Post Length - An Indicator of Skill, or Preference?

[carrot]

This is something I've given a lot of thought to, just as like... An ol' veteran RPer, and as a writer outside of that.


A couple people have mentioned it but I really, REALLY hate seeing boards that are like "every post has to be five paragraphs of at least six sentences." That's unwritable, in my mind. You can't respond to a "how was your day?" with thirty years of backstory on your character every time it happens. It renders any of those small moments around a campfire out of existence. Your character would have had to cook and eat an entire rabbit by the time you finished writing your post and, oh my god? No. Those posts make conversing impossible and slow everything down to like quarter speed.


Some of my favorite posts in all the RPs I've been in over the more than a decade I've been doing this shit have been the shortest ones. Two lines, one of which is dialogue, have rendered me to tears at my computer, if only because holy shit, those few words mean so much. The right word choice and order can just about change the world.


I've got a BFA in writing, and writing economically -- specifically screenplay. Each page is equivalent to one minute on screen, and you have to watch your inches so carefully. If your sentence is just long enough that one word cuts down onto the next line of the page, you have to change it. You can't afford the empty line, especially if it pushes you over your page limit to fit your time slot. This drives me crazy, because I want to have the space for these grand personal moments, but those aren't up to me in the end. Being able to write concisely has saved my skin more than once.


Diction is the most important part of the actual execution of writing (if perhaps only second to editing). Anyone can write five paragraphs. Five paragraphs is a high school essay. To write five paragraphs that mean something, however, is an entirely different ballgame.


Sometimes the one line is exactly what's right, but it's also important to take those scenery chewing moments when you get them. Writing a character death in two lines is heart-breaking in an entirely different way. Great big cataclysms shouldn't be short and sweet either. Sweeping moments of emotional intimacy need some space to breathe. You've always got to know what it is you're trying to communicate, because that's what's really important about a post.


If a character asks "What's wrong with you?!" after an event, you have to know -- do they mean emotionally, or physically? Is there something that happened to your character that made them do this? You have to feel out what the right information to give is, and if that post is two lines or ten lines or twenty.


What I see a lot of, here and on other roleplaying forums, is this perception that length equals skill which is exceptionally pretentious and utterly naive. Diction, flow, hitting the right beats and writing an excellent character make for a good damn post. Nothing runs me off from an RP like a minimum of five posts. Get out of my ass and let me write something that means something.

 

[Tiny Dancer]

@carrot


Thank you ever so much for writing and sharing this. It touched on a lot that have bothered me about forum role playing in the past. Cheers!

 

[SpamBot]

Length really doesn't matter to me.


Just because you can write a huge amount, doesn't mean it's good. A lot of times, people claiming to be 'skilled' writers will write a five or six paragraph response and it'll be nothing but fluff. Maybe twenty percent will actually be relevant to what's going on. I don't want to look at a 'look how much I can write, aren't I great?' post from someone, no, I like when posts get straight to the point. If information is given at the beginning, there's nothing more to tell in the end.


I would rather settle for two beautifully written sentences than have someone regurgitate five paragraphs just to show off how 'detailed' their posts are. Though, that seems to be the general consensus here. But yeah, even the people might not be amazing at writing, or don't like five paragraph posts, get to the point and that's something I appreciate.


At this point, I'm probably a broken record.


Just write however much is needed for the scene, whether it's a few sentences or five paragraphs.

 

[Grin]

My favorite author is Kurt Vonnegut. He's got these 8 rules for writing fiction that have guided me for nearly two decades of online RPing. Most of them apply to this discussion, but the first rule is the one I think long-RPers tend to ignore:

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Kurt Vonnegut

Creators may be enthralled by every tiny detail of their clothing as it verbs to the adjectives of their body's nouns or whatever, but I can virtually guarantee that stuff is getting skimmed by the average RP audience. Writing for the reader is so very important in a kinetic writing environment like RPs.

 

[Huor Spinks]

When it comes to paragraph roleplay I'm of the opinion that there has to be a balance between quantity and quality. Five paragraphs of fluff isn't much good if I can't really respond to that in my roleplay post. And if I'm faced with that much amount of fluff I'd just skim to get to the actions and dialogue that my character can actually respond to.


What I do like are posts in which are detailed enough for me to get the gist of the character and the action as well as something I can respond to to get the roleplay flowing. To me, one paragraph is actually enough, as long as it's detailed enough, and full of useful information. I tend to average between one to three paragraphs; three if it's my first post in a roleplay and one if there is something I am responding to.


