Tips for having long posts without God-Modding

[Wapato]

I've been role playing on forums for years, but I'm new to Blue Moon.

One thing that really sticks out as a difference is that expectations about post length are often central to request threads. Now, I get the "no one liners" thing, but a three paragraph post seems about the shortest expectation, while many demand or at least prefer longer. Sometimes much longer.

If my character was off on their own doing things with NPCs that I also write for that would be easy enough. But this is a forum where the characters would seem to be...highly interactive.

Based on my non-erotic RP experience, after a few paragraphs you're at a point where the other player needs to make some decisions.

But folks here do like their long posts so it must work for you. I'm looking for tips on how. Thanks!

 

[Solo]

I think length expectations are silly, personally. As long as a post gives me enough detail to go off of and respond to, I think that's most important. Requiring a certain amount of paragraphs per post regardless of scene makes RPing more of work than fun to me.

I try to re-read my posts after writing them and see if there's anything I can add that would make the actions clearer, make the environment or character easier to envision, and give at least one clear option for my partner's post to react to, but I think it's a bit ridiculous to measure word count rather than what the post actually does.

TL;DR - Long posts aren't automatically good, and good posts aren't automatically long.

 

[The Crooked Kind]

I think it should be more of a matter on how you want to convey your character's thoughts and actions in writing, and sometimes, that can lead to what you would say a "long post". But like solo mentioned, a long post doesn't automatically make it a good post, and vice versa. Sometimes, a character's thought can be conveyed pretty concisely, so a few paragraphs ends up being enough. Other times, you might be having a lot of stuff progressively going on in the plot, so more things may or may not need to be fleshed out. I'd say your goal shouldn't necessarily be to strive to make a post long, but to make sure you're happy with how and what you've conveyed of your character/plot progression, even if it only takes like, three paragraphs to do so.

 

[Silvered Sutures]

I agree with Solo that post length expectations for post length's sake is silly, provided there's enough detail to keep the story going. Here's a quick and easy to beat the 3 paragraph requirement with low effort;

Paragraph 1: Describe what happened in your partner's post and how it affected your character.

Paragraph 2: Go over the sensations, emotions, anticipations, and thought process of your character.

Paragraph 3: Execute the actions that come from the conclusion of those two paragraphs.

Here's a quick and cheap example using one liners, in the context of an RP fight:

"Jack's ears rung as he felt Mike's fist make contact with his face, the loud thud of the impact echoing through his skull.

He felt disorientated, he could taste and smell the iron of his own blood, and he was angry, wanting to hit Mike back for what he'd just done; hit him hard, make it hurt.

Jack launched a toe kick aiming at Mike's inner thigh with his steel-toed boot."

This has the advantage of; 1. Showing you read your partner's post. 2. Showing things about your character's personality and character. 3. Giving something for your partner to react to.

 

[Wapato]

I appreciate the posts on flexibility and shorter (3 para) posts being fine. I also see that solo and Silvered Sutures have particularly flexible request threads when it comes to post length. Though I suppose I've been reading the female request board. Maybe the lesson here is that you can get interest in your request threads, and so set the expectation that three sentence replies can be fine?

I'm curious about how The Crooked Kind works though. You indicate you do prefer longer posts, 600+ words, and it seems you particularly enjoyed a game where each post was around 3000 words. Did I get that right? If so, how are you managing to write that much each post while the characters are interacting without substantially taking the other character over?

 

[Zephyra]

Silver laid it out perfectly, I couldn't have come up with a better explanation if I tried. But to illuminate from my own side: I am someone who does have something of a post length requirement, not to an insane degree and there are certainly exceptions based on the flow of the scene, but through all my years of roleplaying I've found that ~300 words is gonna be about my sweet spot for shorter posts. I typically write more than that, I just don't generally want to do less than that. I know quality is much more important than quantity, but if there's too little for me to work with I lose interest and move on.

I'm super big on when my partner writes about their character's thoughts and feelings about what's taking place in the scene, as well as describing even little things like how the weather feels, what color the sunset is, if their character is dealing with some lingering pain, how they think MC looks in that moment, etc etc. I do the same sort of thing. Details, details, details. I want them all, haha. With internal monologue and descriptions alone I can fill a lot of a post, while still following the basic "MC's reaction to what YC did/said" ---> "MC taking action/saying something for YC to react to".

