nothing’s too long i’ll read your character analysis for free and support you while we’re on the same ride together. Nothing gives me more power than being able to understand someone else’s character and then doing a thing that makes the rper go holy sht tanz you totally got them abd id be loke yeah ik tee hee

rping for me was never abt rping my fav characters or playing types i like. It’s always been about telling a story, and learning of a story. I myself dont know my characters well from the get go. I discover who they are and i always fall in love with whoever they turn out to be

So it’s the same for other characters. I love learning about them. I love giving them the love they deserve.

And i also think sharing and understanding the love someone has for a character is special. It’s why i love fellow suzaku kururugi fans. Suzaku is a particularly complicated character that does take effort to undersrand so people who love him means theyve gone through the same phase that i did and wept and laughed at how messed up he is

Aka i flourish in sharing exp with others so

i have a threshold for it but it tends to not be a negative thing. i tend to like more information over a little information.

the only time i will say something is too long to tolerate reading is when the text is composed of giant paragraphs with no variance in the length of the paragraphs and sentences they're composed of. as a reader, it is exhausting to read walls of text and run on / overtly fluffed sentences.

so, i suppose, for the most part it boils down to how 'proper' (using that in a loose, opinionated way) the other person writes.

This, mainly. The only time I notice something is 'too long' is when my eyes were already glazing over from boredom at what I was reading, in which case any additional length becomes exponentially more intolerable.

I also don't put word counts on my posts or try to 'match' my thread partners, just vibe check if we're giving each other enough to go off of.

The only thing I've noticed wrt my own writing length is my apps tend to be on the wordier side and the word count goes up when I'm writing fight scenes.

O i forgot this was aboit post length too. Thats a different story.

I dont try to match post length. I think whatever is necessary works. Rather, length is hardly ever the problem. I find the flow more of the pressing issue. Like when there are double convos happening and it just becomes hard to reply. Or when the subject keeps circling about and it makes it hard for me to push the thread forward bc the other poster is just passively reacting insteas of hleping me out

I’m guilty of writing long posts sometimes but it’s like, 1 out of 50 posts, and i do it bci want to change things up a bit sometimes. Play the scene a bit differently… idk i write a lot and i get worried my writing starts to look like a set pattern with replaceable words lol so i try to do things form other angles

I think when it comes to apps, it's okay to have as much information (or as little) as you want, so others can know your characters. I mean apps are meant to give people an insight of what a character is about/what to expect of them. For threads/replies, I don't care how much my partners write but me personally, I always feel like I write too much/overly go in-depth. By much too, in relation to me, is when I double the length of my partner's length. To stop myself from writing too much, I make it a habit to match post length of my partners which often means I spend a good chunk of my time editing my replies. Though sometimes it can't be helped and I pray my partner doesn't feel obligated to match/gets overwhelm and doesn't want to response because of the length.

Personally, I don't equate length with effort. Whenever I edit writing, often I have to cut things, not add to them. After all, people are inclined to repeat things, meander, or get lost in minute details irrelevant to the scene.

I'm not privy to people's lives, so I don't like to assume things based on circumstantial evidence at best. I have no way of telling whether someone made 5 minutes of time in a busy work schedule to reply to a post, or if they spent 15 minutes writing while they were waiting for the bus. The former comes off as someone who is more enthusiastic, even if their shorter writing time usually means a shorter post.

If I were to describe a filthy kitchen, I might write something as such:



I spent ten minutes on that, but it's not very long. Does that mean it's low effort?

Turn it around. Say roleplaying is like having two actors in an impromptu play, bouncing off each other. One of the actors walks to the front of the stage and holds a 10-minute soliloquy while the other sits in a corner, sipping some water, checking their insta, maybe write a post.

Often when I read lengthy posts, I find that they're a lot about the character, their experiences, feelings, memories and whatnot, and the hooks to reply to often aren't more numerous than I would find in a short post. If you want to be judgmental and negative, you could say these posts are written for the author themselves, to show how smart and emotional they are.

But we don't know, because people's reasons for roleplay differ and writing such lengthy insights into characters may be cathartic or therapeutic.

My point is, if we want to be negative, it's easy to judge both short and lengthy posts as either being not enough or too much effort, as being unenthusiastic or too self-centred. It mostly comes down to what your expectations are. If you expect your writing partner to return lengthy posts because that's what you enjoy, great. Communicate that if your partner isn't meeting your expectations.

I think we should normalise pulling out of threads because they aren't sparking joy or filling a need. So much resentment can be avoided if we're upfront and honest with each other, and accept that not all writers have a spark.


EDIT:
I realise I overlooked the question, which is "When is it too long?" Sorry, I have a short attention span.

Nonetheless, I think that depends on circumstances. A riveting post is easier to read than a meandering one. Proper formatting helps keep your focus too. If you stay to the point and the writing is sharp, I'll have an easier time focusing on your 3,000 word post. By contrast, if you meander and launch into poetic waxing, then your 500 word post could come off as many times longer than the 3,000 word one.

Outside of scene setting posts I think 500 is usually excessive. Many folks I see doing this are post splicing (having multiple conversations at once), redescribing what the other person is doing, or monologuing way too much.