One sentence though, or less than that... yes, I tend to get annoyed too.

 

[The J]

I find that, to an extent, yes, it is down to skill. No roleplayer starts out writing five paragraphs per post, but most can soon enough develop sufficiently to post what I would call a reasonable amount of 1-3 decent-sized paragraphs.


To me, much past that (unless you're amazing) is simply fluff, unnecessary information and purple prose. I enjoy going through an RP of 2-3 paragraphs each, but much more than that and I find myself skimming and not getting as much out of it as I would otherwise.


One-liners, however, do tend to make my eyes bleed in a non-newbie environment. I just don't believe that you can fit enough in there to make it a proper post of substance, that gets everything done that needs doing.

 

[Doomshroud]

Quality trumps quantity, always. Length has nothing to do with skill; you can brute-force post length.

This, this always.

 

[Lena]

In my opinion, lengthy posts tend to be better because we need to know a character's thoughts, feelings, and motivations. "Show, don't tell" is important, but in role plays, I think that it's nigh impossible to have a decent character shown only through action. Give me the "why." Give me some back story. Explain who your character is. Don't just write it, make me care.


That being said, no one likes to read purple prose. There's a balance.

 

[Xyshurondor]

There are good short posts and good long posts. There's just no connection between length and quality at all. What's important is that you get across the necessary information with the intended impact.

 

[Face Nemesis]

I personally think that length is something that can be different depending on the circumstance. I typically tend to write a somewhat detailed paragraph or two, although I've written longer or shorter posts based off of what's going on. I don't think that a one sentence post is typically all that good, but shorter posts can still be very effective at times. When there's not too much information to give but you still need to say something, I think that short posts are perfectly fine. Long posts are helpful when giving context, or when giving a lot of dialogue, though. I think that long posts can also sometimes be unnecessary, specifically when there's just a lot of extra detail thrown in for the sole purpose of making it longer. Overall, I do think that skill and preference are both used, but skilled roleplayers know when a long or short post is more effective.

 

[Grin]

More to the topic of discussion, I'd say that length in and of itself has nothing to do with skill. Skill would be more like writing a 3K+ word post and still leaving the reader wanting more. Conversely, a lack of skill can make 300 words feel like a waste of a reader's time.

 

[Xyshurondor]

More to the topic of discussion, I'd say that length in and of itself has nothing to do with skill. Skill would be more like writing a 3K+ word post and still leaving the reader wanting more. Conversely, a lack of skill can make 300 words feel like a waste of a reader's time.

Very well put. Generally my problem with very long posts is when that length is not used to describe what is happening, but rather diverges off into what a character is thinking for too long, or into some detail of back story that would be much more interesting if it came out in dialog. You can establish that something important happened in the past and leave me wanting more in 400 words or less, and if you spend 3000 instead, that kills all of the momentum and tension. There are writers that can pull that off, but they are few and far between.


Of course, I like the noir style in books and film. In an ideal world I would have a live chat roleplay where characters can exchange short, snappy dialogue rapidly in between the action - just because it's written shouldn't mean it has to be one line of dialogue an hour in between thousand-word staring matches. So far the problem has been finding people who can regularly schedule "live time."

 

[wilhelm shakespair]

No, yes.

 

[wilhelm shakespair]

Or to be a bit more detailed and make my point, it kinda depends on how you are feeling but style I think also comes into it. It's also not a good indicator of skill to spill voluminous logorrhoeic outputs onto the page which have mass but are devoid of form.

 

[KhanKhar]

Constant long post or constant short posts are a reflection of the writer's personality.

 

[call me rae]

Constant long post or constant short posts are a reflection of the writer's personality.

Actually that might be the most honest answer to the question that I've seen yet. I mean the quality v. Quantity ; show don't tell ; preference ; etc is all well and good.


But your absolutely right at the end of the day it comes down to the personality and preference of the individual writer. Some people might prefer a lot of fluff, some might be cool with just a single sentences.


Some might be fine with typos or text speak and some might be anal to the point of elitism about every word put in a post.


So as long as both people is enjoying themselves that's all that matters.


It's why I don't mind the whole post length requirements in a roleplays or searches. I would rather you tell me what your expectations and wants are up front rather than muddling through

 

[Grey]

I take it you view the two as competing?

Nah, they're complementary, but I believe quality should always take precedence.


It took me years to come round to the idea, but these days I feel that the ability to say a lot with few words is real skill. Things should be as long as they need to be, you know? I'm not saying don't write 1500 words if it takes 1500 words to express the idea.