When I reply, I tend to focus a lot on what my character is doing/thinking, which sounds fairly vague at first but it's easily the best way to really fill out a scene.
A character can simply say "Got it, thanks," but the real meat and potatoes comes from explaining their facial expressions, how...
Lord, I don't know if I can add anything to really spice up this, beyond "get into a fight" and that isn't exactly the most helpful thing. Even a very basic introduction to grappling and hand-to-hand combat can make all the difference in the world, whether it be by watching MMA fights or...
Reading so many things here that I'm like "ehehehe uh yea! that thing I totally never do..." like my one sorrow-porn character I wrote in high school. He ended up in so many multiverse RPs: first he watched his planet 'splode because it got infested by nasties so bad conventional cleansing...
I certainly disagree, short and snappy dialogue segments can be construed as one-liner posts if you really want to get technical. Those segments can be fantastic if used correctly.
One thing I've been able to do in fiction that doesn't always work in RP is employ nuance. Or, if you do employ it, you need to spell it out in the OOC posts to avoid the fairly decent chance it is simply glossed over. Not for any fault of the players necessarily, just due to how many voices are...
I know what I did, waaaay back in the old-school days of this site (before my hiatus from virtually all internet), was have two "levels" of play. The NB end, and the Character end. Basically, an NBRPer was working on the high concepts. Setting up building projects, making the societal framework...