Thread: Roleplay Post Length

I have always had the view that rping, for me, is an exercise of writing basically a novel with someone else. In recent years my view has taken on amendments of the absolute crucial nature of characters and interactions, so, while I used to pride myself in 30 page longin Word posts, I feel like that is a bit of a self-aggrandizement that takes away the life and the point of a mutual fantasy escapism between two people. Who wants to sit through basically a novel, have to process it, and make their characters replyreact to it? A lot of times, that length of post, I'd split it between 3 different characters POV, filling it with not only character thoughts but also dialogue and actions. But when you shit out something like that EVERY post, looking back, you realize not only have you, in real time, the time frame passing that exists in the rp world, has only gone by less than 5 minutes but you've thought the situation to death. It slows the action down, it's not interesting to read when you step away and then come back to the rp several days later, starting at page 1, and it's needlessly repetitive. A lot of my old posting style was also made up of reactionary posting. Like, Person A writes their character saying and doing something and then Person B, before they move things forward, they go back and step by step react internally and externally to what Person A's character did, before finally saying stuff and doing stuff of their own. Which is also annoying to read from a standpoint of starting from post 1, then post 2 is a rehashing of all the action in post 1 before we finally move forward to new actions being performed. Now, with the crucial part being the emphasis on character interactions and the story having a narrative and linear flow to it, I try to curb that desire to stroke my own ego and throw up a diarrhea of exposition and internal dialogue that basically amounts to both our characters are standing here staring at each other while we wait for you to finish reading his thoughts about every fucking thing and remembering backstory points that may or may not actually have pertinence right now. Rule of thumb Reading the post should not take longer than the in role-play time that is passing. If it takes you 30 minutes to read my post and only 5 minutes in the actual rp have gone by, then something is wrong and I need to shut the fuck up. They need to be balanced and proportionate. Sometimes, stuff happens very quickly and your characters have memories and flashbacks or thoughts about it and it is okay... but to a degree. It's like a comic book fight scene. You got to have a pacing with the panels the more panels you have for the eye to process and look over, the longer and slower it generally flows, depending upon the size and details portrayed. Doubly so if you stop to put word bubbles or boxes full of long internal dialogue. It stops the eye movement which is your meter for how fast things are moving in the story. So, if actiony stuff is happening in real quick succession in your story, stopping to insert a memory or a character's internal exposition slows it down needlessly. I try to imagine putting the entire thing together like a book. Narratively, chronologically, if we took all of our posts and slipped them together into one long document, how does it read? Is my character talking over yours? Asking questions that either 1. don't get answered or 2. after rehashing action, your character finally answers those questions and it's less a conversation than a jumble of sections of dialogue, then something is wrong. So, you gotta stop. You gotta stop, slow down and give the other character time to react. You can't have your character say something or ask a question and then walk away, unless you either don't expect the other person's character to answer, or you want to give the narrative a feeling of being rushed or pushed or bullied. Generally, to give myself room to move around and keep things flowing, I give myself a 3-5 paragraph window but don't really hold to that. Particularly if there is a conversation going on, I think of it as an overall picture rather than two people standing side by side laying independent objects onto a table. We're sitting across from each other, playing chess, or dancing across a floor together. Our movements depend upon one another. As such, I depend very heavily upon a partner being able to give back. I don't like a passive character to join with mine, although in some ways it works. Someone has to lead the story, otherwise we step on each other. But it is nice to find somebody who can follow a lead, then lead on their own. The point with that though is I don't like a story that ends up looking like a tug of war or a fight for spotlight on paper. We have to agree on a goal, agree on a track and show cleverness and ingenuity within that joined focus. So, generally, it doesn't bother me to get less from a partner than I give as far as length. So long as I'm not interacting with a cardboard cutout, who cares how long it is. And on the other side, I'll often walk away from writers who want to drown me in text. Good for you, you know how to write. Have fun. Bye.