When to Write a Short Post

Not too many posts ago, I discussed what I referred to as the “Disease of Long Posts” in roleplay, getting into what makes a so-called “Long Post” and why it’s really harmful to the roleplay. Today I want to look at it from the other perspective, though I suspect there will be a portion of overlap in it. Approaching your posts with an understanding of their length is absolutely crucial to your success as a roleplayer, and it should be an issue the writer is continually sensitive toward.

Ever been on a web-site that banned members for making a “short” post? Some places will classify them as spam, others will say it’s simply poor writing, but all around there’s a sense that fewer words mean diminished quality. Naturally, there’s a really important question we have to ask ourselves:

Does this make any sense at all?

Never in any serious writing community is length an empirical measure of quality. No teacher is going to read your paper or story and go, “Well, this looks pretty good, but if you could just go ahead and talk about the weather in excessive detail and maybe focus on this ambiguous theory, I think that would really help the piece as a whole.” Quite the opposite, in fact! Most often people who really enjoy writing get told, “Look, you’re writing too much and I don’t need all of this. I like what you’ve got, but trim it down, okay?” A good writer is concise. A good writer picks their tools appropriately. The reasons why someone feels inclined to write in excess vary greatly, and I’ve talked about them in the other post, so the question for this topic becomes about when to use a short post instead.

To suggest that a ‘short’ post in all situations is worse than a longer one is like saying a short person is always less useful than a tall person. In every situation. Ever. When websites go out of their way to enforce a word-minimum, it pretty handily kills off a lot of roleplaying potential. The idea usually begins by trying to inspire cheap writers into applying their efforts, but it usually ends up doing more damage than it spares the community.

Popular objections to the short post complain that it feels effortless, that it doesn’t give the other roleplayer enough to go off of, and it makes for generally boring character interaction. (In every situation. Ever.) Not only is this foolish and short-sighted, as it has no real evidence to back itself up besides cumulative generations of insular roleplaying communities, but it cuts off access to another important tool the writer ought to be able to employ when the time is right.

Often times, the ability for the writer to give a one-worded answer makes his post ten times more powerful than if he had a paragraph behind it. I would say 9/10 times in a typical roleplay, you should be able to tango with your partner with a good paragraph or three in response to what they’re doing. You can do what you need to do, reflect on what you need to reflect, and make sure the setting is clear and precise. A post that’s a couple of paragraphs isn’t too long, typically.

But it can be.

The length of what you write affects your tone. Sometimes it’s important to stress that your character is impatient, or that they need little time to think about their actions, or maybe just that your character has nothing to say or do. Do you understand how powerful this can be? Being able to respond to someone’s massive, in-depth post with simply:

“She watched him closely, listening to his words. When her accuser finally fell silent, though, she merely lit a cigar and blew a puff of smoke into his face. There was nothing to say to the man.”

That’s 37 words, and it’s a perfectly good roleplay post, if the situation merits it. In fact, I would say it’s vastly superior to attaching another 300 (or even 100) words alongside it. A good writer should be able to anticipate the tone of the story and respond accordingly, not just in roleplay but in all forms of fiction. Manipulate their emotions with every tool you have, and your tone quickly becomes bullet-proof. It’s much more difficult to make a post both bold and long at the same time, so choose wisely. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Brevity is powerful.

In roleplay, we stand at a fatal disadvantage of being locked into only one side of the story. As I’ve said in other posts, I think this can lead to intensely satisfying writing experiences, but as far as smoothness goes it’s always going to be a challenge. Just as often as a character responds by doing something or saying something, they might instead respond by simply doing nothing. Can you imagine if you went some place with 10 people, and all of a sudden all of them were trying to do something, well… worth writing about? Listening is just as important as acting, and it takes place in more places than just the down-time you have while waiting your turn.

Now you might say that, as a roleplayer, sometimes it can be really disappointing to receive a shorter post in response to what you’ve written. You went to all that work to give a great post, and all you got was a one-liner! Maybe even after a month of waiting!

Get over it.

Whether you got a short post because that person just couldn’t think of anything good to write, or maybe they were rusty, or maybe it was just the perfect response, you can always work with it. The truth is it’s better to get a shorter post now than wait two weeks for someone to come up with something really clever. In those two weeks you’re going to do far more damage to the rhythm and mood of the thread than someone’s bite-sized contribution could ever manage.

Does this mean you should always post shortly?

Certainly not. The time will come when you need to move the thread along or need your character to reflect in greater detail on what happened. Just like a brief post is used in certain situations, so are longer ones. The point of this discussion isn’t to go “One is good and the other is bad” but to dispel those ideas altogether. What makes a roleplaying post good or bad goes so far beyond length and even content.