On (Not) Wallposting

Part of Mastin Academy.

Original Lecture: On (not) wallposting

just do what i do
click submit after every paragraph

--kuribo

The best walls are the ones which aren't really walls; I recommend keeping your walls of text under one screenwidth, usually a maximum of 3-4 reasonable-length paragraphs. If you absolutely must wallpost, then it is paramount you format your walls in a way that encourages people to actually read them. For instance, while people may joke about not reading my posts...most actually do.

So while I'm not the best person to ask on how to stop walling altogether...what I can do is give formatting advice, some of which will be applicable in walling less often in general. The most important thing to have in a wall is good flow: things naturally transitioning from one point to another smoothly, broken up neatly into nice, easily-read sections that aren't hard to digest.

In addition to giving guiding thoughts, I also recommend keeping paragraphs a reasonable length. Most of your paragraphs should not be one, maybe two-liners. Nor should they be a solid block of text. About six or seven lines at MOST. Ideally, you have 3-5 lines. (Usually about three sentences, though depending on sentence length, it could be two to seven.) Yes, that varies on both screen location and location you are typing. But try anyway.

The next thing to ask is how much information you actually need. Sometimes, simply posting as soon as you've completed your thought is adequate, and that'll immediately cut down on your number of walls. Typically, I caution to avoid spamposting to make sure the thought is ACTUALLY completed before hitting submit (to make sure nothing additional is needed for the thought), so look over your post, see if there's anything you want to change, and only after thinking for a few seconds (or even minutes) do you submit.

That thought-train editing makes all the difference. You want to process and organize your mind, and minimize what you don't need. Refine your thoughts! If your process is easily traceable, it is easily followed. When I post, what you see is typically not my first draft--it's usually my third or even fourth. That editing allows me to string people along, showing my mind's narrative.

As an added bonus, the editing process typically cuts down on words used, making walls...less of a wall! If not, if you end up with more than you started with...start over. No, really. Scrap it, do it again. Subtract! And you often will, so long as you follow this process.