Alright, so this has always bothered me and tonight it really just hit the zenith of my irritation and I really want to rant. It's not gonna be a long rant, or at least I hope not, but I want to rant about it anyway.

Okay, so I consider myself an advanced roleplayer. Occasionally I have a brain fart and I write short posts, but hey, who doesn't? My posts are generally about four paragraphs, each of the paragraphs with at least ten lines. And I give my fellow roleplayers something to work with. Not the most advanced roleplaying ever, but I find that roleplaying on so-called 'intermediate' boards, bother me. No offense to everyone there, but that's just not what I'm interested in writing and dealing with.

But on almost every site I joined, without fail, there was at least one or two people, sometimes more, who were obviously not advanced enough and could not write a decent post. This evening, for instance, I had to respond to a post of, literally, six lines. And I'm sorry, but on a so-called 'advanced' site, that's just not okay. Whatever, I made a quick two paragraph post and got my character out of there as fast as I could. I posted about five other three paragraph posts with things for my character and the other character to interact over and every-time I posted, I got the same short, choppy post.

I'm not an admin on the site, but I am a mod and I'm not sure if I should say something to the person or not and augh... I just want to smack the Admin's and be all 'WHY DID YOU ACCEPT THREE CHARACTERS OF XXXX???' They're obviously not an adequate roleplayer... I mean, on this site, I often feel inadequate compared to the Admins, but you know what? I'm not in that place and I know it. But this person obviously cannot compete and AUGH! I mean, the rules clearly say 'two paragraphs, of at least ten sentances each'! SIX SENTANCES DO NOT QUALIFY. So why aren't the admins keeping their site clean of unadvanced people? And it's not a problem of activity, because the site has well over 100 accounts; if the Admins said something to one member, it wouldn't kill the entire roleplay. I've had that issue before on my own boards where there was an activity issue so instead of chucking an irritating, illiterate member I simply kept on going 'you didn't give me enough to work with. More, please!' And although it's not perfect, it works for me. But this site... AUGH!!!

It just frustrates me, you know?

Quantity =/= Quality. I think that's all that needs to be said, right? The quality of a post should not be judged by its size, but rather its content. I used to share a similar elitist viewpoint, but I've since realized that shorter posts are the bomb. Less time to read, less time to write, more time to progress the plot. Contrary to popular belief, people who can write concisely can write well.

Hey, maybe the posts you got back weren't up to your standards because of size and content, but if your only argument is that it was too short, well. Size doesn't matter all the time. ;P The idea that short posts = bad posts is just ridiculous, sry2sai.

This is only sometimes true. It takes a great writer to make a short post great IMHO, and if Lady Notorious is getting her character out of there asap then I'm assuming these specific posts weren't great. Quantity=/= Quality, but a lot of roleplayers who respond to a 3 paragraph post with 6 lines don't respond to everything that happened and often don't include much in their own post for the other player to respond to. I agree completely that short posts don't always equal bad posts, but it's not ridiculous to be upset about a short post that didn't leave her anything to work with.

@@ Sunday: You cannot adequately describe what a character's doing, thinking, and saying in six sentances. I'm sorry, it's just impossible. That's my only complaint. If someone wrote six, Nathaniel Hawkins-like sentances, then that'd be fine. But they don't.

That's the problem though, you nailed exactly what I hate. Roleplaying is supposed to be for the plot, yea, but if you're on an advanced board, you obviously should be writing in an advanced fashion. Giving the other roleplayer nothing to do is not doing just that. And it's not even advancing that plot! It's just 'oh, okay...' Literally!

Maybe I'm just crazy. But there are ways to do things. There are ways to speed up the plot; I know that I got yelled at last night by an admin on another site because she wanted the thread finished by a certain date. I'd been having problems with the fast-paced thread, but you know what, it needed to be fast-paced for several reasons. But I didn't write a paragraph which read 'she ran and did this.' No, I wrote four paragraphs dealing with the conflict and solution because I knew that I was dealing with an advanced board which had a word-count requirement. And you know what? Because I had to draw it out, I liked it a whole lot more than just saying 'she ran and did this.' Because roleplaying is also about development, not just the action. If people didn't write about their character's thoughts, it'd be quite boring a lot of the time.

@@Sarahj: They most definitely were not the best posts ever.

I kinda agree with this.

There are reasons why sites are called "advanced" and "intermediate". Quantity does not equal quality. I could pump out a decent one paragraph post of ten sentences that makes sense and does what the thread needs.

