Having not played an actual player character for a while, my roleplaying is a little rusty, so I took a look around and found an article that offered help.
After having gone through a few sessions of Dungeons and Dragons now, I find that my roleplaying as a character is a little lacking, well, in at least the way I want it to be. I find myself consistently outperformed by our Lord Blackwold, so being the personality type that I am, I started looking for ways to be better and found this article:
http://www.nerdsourced.com/better-roleplayer-players-guide-building-flow/
On top of helping me know which type of player I am, it did have a very useful set of tips for being better at roleplaying. Below are a few that I found particularly helpful, but if you click through the link, there are a number more that might be more useful to you.
Build on the Flow
Instead of trying to stop someone from doing something, go along with it. A common way to think of it is “Yes, and…” Acknowledge what the last person talking did and then do something to add to it. As Nerdsourced used as an example, let the dwarf in full plate jump into the ocean to try to rescue the drowning man; and then jump in after him or throw him a length of rope. In essence, let people play their character and make their own mistakes – better stories come out of people that make mistakes and are not perfect.
Create a Voice
The idea of doing this embarasses me to no end, but it really is the way you make your character stand out. My husband has been giving out experience as a reward for good roleplaying, and Lord Blackwold always gets it if he’s playing. He purposely elongates “S” sounds, has a love of his “Gucci” boots, and continuously references the parents that he swears no one can prove he killed. Blackwold is amusing and compelling, and his player is definately a center-of-attention kind of guy. I vote for him every time.
Know the Difference between Yourself and Your Character
Honestly, this is one of those things that I have always struggled with. I am an INTJ-type according to Myers-Briggs, so my go to is planning. I did all of one role in a play in high school, so I know that I can do it. Still, getting over that mental hurdle is very difficult.
Whoever your character is should be different from yourself. The best way I have figured out how to do this for myself – besides getting months of coaching from a perfectionist Drama/English teacher – is to fill out questionaires, usually the ones associated with writing characters for a story of some sort. Depending on how strong the personality of your character is, you might figure them out very quickly or very slowly – – my last villain Alaera only needed a dozen or so questions before I had a solid idea of exactly what type of person she was while my current character Del took me maybe three pages worth of information first.