Other Is a paragraph enough?

[rae2nerdy]

I was using open ended vs close ended as a better dichotomy than "1 liners" vs "detailed posts" or low vs high effort, or 1 paragraph vs 3 paragraphs. I feel it's a more useful distinction.

I draw mazes and the metaphor that comes to mind is: Did you create more threads than you closed?
At a minimum you should try to at least carry the threads of the conversation (body language, physical actions, tone of voice, actual dialogue, background information and ques) and pass them back. A good post should offer up 3 or 4 different things to respond to. If there are enough ques, neither party has to respond to them all, but maybe they'll come up later.

This is awful hard to explain with out a good example.

But anyways, I just wanted to point out that people can mean many different things when they say "one liner" and it would be useful to be more specific and try to qualify what exactly is meant by "one liner"

As for problems with brevity I think I'm almost too good sometimes at combining sentences, chaining multiple phrases into one sentence. So if you want help, pm me something and I'll condense it down and explain it a little bit. If you want, I dunno, maybe you don't. *shrug*

lol i'm usually pretty laid back as a whole on posting and most of the folks i write with are equally so. but that's the benefit of 1x1s as a whole, it's a lot more about you meshing well with a partner than having a more uniform posting system set up that keeps everyone on track.

but thanks for the offer.

 

[Kozilek]

It depends on the situation. When I write the starter, I can write reams and reams, while at other times, I can write significantly less. It all depends on what you receive as well: if you are responding to something with very little content in it, then there isn't much you can do/write about. I've had replies that are a few paragraphs of them acknowledging whatever I've done, and then their character has said a one word sentence. There isn't much you can reply with to that sort of stuff.

 

[rae2nerdy]

It depends on the situation. When I write the starter, I can write reams and reams, while at other times, I can write significantly less. It all depends on what you receive as well: if you are responding to something with very little content in it, then there isn't much you can do/write about. I've had replies that are a few paragraphs of them acknowledging whatever I've done, and then their character has said a one word sentence. There isn't much you can reply with to that sort of stuff.

I've had worse. Where literally every post was their character off screen doing things.

Like - one post is their character going to work , another post is their character going on a date, to the beach, etc.

And like I would try to have my character interact with theirs and they might have their character talk to mine but only if mine like physically cornered them in a location they couldn't get out of.

And when I confronted them about it ( like I can't respond to these posts can you please have your character actually interact with mine ) they were like oh well i just like having a loner character and I wanted to see your response.

And they would be the kind of folks that wrote like two page long replies too.

 

[Kozilek]

I've had worse. Where literally every post was their character off screen doing things.

Like - one post is their character going to work , another post is their character going on a date, to the beach, etc.

And like I would try to have my character interact with theirs and they might have their character talk to mine but only if mine like physically cornered them in a location they couldn't get out of.

And when I confronted them about it ( like I can't respond to these posts can you please have your character actually interact with mine ) they were like oh well i just like having a loner character and I wanted to see your response.

And they would be the kind of folks that wrote like two page long replies too.

That sort of stuff just makes me laugh, the whole point of role playing is (arguably) to interact with other people in a situation you couldn't before. A single post to demonstrate character tendencies like that is enough, but if you end up writing the whole thing on your own with my character doing very little, why am I here?

 

[rae2nerdy]

That sort of stuff just makes me laugh, the whole point of role playing is (arguably) to interact with other people in a situation you couldn't before. A single post to demonstrate character tendencies like that is enough, but if you end up writing the whole thing on your own with my character doing very little, why am I here?

Exactly and I think people like that or similar sort of cured me of post requirements. Because inevitably they would point to their posts and say they weren't doing anything wrong. That I hadn't specified my character had to interact with theirs so why was I getting so upset?

And in the example roleplay the posts were technically very well done. I mean sometimes there was an awkward turn of phrase but by and large they were very nicely written with clearly defined actions and not too much inner monologues.

The problem of course being the action was all off screen.

 

[Amethyst]

In my opinion having a pargraph threshold often brings purple prose, which is generally frowned upon. I mean if your post is about your character climbing off a horse, how are you going to fit such a short scene in five or more paragraphs, let alone two?

 

[Lappi]

I have a list of proper amounts of paragraphs
1) How ever many you fucking need to explain actions, reactions, and scenery.
Ex.
The park was decrepit, not a soul in sight. The trees hung low and grass turned brown. One very old man stuck around, wearing thick work overalls and a cap. He sat on the bench feeding the birds. Digging into a nearby pouch he carried with him from home and throwing the seed in a large swooping motion. Anyone nearby would notice, that feeding the birds plastered the most innocent smile on the mans face.
(6 sentences total for a decent setup. And for my personal opinion, I prefer 1-2 paragraphs of meaty text then a large long wall of chicken scratch. Full of unnecessary details and other happenings that while add to the RP, they also become very redundant over time.)

 

[ceolsige]

My opinion on this matter is very simple: a great writer can say more with a few words than a poor one can with a hundred.

That being said, I’d be a little put off if I saw 1 paragraph to my 8 paragraphs, but I’d read it before assuming the other person wasn’t into the RP. Sometimes a small post in response to a huge one can be a sign the other person is not feeling it.

I should add: I write novella posts.

 

[rae2nerdy]

My opinion on this matter is very simple: a great writer can say more with a few words than a poor one can with a hundred.

That being said, I’d be a little put off if I saw 1 paragraph to my 8 paragraphs, but I’d read it before assuming the other person wasn’t into the RP. Sometimes a small post in response to a huge one can be a sign the other person is not feeling it.

I should add: I write novella posts.