In this way, you can avoid god-modding pretty easily. Some things will have to be a given though, for instance, let's say our characters are having a conversation and MC starts walking into another room. The assumption is that YC will follow her, and I will work off of that assumption and add it into my post, because if I had to stop my post every time MC wanted to go somewhere else to wait for YC it would be incredibly disruptive to the flow of the story. That's why I think small things like that are fine, or MC could grab YC's wrist and pull them along after her to make them follow. This should always be discussed with your partner too, but yeah.

Anywho, the main thing is to just fill out your post with little intricacies that flesh out your character/side characters and add to the story. There's been times where I've churned out a few 2,500+ word posts, I don't think I could do that *every single time*, but with really long posts like those a lot of it is just worldbuilding at that point. A lot of the time I can consistently stay around 1,000 words though just by having the reactions, thoughts, and actions. If there are side characters in the scene that makes it even easier, allows me to write out MC's interactions with them without god-modding the other person's character.

 

[Siph]

Aside from the great advice that's already been posted here, something else I'd recommend is having a look at the public RP subforums and see what and how much people are writing there. You'll find RPs with regular two-sentence posts, and some with 1000+-word posts, and everything in between. Simply reading through those RPs can give you an idea of what longer posts tend to contain, how it works with character interaction, and how they compare to RPs with shorter posts. Maybe it'll inspire you to seek out longer-format RPs yourself, or you decide that it's not your thing after all.

If anything, it'll assure you that, while many people on here indeed tend to prefer two, three or more paragraphs, there's plenty of writers whose preferences are within your current comfort zone.

 

[Silvered Sutures]

Another common cheat I like to make use of if I'm like 100 or so words short of the agreed upon post length between myself and my partner is internal dialogue. Just something italicized so its clear that it's only the thoughts of the character, sometimes putting a bit of further context around it to give it a more natural flow. Going with my earlier example of the fight between Jack and Mike, it could be something simple like:

Jack had thought, in the midst of disbelief and confusion in response to the sudden flare of pain; "Did that fucker just-" but the thought remained unfinished, giving way to the instinctive desire to retaliate.

Boom. I just got an extra 25 words right here. It also tends to make the character feel more alive, and like a breathing, thinking, individual.

 

[Wapato]

In this way, you can avoid god-modding pretty easily. Some things will have to be a given though, for instance, let's say our characters are having a conversation and MC starts walking into another room. The assumption is that YC will follow her, and I will work off of that assumption and add it into my post, because if I had to stop my post every time MC wanted to go somewhere else to wait for YC it would be incredibly disruptive to the flow of the story. That's why I think small things like that are fine, or MC could grab YC's wrist and pull them along after her to make them follow. This should always be discussed with your partner too, but yeah.

That's useful if it's a common expectation. I suspect there are points of accepted etiquette in play that might not exist in, say, system RPs.

Siph:
Aside from the great advice that's already been posted here, something else I'd recommend is having a look at the public RP subforums and see what and how much people are writing there.

I tried looking first, but I note that there seems to primarily be two types of threads.

1. Those that die rapidly. These make up the vast majority of all threads, and presumably one or both of the writers are making literary transgressions of some sort.
2. Those with pairs that seem to generate incredible amounts of content. Often across many threads, but seemingly always with each other, over my admittedly smallish sample. These might be good examples, but they might also be very very particular to each other. I also suspect, but don't know, that they have substantial levels of either OOC discussions going on, or just a high level of trust in terms of what they can do with the others character that I wouldn't want to presume with a new player. They also might have reached some kind of agreement about the flow of things as they were planning the RP.

In any case you'd be the ones to know how the behind-the-scenes part plays into it all, or even if it's common to have or not.

 

[Wapato]

I spent a little bit poking around the threads again, with this post in mind.

Interestingly, despite "one liners" being treated like a near unforgivable sin in the request threads, the actual threads that last on these boards seem to heavily favor them.

