Stretching out your posts!

[Human Torch/Johnny Storm]

Stretching out your posts

Hey this is just to help you stretch out your posts if they're getting way to short.

Sometimes roleplayers will post quick, short and weak posts just to fill in a small area of time or to answer a question.

A way to stretch out a post that seems hard to make into anything appealing to anyone is to describe what your character is thinking (not other people's characters), describe what his current enviroment is like and what other people look like and what your character thinks they're thinking.

Let's look at this post:

Spider-Man waited, clinging to wall until the gang member was in sight. Then he saw the gang member he dived on him and told him to tell him what he knew.

Now that's basically no good. It wouldn't make anyone want to roleplay with you or read your posts. Let's see if we can stretch it out by describing different things.

Spider-Man clung to the side of the wall. It was raining hard. And getting darker. Soon it would be too dark to see anything.

Spider-Man wasn't thinking of this though. His spider-sense could guide him if it got to dark. All he was thinking of was how long it would take the gang member to walk out of the door. He was in a meeting with his gang. He had been thirty-five minutes.

Spider-Man had saw him pull up in the mercedes benz, get out and run into the closed pizza place. He happened to know that this man was part of a gang, so he followed him to this place. He decided to wait till he came out of the meeting. He would probably have more information then.

Spider-Man saw the door creak open. It was the gang member. He quickly dived on him, knocking the gang member down to the ground with Spider-Man on top of him. He webbed his mouth so he couldn't make any sound. Then he pulled him behind some trash cans and hid. Spider-Man wasn't up for a fight. He didn't want the gang to know he was on their trail.

The door creaked open again. A gang member walked out. For twenty minutes, different gang members would walk out and leave until finally they were all gone. Spider-Man saw the last gang member walk around the corner. Then he looked into the robber's eyes to see the fear in his eyes. He tore the web of his mouth and said, "Now talk."

See that's much better and it maked the role playing game much more interesting. I stretched it out much longer there. At the begining I described what it was like waiting for the gang member. Then I described why and how he got there. Then I went into the action and explained how he avoided the other gang members and got the gang member to talk.

[Scott Summers [Cyclops]]

be careful as well to not fall into another, senseless trap. if your post is good, strong, and solid, despite the fact that the length of it isn't desireable, it becomes rather un-attractive to add meaningless things to it. sometimes people will try their best to make their post as "long" as possible, once more falling into a trap that indicates that quantity is better than quality. if you find you are -struggling- to come up with things to say, it may be best to try an alternative post, from an alternative standpoint, rather than create some meaningless poetry.

-silas