True sometimes my rambling is kind of hard to understand. And I'm totally fine with you ignoring the side tangents and just writing a short reply. Or even asking me - Hey what just happened? You kind of lost the thread in the middle and I'm confused.

As long as you put some effort and actually talk to me I'm not too fussed with exact post lengths.

Although your PS did have me thinking - I wonder how you would write multiple paragraphs in chat style. By which I mean a roleplay that is structured to mimic a instant messenger chat convo. Like theoretically you could do paragraphs but it would look weird

 

[ceolsige]

Although your PS did have me thinking - I wonder how you would write multiple paragraphs in chat style. By which I mean a roleplay that is structured to mimic a instant messenger chat convo. Like theoretically you could do paragraphs but it would look weird

I definitely can't speak for everyone, but whenever I'm RPing a scene where two characters are literally sitting there talking to one another, I'll do shorter posts. I've never really done just the dialogue, though. I always sprinkle in some action beats and body language. Typically still small paragraphs. I've never RPed instant messaging, but it actually sounds kind of interesting as long as it was intermittent in an otherwise "descriptive" post RP. Hmmm...

 

[rae2nerdy]

I definitely can't speak for everyone, but whenever I'm RPing a scene where two characters are literally sitting there talking to one another, I'll do shorter posts. I've never really done just the dialogue, though. I always sprinkle in some action beats and body language. Typically still small paragraphs. I've never RPed instant messaging, but it actually sounds kind of interesting as long as it was intermittent in an otherwise "descriptive" post RP. Hmmm...

No I was talking about like a specific style where you are essentially writing as if you were texting someone or talking on some kind of social media chat site. Like that's the entire roleplay is just using that style it's not really intermixed with anything else.

Although some might use like asterisk to show that your character is doing an action. But it's mostly just like your character logged onto some kind of social media site and is talking to all their friends on that.

So assuming that is the style your using it would be interesting to see if you could do paragraphs or more of information. I mean theoretically you could - unless the posts themselves have some kind of character limit to mimic like a twitter or text messages or something. It would look weird though. I mean like when your talking with someone on skype or something and you unload a big old block of text.

 

[ceolsige]

No I was talking about like a specific style where you are essentially writing as if you were texting someone or talking on some kind of social media chat site. Like that's the entire roleplay is just using that style it's not really intermixed with anything else.

Although some might use like asterisk to show that your character is doing an action. But it's mostly just like your character logged onto some kind of social media site and is talking to all their friends on that.

Ahhh, I gotcha. I don't think I could handle that, haha. I can absolutely see how it would be appealing, but not my cup of tea.

I've seen some roleplays where people make Tumblr blogs for/as their characters and communicate with the other characters only through the blogging format, which I guess is somewhat similar. As in, no actions --all ...blogging.

 

[rae2nerdy]

Ahhh, I gotcha. I don't think I could handle that, haha. I can absolutely see how it would be appealing, but not my cup of tea.

I've seen some roleplays where people make Tumblr blogs for/as their characters and communicate with the other characters only through the blogging format, which I guess is somewhat similar. As in, no actions --all ...blogging.

Yeah I was just thinking that since your were specifying novella posts in your response how you could maybe take the same basic concept into differing styles. Like chat or poetry or something.

I mean I have seen people do roleplays through blogs, through the chat style ( and actual chat services ), even through poetry. And it's kind of interesting to think if you would have the same kind of hang ups.

Like I mean if someone in a chat style roleplay wrote a 200 word mega post would the other chat roleplayers consider that to be too much? Or if you're writing your posts in the form of poems and someone randomly decides to write in hiakus would that be equally as off putting?

Just a random thing to think about. I mean granted some of those forms can't use paragraphs so how would you then determine quality posts?

 

[ceolsige]

Yeah I was just thinking that since your were specifying novella posts in your response how you could maybe take the same basic concept into differing styles. Like chat or poetry or something.

I mean I have seen people do roleplays through blogs, through the chat style ( and actual chat services ), even through poetry. And it's kind of interesting to think if you would have the same kind of hang ups.

Like I mean if someone in a chat style roleplay wrote a 200 word mega post would the other chat roleplayers consider that to be too much? Or if you're writing your posts in the form of poems and someone randomly decides to write in hiakus would that be equally as off putting?

Just a random thing to think about. I mean granted some of those forms can't use paragraphs so how would you then determine quality posts?

I would really like to see how people handled it, now you've brought it up. I do think a 200 word chat post would be met with a lot of "wtf" from the other characters IC, haha.

 

[yanastyboi]

In an rp I feel a paragraph is enough if the pace allows. For example a single paragraph when you only get one post a month, honestly isn't enough. One paragraph is more than enough if you do a reply a every couple days / every day / multiple times a day.

A very slow environment is conducive to longer replies. You aren't telling a whole lot of story quickly so you need the extra detail to stay interested and keep the narrative going. Plus you generally have a lot of time to write that detail so you aren't overloaded.

While, as you can guess, in a fast paced environment it makes sense to write less but more often. The pace allows for shorter, less detail laden replies because all that detail is interspersed over many smaller posts and quickly.

 

[BackSet]

Holy crap this is still alive! How?

 

[MiracleGrazer]

I’ve noticed that the flaw of having a handful if paragraphs in ROs have to interact with eachother can feel clunky and messy. It really depends on what you want to illustrate within your writing, but when they consist of mostly actions and dialogue rather than thoughts, it almost feels like people are just trying to take control of the scene. Sure they are not godmoding in the sense that they are not defining the effects of other players but they are surely defining their lack of action.