But when you're on a site that is advanced, there should be rules stating that. Complain. If no one does anything, then you know who not to RP with. Simple as that.

Yea, I definitely learned my lesson this time...

I wouldn't have read this at all because of the insanely small font you insist on using, but your post is just...riddled.

Yes, you can adequately write a post with enough to reply to in six sentences. I would love to hear what constitutes an advanced thread for you--what the content ought to be in order to make it 'advanced'. The problem you have is forcing people to meet your sixty sentence quota will result in posts that are no more advanced because of padding, repetition and random tangents. Why? Because there's no further help on how to best use those sentences to make a good post.

Clearly you have a skewed idea of what this term means. It should be about character concepts, ideas, roleplay. Even if they are not advanced, the best way to promote better writing is to put a mix of players in together and watch them progress toward the same goal. It's a tried and tested method.

Finally I suggest that if you are going to harp on about the frustrations of writing with people who are not advanced, that you do a basic SPAG check on your posts, otherwise you come off with a double-standard.

No.

I cannot even begin to relate to your post.

In fact, I cannot fathom why someone would want to read a post with 40 lines of padding. I find my time much more valuable than that.

Advanced writers know that you don't have to drag something on for eternity if it doesn't need to be. They realize that there are times to write quickly and choppily and times to write with great depth and detail.

Simply put: writing everthing with depth and detail detracts from those points which you want to emphasize. Varying sentence length and--dare I say it?--post length draws the reader's attention to the parts the writer wants them to read. A long sentence buried within several shorter sentences or a one-lined paragraph within a couple seven-lined paragraphs pulls the eye to the focal point of the post.

Thus, you can reply to a post in six sentences. Yes, it can be crappy. But it doesn't have to be; it can be the most fabulous post you've ever seen that makes your jaw drop and your heart beat quickly as you read it over and over again.

That's what I want to see, baby.

You do very little to convince me that you're an advanced writer with the multiple errors in your post. I will assume that your grammar and spelling are off because it's a rant, though it still makes a poor impression given the subject of your post.

If I am interpreting Lady N correctly, I don't think some people are quite grasping the original point that she tried to make. She was roleplaying with someone who wrote, "short, choppy" posts and rightfully expected the admins to do something about it considering the site claimed to be "advanced." In addition, the person she was posting with was breaking several rules of literacy the site had maintained for itself, and Lady N expected said roleplayer to comply like the rest of the forum.

Please correct me if I am wrong, Lady N. ;] It's happened before!

As for the length issue... is it possible to write a quality six-sentence post? It depends on what you were given and your own writing talent. If you were given a lot to work with - not padding, but a post of quality - then the majority of roleplayers do not have that ability. Most posters cannot adequately condense a post to that length while maintaining quality content, though I really wish they could.

On the other hand, if written well, short posts can indeed be fine. When you add "choppy” into the mix, however... no. We've all had to roleplay with those "short, choppy" people at one point or another, and it's not even remotely fun. Lady N said, "If someone wrote six, Nathaniel Hawkins-like sentences, then that'd be fine. But they don't." I can easily identify with that because, for instance, I will not roleplay with someone whose posts look like this:

Can you imagine six lines of that? Making a typo or having a misplaced punctuation mark I can handle, especially considering I'm guilty of it myself at times, but choppy posts are from the devil. In my humble opinion, no "advanced" website should ever accept an applicant that writes posts in that manner.

There is nothing wrong with short. Short, in itself, cannot be negative. Not that I can think of anyway. Someone's lifespan too short? What if they had a life much, much better than someone who lived hundreds of years? Person's height too short? Well, I'm short. You wanna take that up with me?

I write short. I write long too, but no one is going to tell me that my long posts are better than my short posts. They're just different. I can understand having a preference for longer posts, but discriminating against and even having rules against short posts? That's like saying someone who talks a lot is more intelligent than someone not inclined to talking.

In your post, Lady Notorious, you pretty much implied that people who wrote short posts were illiterate. That's probably not what you were going for, but that's what I (and I think some other people) have read from this.

December, Esq, please watch your comments in future. We are here to disagree (or agree) with Lady Notorious, not attack her.

Another thing here to consider: Everyone has off days, weeks, months. I'm in the midst of one such myself because I'm stressed about things that are going on in my life. I'm not able to post too much of intelligence because I'm too preoccupied with all the nonsense around me and it's really hard to concentrate on rping. That's another thing to take into consideration when you're playing with someone online. You can't see their body language to determine if they're having an on or off day.