There is also another sort of thread type I hadn't appreciated. Those that are perhaps long lived just very very slow. But these might be examples of longer posts with more success to them of a sort. There may not be that many posts, and there might be months or weeks between posts. But they maintained a level of interest over some impressive spans of time. Though again there is plenty of room for vast amounts to be happening in planning PMs or the like.

 

[Silvered Sutures]

2. Those with pairs that seem to generate incredible amounts of content. Often across many threads, but seemingly always with each other, over my admittedly smallish sample. These might be good examples, but they might also be very very particular to each other. I also suspect, but don't know, that they have substantial levels of either OOC discussions going on, or just a high level of trust in terms of what they can do with the others character that I wouldn't want to presume with a new player. They also might have reached some kind of agreement about the flow of things as they were planning the RP.

Look at these cases specifically, find their first RP on site together.

 

[PreciousKitten]

People consider doing anything for or moving the other character to a new location as godmodding? New take for me, but I'll still have a tidbit to share. If someone expects a longer length post or does them kind of like I can, at least SOME leeway usually has to give otherwise one person can be stuck writing a majority of the roleplay and that is not the fairest expectation of just one of you.

If someone truly values length and content? Usually some give has to take place like allowing character movement to degrees that are discussed prior to starting the story. My general rule is nothing serious is done outside of my reply (I.E grievous wound, death, or similar) If someone is not 'comfortable' with their character being taken along throughout a scene and just possibly moved to another location it can quickly cause longer posting replies to become stagnant and the story suffers most of the time or ends up being dropped.

So, my take is either your partner is A) alright with some control being given to move a scene along or possibly B) The replies you give are likely to vary based on the content you are given or can give in return without pushing that boundary.

 

[Dion]

People consider doing anything for or moving the other character to a new location as godmodding? New take for me, but I'll still have a tidbit to share.

I was going to add that myself last night but forgot, but I tend to agree with my partner on certain ground rules i.e. they are allowed to do small things for MC if it advances the story as necessary, without ascribing specific actions to MC or thinking/speaking for them. I used to have an RP with someone that was like, 20.000 words per post that'd take us a month to write. It was borderline impossible to do so without occasionally having to resort to a little god-moding to get a character in the right time and place, especially as we'd often cover multiple days if not weeks in our posts if it was required.

A quick 'hey, is it OK if I move your character to xyz place in my post' works wonders in avoiding any potential upset feelings, but also, it's based on vibes and you can often tell when a partner is OK with it and when they aren't. So I think you are absolutely right, I think moving a character along for the benefit of the story isn't a big deal at all, but it all has to happen in communication.

 

[The Crooked Kind]

I appreciate the posts on flexibility and shorter (3 para) posts being fine. I also see that solo and Silvered Sutures have particularly flexible request threads when it comes to post length. Though I suppose I've been reading the female request board. Maybe the lesson here is that you can get interest in your request threads, and so set the expectation that three sentence replies can be fine?

I'm curious about how The Crooked Kind works though. You indicate you do prefer longer posts, 600+ words, and it seems you particularly enjoyed a game where each post was around 3000 words. Did I get that right? If so, how are you managing to write that much each post while the characters are interacting without substantially taking the other character over?

Sorry for the delay. That's correct. I think my partner and I were on a personal challenge toward each other for that roleplay, so I think that was part of the enjoyment. We really got in heavy with description and internal thoughts (it probably also helped that it was a particularly smutty roleplay as well, heh) and our characters were dealing with themes of identity crises, psychological evaluation, drug use, unorthodox methods of psychiatry treatment, things like that that can be very heavy in nature. Occasionally, we'd kinda godmod a bit just to flesh out an idea that we might have, but as with anything, we had a lot of communication and understanding about how we'd like to progress.

I don't think my mind is in the same frame as if was so long ago to write in that manner tho, lol. And I think it's just my style, since I tend to like exposition and internal thoughts, monologues, and critiques in writing my characters. And I throw in a little bit of fourth-wall-breaking humor as well just because I like to have a little laugh at breaking the boundaries between the writer and the character. Sometimes it might border on the line of fluff, but I've generally received a lot of good reviews and my partners have always enjoyed how that style has moved the plot along. Everyone's style is different.