer more thanks to the Founders and Storytellers for the time required to keep the rest of us pleased.[/center][/size]
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by Luminescence on September 1st, 2018, 6:29 pm 