I wish a holistic approach to threading was more normalized. Instead of "How can I make this post perfect" I wish people would spend more time trying to make it flow with their partner's posts better.

I mostly agree with Traveller here.

Since I also tend to remove a lot when I edit posts, longer posts tend to be less effort for me because I put less work into editing them. It's really hard to judge how much "effort" someone put in a post from reading them alone sometimes, and it's not something I try to judge often -- but I can be a pretty lax person when it comes to RP overall, so yeah. I can understand the disappointment that can happen when someone replies with something short to something long, I have friends who feel the same, it's just not something that I feel personally.

This is definitely an RP subject that will always be...subjective, especially since we tend to have different tolerances for what is long and what drags on or not. Which is why I like threads like these, since I really enjoy knowing others' perspectives. As for my personal preference, I like long and short posts, and while I think I enjoy writing long posts the most, I don't mind writing short to medium ones either, it really depends on the thread overall.

I think the best solution is to clearly communicate expectations and ask your RP partners if they prefer length matching, long posts, short posts, if they don't mind lots of monologue and so forth. Sometimes you're just not compatible with someone's writing and that's perfectly fine. I think it can be surprising and fun just what styles can work together, but if you're just not meshing well, it does no harm to not RP with someone or talk to them about it and figure out a compromise.

When I was younger and I ran a forum that had a constant flow of applications, I had to put in word limits because some people wrote extremely long apps and I didn't have the time or energy to read them on top of everything else I had to do.

Nowadays, I'm a much less picky app reader and my forum is new and doesn't have 5,000+ characters with more constantly coming in... so people can write as much as they want and I'm happy to read it!

On the writing side of it, occasionally I'll write a long app but most of mine are short because I much much much prefer discovering the character's personality, background, quirks, and interests through roleplay threads. I write apps lightly so I can fill in the details later and figure out what suits them. Oftentimes what I write in the app doesn't end up very accurately reflecting how I end up writing them in RP, because, well, things change!

90% of my RP posts are under 1,000 words, usually in the 300ish range, depending heavily on the genre. I don't mind reading or writing 1,000+ words, but I think it's generally easier to stay under that. Flows better.

I think I'm in the same camp as Traveller and Wraith here. I've had to learn not to equate length to effort in roleplay. When I'm pressed for time, my posts tend to be longer. When I have time to give, I cut a lot more words. A lot of times, I write out my post and then I delete the first paragraph of whatever I wrote. Because it was just clearing my throat and getting started.

'Is the writing compelling,' is the better question. I don't mind reading monologuing about characters -- I often find it interesting! -- but it has to be written in a way where it's enjoyable to read, as opposed to feeling like skimming a grocery list or listening to a lecture.

Additionally, you need to have things people can respond to! Dialogue, actions, etc. A post that is just interiority is hard to respond to, no matter how beautifully written. I'm a very introspective writer and it's important to me that my character's motivations are understood by my writing partners, but I make a rule for myself that everything needs to have something grounded in the moment to go with it: a meaningful glance, or a phrase of dialogue that hits differently knowing the interior monologue, or maybe a shift in mood or unexpected action that is explained by the way the character reacts to the scene internally.

Lately my own posts skew 200-300 words ish on average, but they'll get longer if it's a big scene where there's a lot of action going on. 800+ feels like a lot for me personally, and my last post in that range was a pivotal event for my character with a lot of characters and responses to account for.

traveller, wraith, and scarlet have p much said everything for my take, honestly.

a lot of it boils down to what the content of the post / app / etc. is giving. maybe it's bc i'm a gal whose favorite ao3 tag is "character study" but i love introspective threads and debate threads for a reason—it lets you dig deep into a character, how they work, why they do, what they've gone through, and how they're still here. a good piece of writing advice i've gotten before (though it was for scriptwriting, rather than rp explicitly) was that in each scene, the involved characters must want something — it provides direction, momentum, and an anchor. and i tend to treat my threads the same way (at least on my character's end), which usually leads to threads i enjoy since there's that feeling of movement and development. moreover, since it's rp, trying to provide hooks in your post is super helpful! some kind of action, a question, a special tool that'll be needed later, an npc, w/e else.

that doesn't mean lengthy = better or shorter = better, imo. by this point, i've threaded with a lot of people who provide different standard post & app lengths, and i can earnestly say that neither camp has one thing above the other. it rlly falls into what you've communicating and providing in the piece; posts that span 3000+ words can be genuinely riveting if they're digging deep into the character's psyche in a way that's just compelling. at the same time, posts that are shorter than 500 can feel legitimately impressive if they're offering something to work with. i've read long as hell posts that i breezed through because of the content, long posts that said a lot but gave very little, short posts that i found to be super helpful in moving the thread, short posts that were rlly insubstantial and gave me nothing to work with, etc. etc. 

if post length is rlly important then i think just... communicating that with your partner is invaluable, and will save everyone involved a lot of time / effort / energy / stress / worry. set boundaries and set expectations, because god knows no one knows what's actually going on in anyone's head. the only way to rlly figure that out is to just talk, yknow?

also i want to ++ this from what traveller said bc i learned to take this sentiment (both as the person receiving the Talk of that, and the person who has given the Talk of that) this year and by god, was that groundbreaking and gave me significantly less grief in the long run: