# Good length for a post?



## random user (Jun 8, 2004)

I'm thinking about about archiving a story hour for my campaign here and I'm thinking how to organize it all.  Does anyone have any suggestions on about how long an average story post should be?


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## Joshua Randall (Jun 8, 2004)

Personally, I like 'em long. The longer the better. 
(There is a post length limitation built into vBulletin, but I'm not sure what it is.)

Alternatively, just take every 5 or 10 pages of your Word document (or whatever) and make that one post. If the story is good enough, most people will end up copying it back into Word to read offline anyway.


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## Cheiromancer (Jun 8, 2004)

A lot depends on how often you update.  If you update frequently (once a week or more often) your posts can be short.  A few screenfulls of text.

If you make your readers wait for a month between updates, you need to make the updates substantially longer.

Note that you will not get a lot of readers or comments early on.  I know that I wait until a thread gets to a healthy length before I start reading it.  I dislike reading a story hour that its author abandons after two or three updates.

A few lurkers read a great number of story hours, and they are the ones who will likely give you early support.  But the motivation to write the story hour has to come from within.  It is, by all accounts, hard work to write a story hour, and harder still to persevere in it.

Good luck!

[edit]If you are going to update more than once a week, 500-800 words is a good size.  The Jester's last post was a little over 500 words.  On a monthly or biweekly basis, you want to look at Sepulchrave II; his posts often hit the limit on post size, and might be about 4000 words or so.

Try for 1000 words a week, and you'll do fine.

[edit]


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## Dr Midnight (Jun 9, 2004)

I make each update around 1,000 words, and I have maybe four or five updates per game session. I try to update fully weekly so I don't fall behind.

$1,000,000 tip: Always end each post on something cool. A revelation, a cliffhanger, a great line... something that will keep the readers coming back.


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