On Walling Format

Original Lecture.

I had a student send in a request by PM, figuring I was an expert on walling and asking me if I had any specific tips or if it was just something that took me practice to get good.

As it turns out, the answer's both. I figured it'd be something others could find useful, so I might as well post my response to them.

To be honest, I still struggle with formatting my walls to this very day. I've heard from many of my friends my walls are amongst the most readable walls on the site, but they're my friends, and I still see a lot of people say (without joking) that they aren't going to read what I'm writing because it's a lot of words they see as useless. So I'm still refining my technique. A few things that I've picked up, though, that might help:

• When I know that I'm going to be doing a lot of catching up, I will try to make things have a "flow" to them. Irrelevant things are placed at the top, and slowly transition into the more relevant topics. I also group things. Things about myself will be in the same section, things about townreads will typically be right above or right below that in their own section, things about scumreads will typically be the last thing I talk about in a post, regardless of post chronology. (For instance, I might have a post that quotes posts 65, 59, 28, 79, 90, 69, 40, 100, 20, and maybe even 79 again as a totally random example.)

• I typically break up my walls into multiple posts. While this does somewhat lose the above effect (in that groupings aren't quite as grouped as they can be), it makes the post look less intimidating. Typically, I go by arbitrary criteria: "oh, I've gone five pages on my catch-up, so I might as well post" as one set, and, "oh, it's only been one page, but I'm quoting and/or saying a lot of stuff on this page, so I should probably post" as another, and frankly, more important second one. (Heck, sometimes, if it's a really content-filled page, I can spend an entire post on half a page.)

• Both of those are assuming catching up on the game. Assuming you already are, the question which comes to mind is...is there a need to wall in the first place? Often, there isn't. You can do whatever it is you want to without walling.

• In general, it's best to avoid wall wars. Nobody really reads them, and it'll just make people assume an arbitrary "xVx", usually townVtown.

• When walling, I typically slow down and apply standards to my posting that I would for writing a novel: cutting repetition out whenever I see it. I never get it all the way there, but I try to even limit basic words, like repeats of "but", of "of", of "to", of "as", and such. That might seem like it's focusing on the wrong things to cut down...but at least for me, it helps also reducing repetition in key areas, often because by using synonyms or rewording sentence structure to remove that repetition, I'm also helping to get my argument more succinct.

• In general, I avoid making walls for cases...but should you deem it necessary, again, make things flow--you don't necessarily need to tell things chronologically; you can point them out in the order of their relevance. Let people see how one point leads into the others.

• This also applies to a wall for, say, asking questions. You're not telling a story, but you are asking for someone else to tell you one, in essence. (Rather, it's sort of a "fill in the blanks" type narrative.)

• Even VCA walls are like this: you're pointing out the votes throughout the game, and how they have unfolded, to tell the story of players' shifts and what you think that means.

• Quoting methodology also helps. Don't quote the whole post, nor meticulously break it down. Both have a high ignore rate. When I quote things, I typically group the relevant things together in what visually appears to be a paragraph or two, and then respond with a paragraph or two. I might quote a single sentence, but again, I'm quoting the entirety of a "thought" given in a post, so if I'm quoting only a single sentence, then that single sentence is either the only or contains the entire heart of the thought.

• Speaking of which, I rely on players having read some of the context, meaning I remove parts that are redundant in their posting. One common trick of mine is that if they have two separate but closely linked thoughts is to quote the first, address it, and transition my addressing into the second to serve as my conclusion for the first, thus removing the need to quote the second thought.

• A final trick is to recognize that paragraph length matters. In general, paragraphs that are too short make the post look much longer (and thus, more intimidating) than it actually is. (Which is one reason for the grouping of thoughts I do for other peoples' quotes.) I sometimes make that kind of post intentionally as a form of emphasis (line breaks serve as a VERY strong pause in speaking, stronger than a period would be), but in general, I want to have it condensed down.

• • ...Though be careful not to go the other way, which is even worse. A block of text is impossible to read. Paragraphs are your friend, not your enemy, and a good paragraph is neither a single line nor a whole short story. It depends on screen resolution quite a lot (and where the message ends up being posted; different forums have different 'widths' for lines wrapping), but at least on my screen, the paragraphs I'm making in this post are ~4-6 lines long, with 4 being a bit on the short side for the final display. (This paragraph was 5, and the above one four.)

Butyeah. Play around and experiment; you'll figure out your own personal methodology for getting your posting read.