When it comes to length, I wouldn't consider a post to be 'long' unless it overstays its welcome. I would include any post that overuses fluff for no mechanical purpose, posts that dump piles of pace-breaking exposition, and posts that break 3000-4000 words. Many players have trouble writing exposition without disrupting the pace of a story, using descriptive writing to empower themes and tone, and summarizing their writing in general. While casual RPs are certainly not exempt from this fact, I've merely experienced more of this trend while reading into advanced threads. Either I'm just
excessively unlucky, or Casual is so over-inflated that it's hard to compare to advanced due the the sheer mass of examples. I'd say it's important to make a relative comparison in that case though. You can't compare 800 threads from one section to 100 threads in another section
directly. It's also important to examine posts/writing from a storytelling perspective more often than it's important to accredit a text for its use of fluff. Dan Brown, as a professional example, does not fluff up his books at
all. Whether that's because he simply lacks the capacity to do so without putting cracks in his
already bland narratives, or because he thinks it unnecessary is besides the point. Compare him to somebody like Steven King, and there's a drastic change. King's storytelling is well executed in tandem with his talent to the written word. Sometimes his books suffer because of how verbose they can get, but for the most part, he's a good example of how to write fluff without breaking sentence flow or ruining pacing. Though, it should be no surprise that I also think Steven King's books are
very hit-or-miss.
The issue that comes up when people 'prettify' their writing, is that many young readers will flop over and applaud when they see 5 adjectives in one sentence. Sometimes a community that encourages innovation is not healthy for improvement. RPG's community as a whole is mostly concerned with the art of roleplaying. That, or
starting drama. What a shocker. It should be noted the
role playing and writing are not mutually inclusive. There are plenty of people that have no desire to improve their writing while role playing. While RPs involve some level of collaborative writing,
that isn't the focus of role playing. This is also one of the reasons as to why collaborative posts are cancerous monstrosities that defy the very nature of Role playing, but that's another topic entirely.
Even so, I don't think this is a community where people
should look to improve. I think it's a site where people seek entertainment through a medium that happens to find itself based in writing. If people want to improve, that's great. If not, that's also fine. I'm not looking to push people towards professional writing myself.
That being said, I'd always thought that separating 'casual' and 'advanced' was a silly idea that brings more negatives than positives.
A novelist doesn't always follow the standard.
I'd argue that, most of the time,
novelists do follow particular standards. They also have professional editors to pick up the slack in some cases, and reflect on their writing. Part of the issue with examples you'd find on a site like this, as mentioned earlier, is that players post-and-go pretty quickly. The level of proofreading that goes into a post is likely minimal. I rarely even proofread my own posts.
Quality =/= quantity but they are intrinsically related in most cases.
In what sense? Does it have any pertinence?
"I can write what you write in less words." I'm sure you can, but I'd probably enjoy reading it less.