Also, picking on the admin for accepting said person is not likely to win you points. We've had writers come on board who wrote a pretty decent character bio, then once it came to actually RPing, couldn't write a repliable, cogent post for their lives. Maybe some admin would be willing to boot people for it, but I'm not among them. I feel like things like that naturally work themselves out.

This is in response to the whole thread, not just the original rant.

See, reading this just makes me realise how different people's views on 'advanced' and 'beginner' via post counts really are. I'd say that 800+ words would be advanced, myself, 300 and below would be beginner and anything in between would be intermediate. I suppose this is because I've spent a lot of my time on 'advanced' boards, with people who are fantastic writers, and eventually managed to boost my highest word count up to 4200 words. I don't think that padding is necessarily a bad thing, it can be, but not everything has to be connected to the current situation for you to enjoy reading it. A good friend of mine often ends up talking about her character's childhood in a post, and I still love to read it, because it shows character development, and shows that she's actually put some thought into her characters history. I do agree that spending a paragraph describing someone's eyes in a post could be considered bad, but a lot of people here seem to have some sort of grudge against longer posts, because of all this 'quality over quantity' stuff. Just because a post exceeds 600 words does not mean it's full of rambling crap.

However, I also agree that all short posts are not bad, I find the world of beginner sites to be more relaxed. There's certainly less pressure on you to get a post up. On my site, at the moment, we welcome all roleplaying levels, and I can see the entire spectrum there, there are a few short posts, that doesn't really have much content, but there are also interesting posts which also happen to be short, brilliant longer posts, and a few rubbishy longer posts too. It's just people learning, everyone's going to improve, and not everyone's always going to like what they write. People should be able to write whatever they want, and if other people don't quite like it, then they should just not roleplay with them.

I do think that whoever this thread is talking about is sort of doing wrong though, or the admin, maybe, because I think rules of a site should be followed, and this person either did not read the rules, or knew that they had to write a certain amount from the beginning, and just chose not to. Both of these options are not too good. Sure, maybe they've just not gotten into the swing of writing their character yet, and are finding it difficult to think up what to write, but two paragraphs really isn't all that much. If they thought they weren't going to be able to write that then they shouldn't really have joined, if it said so in the rules. :/

Have you tried to encourage them to write a little more? Usually, the more you give someone the more they'll give back. If your character speaks a little more than usual, or there's some sort of an action in your post that the other character could react to, sometimes people just need a little more to respond to than others. My friend can easily write out posts after the character before only says one thing, but I would find it slightly more difficult to, unless that sentence was partifularly meaningful in some way.

You could just ask them to reread that rule too :/ Back when I joined my first site with a word limit, that's what the admin said to me. It kind of embarassed me, but I started trying to write more, and it worked.

I don't know if any of this is of any use, but... yeah. xD It's getting posted, lol. My fingers seem to have gone a little ramble happy, oh well.

OMGCHANCETORANTABOUTPOSTLENGTHMUSTPOUNCE. Short posts are Satan long posts are Satan I hate the way you post you're an awful bad person for not posting the way I do and I'm a better person because my posts are ____ length blah de blah! :rawr:

*cough*

Now, with that out of the way, I understand where you're coming from, Lady N. It really stinks to put a lot of effort into a post and then get something back that didn't have the same amount of effort put into it and makes it hard for you to reply or stay interested. All writers are at different points on their journey and sometimes dealing with someone who isn't at the same place is obnoxious. Particularly when the other person doesn't follow the rules of the site, whether you agree with those rules or not. I think it's good that you did both yourself and the other person the favor of getting out of the thread instead of subjecting yourself to something you weren't interested in.

This has been discussed and rediscussed and I'm in the quality over quanitity school. If a post is short AND fails to deliver, than that's understandable, if you don't like a post just because it's short, that's not. A short bad post will not get better by making it longer. It will likely get worse. If you want more detail, well, mayb e there is no more to give without it becoming purple prose, or just unnecessary.

I used to think length = good because my short posts were met with begrudged replies, but I realised that it wasn't the length that was the problem, but the fact that I hadn't given the RPer anything to respond to. i admire rpers who successfully RP short posts, and actually, I prefer it. I read it quicker, reply quicker and the thread flows better. Long posts can be good, short posts can be good, it's how you balance and fill your post up that matters. Frankly, most people who write 'advanced' just describe their surroundings and add a lot of thoughts to their post, sometimes excessively. I feel no need to describe a room beyond what the other player needs to know (there are two chairs, a table, a lamp... if you wanna say that the wallpaper contrasted majestically with the mahogany, victorian table which cast an eerie shadow from the elongated, glowing candle-lamp, that's your choice, but it doesn't make you a better writer IMO. Not in an RPG, anyway.

Wow, that is so completely and totally not true.

What's also not true is this completely baseless and incorrect idea that you have to describe everything your character is thinking and feeling. No, you don't. You really don't. And, in fact, if you do it needlessly pads your writing and in many cases ruins the story.

Every self-proclaimed advanced site I have seen has threads that are choppy and jarring with inconsistencies in tenor, tone, and point of view. A completed thread should read like a finished story, and when you have to quote every three lines of the post in order to "respond to everything" and color and bold your dialog because you know no one is actually reading the whole thing, that completely destroys the immersion and wrecks the narrative.

4200 words blows my mind, because that's your personal story, that's not an RP post. It's needless grandstanding. What's fun for me is cooperative writing -- in the oldschool days this was called a pose. Your character makes a pose, which is a single action. Then the next players present their single actions, and so forth. It's snappy, it's quick, it reads as a single finished story when it's through.

Another problem I've seen with self-proclaimed advanced sites are consistent problems with spelling and grammar. It appears, very often, that "advanced" is only used to mean word count, and that is so incredibly unfortunate. For example, just throwing this out here, the word is 'sentences.'

ETA another quick note: there's another misconception that people who write shorter posts aren't capable of writing longer ones. This is not true. Several of the posters here who espouse the shorter, terser post school are incredibly talented writers, and it's not a question of laziness or ability -- it's because they are confident enough in their writing and storytelling skills that they don't feel they HAVE to impress people with some ridiculously high word count.

I'm not sure if I take offense at that or not. The thread I was doing at the time, in my opinion, needed a longer post, because my character was extremely angry, and she tends to ramble when she's angry, and she also had a lot of explaining to do. It was a time twist era site, and she had basically just found out that she had four children which she accidentally killed by splitting up with her partner, so she was sort of freaking out.

I don't get why people seem to be totally against one or the other, can't we all just write the amount we choose to write, be it a hundred words, or a thousand words? Both are fun, in their own ways. Short posts are more fast paced, and there's less pressure, long posts make you really think, and, in my opinion, help you learn about your character faster. Not that you can't with shorter posts, but from what I've experienced, anyway.

I have two characters that I usually write shorter posts with, and one character that I usually write longer posts with. I've had the shorter post characters for two years, the other for one year, and yet I think I know the one that I've had the shortest best. I don't know if it's like that for everyone, but that's what I think. The shorter post's characters short term histories are more detailed though, whereas it's my other character's childhood and teen years that I know most about.

What did you accomplish in one 4200 word post that you couldn't have accomplished in eight 500 word posts? Not being flippant, here; genuine question. I really, honestly am curious how it was effective. Was it full of flashbacks or flashforwards or something else that was specific to the character that none of the other respondents could technically reply to, or was it four thousand words of dialogue?

Often times people who write long posts write like they're playing with a telepath. If you ARE playing with a telepath, I can see the point, but if you're not, why on earth would you want to pad things out with five paragraphs of your character's thought process that no one can ICly respond to anyway? It's been my experience this happens because people want to show off how awesome they are, which is why I used the word "grandstanding."

I wholeheartedly agree that people should write what they want and what they think is effective and fun for them and -- here is the most important part -- what is most effective for the story. The problem is that I, who enjoy two hundred words of quick single action and dialog, think that a thousand words of thought-posing is eye-rolling, and that thousand word thought-poser thinks that I'm lazy and suck. :)

One of my bios is around 5000 words... And it's quite in depth...

It was pretty much an even split between speech and thought, with actions thrown in. She had a nice big yell at her relative, nearly went to hit him, and then freaked out ((in her mind)) a little bit, when he dropped the "Oh, and by the way, your kids will disappear now." bomb. She kind of lost the ability to speak by that point, considering it's kind of big news.

I don't think it matters if people are going to reply to it, I can imagine it would be quite annoying if they only wrote speech and action and then someone else expected them to read through all the thought, but if both players are writing thoughts too, I don't see the problem. It helps you learn about your character, IMO.

Besides, I find thoughts interesting. Can you imagine if someone took all the thoughts out of a book? It'd be slightly monotonous. I mean, I know you're probably not saying there should be no thoughts at all, but I thought I'd go to extremes to give an example. =)

I love discussions, you know. xD It's odd I don't spend more time in the debate forum.

I'm a fan of the long bios. I honestly don't see how one can get the slightest grasp of a character in under a thousand words. Long, 4200 word posts, though, are another story entirely.

I don't want to take more than five minutes to read a post. Obviously, time will be given during reply-writing to pick out the more important details, but initially... no. I personally have read maybe three posts (ever) of a thousand words or more that were actually worth reading. That said, while I appriciate that short posts can be necessary and can be incredible, most short posts that I've seen haven't been the least bit great. Yes, quantity =/= quality, but that fact doesn't mean that short posts are always adequate.

That said, the OP's point was, I believe, that a certain level of effort was put into her post, on a forum that advertised itself as being 'advanced', and she was given a reply in return that neither displayed the same level of effort, nor lived up to the label given.

Personally? Yeah, I agree with the "You cannot adequately describe what a character's doing, thinking, and saying in six sentances.", but I also agree with Cal's point that you don't have to. But if you reply to my seven hundred words with one hundred, you damn well better have given adequate response to what I've provided, action-wise. If you did, and one hundred's all that came of it, then I know I padded more than I should have. If you didn't, I reserve the right to bitch about it to my friends later.

Short posts are fine. Short, irrelevant posts that give you nothing to work off of and are nightmarish to read? Not so much.

Despite my agreeing with Cal's statement, that isn't to say I don't shove in my characters' thoughts. Frequently. My character's minds are very, very busy, and so to not include them would make me feel like my post was missing something major.

For me, bios are different creatures. My oldest character's bio is 3516 words, and that's after painfully excising about half of the excess (I have an older version that's 7444 words).

One of the first threads I finished with her was completed with 13477 words, and another of her fully completed threads is 17643 words. I've written over two million words for her in nine years, which is 600 words a day -- but the average for each post is still about 200. Sometimes it's 100; sometimes it's 1000; once, it was seven. Each time, the post was appropriate for the story, and I think that is the hallmark of an advanced RP: knowing what's appropriate, knowing what's good for flow.

I'm not saying you shouldn't include some of your character's thoughts, for that matter, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression -- I just think there's a limit to how MUCH you should be including. There's a difference between a line like "she wondered if he were drunk, or just stupid" and "she thought back to how her friend used to drink too much" followed by seventeen lines of unimportant flashback.

I just think some RP styles are completely incompatible. And that's fine. Some people like in-depth bios (I'm one of them -- I start brief and then flesh out through RP). Some people like applicationless games. Some people like short posts. Some people like long posts. The only thing I get het up about is when I see people saying that six sentences is crap. It's not. It can be, just like six hundred sentences can be. I don't think the style that encourages (or, for goodness sake, requires) thousands and thousands of words is fun, and I definitely don't think that just slapping a bunch of words on the page makes you an advanced writer. Those words you slap down have to be effective and worthwhile -- and if they are, good for you! I'm sure it was an awesome post.

It's just that there is more, SO MUCH MORE, to RP than just word count. SO MUCH.

I've read some really great long posts. They were compelling and they never dragged; however, I'll have to agree that a lot of longer ones are full of stuff that doesn't need to be there. I won't say that they're bad, but I'll say that I'm not always interested in reading or writing that much. Years ago, I was a huge fan of five-page posts. Anyone who wrote less just, well, sucked. So I kind of understand that mentality, even though it's not something I encourage at all.

Nowadays, my posts average 150 to 300 words, and I feel a little offended sometimes when someone who writes more -- but not better -- implies that I can't be good or "advanced" if my posts are shorter. I get it done -- it's short, simple, and to the point. If I feel bad that someone wrote 1000 words for me, then I'll try to write as much back, if only out of a sense of obligation. But I won't enjoy it.

To me there are two aspects to writing a good RP post.

Firstly, as a reader of the post I want it to be interesting to me, I want to know why the character has acted in a certain way and why they are thinking what they are thinking. I want to know what the character is up to. It is not just about the parts that I can use as a player to respond to. I read threads on my site that I am not involved in and if they simply consisted of parts that the other player could respond to and nothing else, it would become rather boring to read.

Secondly, They do have to have an element of response to them. Someone can spend 1000 words witing a break down of their character being in a certain area, it can be really vivid in the description but if there is nothing for me to respond to with my character, no hook to get them involved, then it becomes a struggle to respond.

If you can combine the two, that to me makes a good RP post. Long or short as long as those two bases are covered and it is well written and interesting I will be a happy bunny. I don't want 1000+ words of scene setting that my character cant react to but I don't want 6 lines of action with no detail either.

I agree with the posts above that say how great short posts are, but I write long posts and enjoy reading long posts. In fact, I'd probably find that 4200 post very interesting. Roleplaying for me is as much about reading and getting to know other peoples' characters and ideas as it is about writing. I understand that this is not the view that many people take, and this is not the style of roleplaying that many of you enjoy, but it's what I like. When another player writes a long detailed post, I get excited. I enjoy reading, and I roleplay with some great authors, so I actually really like when they include flashbacks and thought processes that help me get to know their characters better.

Coming here and saying that 1000+ word posts aren't worth reading or are always filled with padded fluff is as bad as saying that six sentence posts are always inadequate. Sometimes long posts have too much padding and sometimes short posts don't include enough, but neither is always true and neither style of roleplaying is worse than another, it's just a matter of preference. Also, all writers make mistakes and picking apart posts at a public discussion forum is ridiculous to me. I use too many commas, Lady Notorious spelled sentences wrong... who cares? I don't proofread my posts at RPG-D like I do when I'm roleplaying and I don't want to feel like someone's picking through my posts here with a red pen.

in my opinion, around 3 good paragraphs (give or take a few depending on the situation) is about right for most replies. not too much to muck through, not to little to the point of lacking. i usually do about that myself, unless the situation asks for less/more. in very long posts, i know i wouldn't read it all, i'd skim for dialogue or an action or two and respond to that, which may or may not be enough to consist of a long post, and sometimes i end up with a few lines to a ten paragraph post because my character cannot respond to the other's mental state or anything other than actions/speech and sometimes a character cannot even respond to all of that for personality/situational/other reasons.

i don't mind the thoughts, i like all that very much, but usually if i'm rping with someone who does the long post thing with a lot of that, i will ask the person to separate it. i like to know the character, but once i know the character, it becomes fluff to me if it isn't called for.

Obviously I care, and feel that everyone should care about how they present themselves in text. :) There's a difference to me between a typo -- we all make them, god knows I do, and I try not to point them out -- and consistently spelling a word incorrectly. The former is easy to fix and is usually a one-time thing; the latter shows that you honestly don't know how a word should be spelled. I pointed it out in this instance because I think it's indicative of a problem in the culture that I feel many members of RPGD espouse: that the single most important quality of an advanced writer is the word count. THAT is what I think is wrong. :)

You're saying that she isn't an advanced writer because her posts at an OOC discussion board have spelling errors? o.O Many people, myself included, proofread their roleplay posts and other writing but don't always proofread their posts on forums like RPG-D. If you haven't played with her, then you really have no idea. In any case, she didn't give us a post of hers to pick apart. The point of this thread is not to judge whether or not Lady Notorious is fab enough for you to label her advanced, it was for her to rant about an anonymous player at an anonymous site.

Sarahj, I think I just fell in love with you. You're my knight in shining armor. <3

Seriously, wtf people?? This wasn't meant to be a debate or anything! I just needed to vent a bit last night so I thought when I went to bed it would be the end of it. And then I wake up this morning to find two pages on it...

Okay, you're missing the point I was trying to make, and I'm not sure why you think I'm picking her post apart. I pointed out one word that was consistently misspelled because I believe that when you are presenting yourself in text -- ANY text -- you should take care how you present yourself. I make no distinction between OOC and IC writing. If you don't care enough to spellcheck OOC, especially when browsers like Firefox will automatically check for you, why should I assume you care enough IC?

Whereas the impression I -- and several others, it would appear -- was given was that the original post specifically said that it was impossible to have a good post be six sentences long. Here is the direct quote: "This evening, for instance, I had to respond to a post of, literally, six lines. And I'm sorry, but on a so-called 'advanced' site, that's just not okay." That's my point, because that statement is patently false, and is based on the assumption that "advanced" means only word count. It doesn't, and it shouldn't.

There's no rule that says rants can't be taken as serious discussion, and there is a lot of good discussion here, particularly Kwentra's two rules of an RP post and missmossxx explaining why she finds her very long posts so much fun.

Amazing how people will debate matters of taste... (which are indisputable).

Probably shouldn't add anything here, but hey...

If you don't like RPing with someone, either because you find their posts too long or too short or too neon-orange... why not... just.... not RP with them? Or have a chat with them?

That is, you're RPing with a person. Not a machine. Not a computerized system. Not a 'board.' Granted, boards can foster certain irritating qualities, like really long, fluff-filled posts (I refuse to play into trends like that, but most people don't). Still! RP should be about interactions between individual players, I think. Thus I've had some great RP with people I've found on 'open' boards, 'intermediate' boards... 'insanely elite' boards, etc... make sense?

Alright, Emma. And I apologize to you, Lady Notorious; being mean was not my intention if it seemed that way.

However, that said, I still stand by the content of my post. The original post--which was what I was replying to (and it seems that many people are replying to)--came across as incredibly arrogant and "this girl sucks because she doesn't write long enough posts." Whether or not that was what she meant, that was what she said and that was what I was (and am) against.

As for advanced labels: I understand that everyone labels "advanced" differently, but when the post is full of basic grammatical and spelling errors, it's hard to believe that one is an advanced writer.

Now, I don't know why someone would have a problem with long posts in general (just as I cannot fathom why anyone would have a problem with short posts in general), but I can see where a post with thousands of words would be time consuming and difficult to plow through. Yes, it's fine for novels, but for RPing, it's kind of like a one-sided conversation.

Once I decided to match my post length to whoever's posts I was RPing with. It produced boring posts on my part. (And the other people's posts weren't all that spectacular, either.) The point: people's post lengths vary depending upon the writer. Sure, some people may write tons of words and some may write fewer, but it's no reason to discriminate if they're all good posts.

sarahj's and and SmathNa's last posts - here here. xD
And December's last bit too, which I didn't see until starting this. xD

*giggle* But debating things is so much fun! I seriously need to check that forum out lately xD I seem to have placed my enthusiasm for discussions in the wrong forum, whoops. :p

@ Cal: I'm just saying that you (this is a collective you) should take this for what it is- a rant. Something written up for the sole purpose of venting. Something probably written up very quickly, with little thought put into phrasing or grammar. The discussion that follows isn't an issue for me, but you implying that grammatical errors in her rant disqualify her as advanced writer is. A rant written quickly out of frustration and annoyance IS different than a long post, whether or not you care to distinguish it.

Advanced doesn't just mean word count- I never disagreed with you there. I do disagree that her statement was patently false though. The site in question had a post length requirement, and regardless of your stance on post lengths, the other player was breaking the rules when he/she didn't meet them. Why is it so fundamentally wrong for her to be upset that the person was consistently breaking the rules and the admins weren't saying anything?

I understand where you're coming from. I have experienced roleplaying with people that are simply not at the same level that I am (generally resulting in much shorter, bland posts), and it can be frustrating. When a site has high standards, they should be maintained by the administration. These standards should be made clear, leaving no excuse for accepting members that cannot meet the standards and having members that fail to meet those standards after being accepted. I don't see anything wrong with maintaining a community that caters to a specific group of writers (in this case, "advanced" writers), but that's just it. . . it needs to be maintained or there's no point in claiming that there are specific standards in place.

You would be right to take some sort of action based on your experience as long as you handled the situation respectfully and maturely. After all, failing to post over the minimum requirement is breaking a rule, whether everyone believes the rule is logical or not.

I think everyone can easily agree that quality over quantity is better, especially as more words doesn't always equal a better post. However, inexperienced writers often have difficulty roleplaying with detail, resulting in shorter posts that are not easy to work with. Some shorter posts (I'd say about 200 words) are very well constructed (experienced writers can be clear and concise while providing a post that is both entertaining and full of useful information), but others are clearly not. A short post does not immediately point out an inexperienced roleplayer, but inexperienced roleplayers often create short posts.

Sometimes I write 300-400 words. Other times I write over 1,000. It really depends on the situation. Sometimes there isn't a lot to say, and other times a lot must be said to move the thread along. I have no preference either way as long as posts are well constructed and useful. Obviously, longer posts tend to show more effort (not always, I know that) which I definitely appreciate, but I don't think people need to write 1,000 words per post just to be considered "advanced". However, experienced roleplayers should be capable of writing a few paragraphs, especially when it is required. Minimum word counts that are reasonable (800 words would not be reasonable. XD I'm talking 150-200 or something.) don't bother me at all, and I would expect people to pay attention to them.

Bottom line- I think that you have every reason to be irritated by situations similar to the one you described.

Since when is loading something with padding simply to hit some arbitrary limit ever good writing?

It isn't. Seriously, take a few writing courses - you will quickly learn that being concise is one of the most important skills that you will develop for writing. Learn to excise out everything that is unnecessary, simply there for padding, etc., and concentrate on what is actually important. That is what good writers do.

I'm not saying that you should leave out all details - or even a lot. Just that long posts do not automatically mean "good writing" and in fact generally skew towards the opposite. Not to mention the fact that plowing through paragraphs of needless detail and padded fluff to pick out the relevant bits is simply boring and tedious.

And yes, it is very possible to accurately describe someone's thoughts, actions, and what they say in six sentences. As I said above, it's called being concise and stripping out unnecessary detail.

*considers* I actually like forcing myself out of the bounds of my ordinary concision. I often have the opposite problem to most people--I don't automatically pad, I automatically condense, and try to mention six ideas in six words, because, I guess, I'm worried it won't hold people's interest (had a prof. yell at me about it, too). I find it creates the sense of being 'in the scene', that is, it absorbs one more as a reader, if I write more than, say, two or three paragraphs (and less than eight). I don't think concision is really the soul of wit. Besides, in RP, as opposed to real writing, there honestly is the issue of courtesy. Much shorter than the reply you got? Discourteous. Much longer, too long to read without eye- or brain-strain? Discourteous. Of course, like all of etiquette, these are guidelines rather than laws.

If I can say it all in two paragraphs, I will.

On one site I was one, I decided to RP with someone. They started it with an 800-word post, to which there were two lines I could reply (the last two). I gave them two choices - give me more to reply to, or watch me waffle up to the word minimum (which in turn, would give them little to reply to). They changed their post and the resulting three paragraphs were much better as the waffle was removed and the whole post was now things I could reply to.

I refuse to be told I'm not advanced just because I don't write page after page of waffle. If I've written two hundred words of pure awesome, you can't say I'm not advanced just because "it isn't long enough".

Example: The Harry Potter books. Very enjoyable, but in the last three I was drifting off into thinking of other things because there was so much unnecessary waffle in them. They could have been much shorter if the waffling wasn't there.

(for 'waffle', read 'wank' - I just didn't want to fill my post with the word xD)

^ I was "converted" through similar means. I can whip up a post of four paragraphs of about 300 - 600 words easily; however, my posts are not all action. They're actions, thoughts, feelings, some tidbits of the past (if the post calls for it). I don't stretch things out to reach a "length requirement," because I never have those on my boards and I just hate the message that that sends across.

However, my favorite RP partner (who I RP with on AIM and via InsaneJournal) writes only a few lines per post, and I post the same amount. So saying "You cannot adequately describe what a character's doing, thinking, and saying in six sentances. I'm sorry, it's just impossible." is just BS, because I do it all the time. Sometimes in less than six lines. I don't consider myself anywhere near Hawthorne (who, just FYI, is probably not the best example when describing "concise" writing lmao), but I do consider myself a pretty competent, creative, imaginative writer... I hate seeing people who say you can't write a "good" post in less than ten or six or one hundred lines, because I can and I do, and I know many other people who can as well.

So, whenever people are essentially saying or implying that short posts are bad posts, I automatically assume that they've either A) Had really bad luck with "one liners" (which, IMO, is an insult and shouldn't be used to describe people who write less than, say, 200 words); or B) Have never honestly given 'writing less' a try. And more often than not, I'll bet my money that it's B. I myself didn't intend on writing only a few lines per post with my favorite RP partner; that's just how it turned out. And seeing how quickly the lines progressed, how nice it was not having to wait days for an 800+ word reply... I have to say, I really prefer short posts now. :p Though my average (when I'm RPing with others) is still 400 - 600 words.

Not pointing fingers on anyone in this thread; I'm just clarifying my stance. After all, I was of the mind that short = bad once upon a time, so I know how people can come to that conclusion. I've just been enlightened. XD

I haven't read this entire thread, but I read the beginning and the end.

Personally, I judge by how I feel. If I'm RPing with someone and their posts are making me feel good, then I don't care how long they are. They can be one line replies and that's fine. All that matters is whether I'm enjoying myself when I'm writing my reply. So I can be on a site with many "inferior" roleplayers, but that doesn't matter because I just want to enjoy myself when I reply to their posts.