Post Length and Other Guidelines
Post Length / Posts Per Day

The guidelines for post length and number of posts per day are fairly simple:

There is no specific limitation on the word count for individual posts or parts of a longer post. However, if a post is more than 5,000 or so words long, you may want to consider splitting it into multiple parts. 2,000 - 3,000 words is a good length for individual parts of a multi-parter.

There is also no limitation whatsoever on the number of parts in a multi-parter. Some writers have written epics that span the entire mission and contained over two dozen parts. The sky is the limit.

There is, however, a specific limit on the number of posts that a writer may post per day. Writers are limited to two posts per day. Doing this helps prevent everyone's inboxes from being completely flooded on any given day, and increases the chance that multi-part epics will be read. Think about it this way: someone who checks their email and sees ten posts from a single writer in one day could be frustrated or overwhelmed by the amount of reading, and may be more likely to delete all ten parts without reading a single word. But if someone logs in and sees only one or two posts, they'll be more likely to read those and then eagerly await the continuation of the storyline on the next day.

The sole exception to this rule is in the case of a multi-parter that is three parts long. In this case it is easier to post all three parts in one day, rather than waiting to post the final part on the next day. Of course, if you'd rather delay the post to create a little suspense, that's perfectly fine too!

Other Guidelines

The following guidelines aren't requirements by any stretch of the imagination. However, adhering to them can help alleviate confusion among the readership as well as make the log archiver's life much, much easier.

Please be sure to include the title of your post in the body of the email as well as in the subject line. When copying posts into the log archives, the archiver copies *only* the email body, not the subject line. Having to go back and copy a subject line to get the title of the post effectively doubles the amount of time the archiver has to spend pulling information into the archives: a four step process (select text, copy, switch window, paste) turns into a nine step process (select text, copy, switch window, paste, switch window, select more text, copy, switch window, paste).

When more than one person worked on a post, please be sure to note that in the header at the top of each log. The easiest way to do that is to list all the characters involved in the post. Log counts are based on the character/writer names listed in the header of each post, so if the list of characters is incomplete or missing, there is no guarantee that everyone who worked on the post will get credit for the post. Most times, when the header contains nothing more than the post title, the only person who ends up getting credit for the post is the person who sent it to the list.

If there is a credit that says something like "...and special guest", and the special guest was written by someone else not already listed as having contributed to the post, please be sure to note that in the header, otherwise that writer won't get credit for the post. For example, if Chad and Rob write a JP that includes a "special guest", and one of them wrote the special guest, it doesn't really matter. But if Dallas writes their "special guest" and that isn't specified in the header, such as "...and special guest (written by Dallas)", I can almost guarantee Dallas isn't getting credit for that post.

If you're writing an NPC in a JP, please specify that it's you writing the NPC. If you're writing a character you haven't written in a while, and you're not sure that people will recognize it's you, or if it's a character that multiple people have written for in the past, also specify that it's you writing the NPC. It's not necessary to do this for every single post if this is a character you're using in several posts (i.e. an NPC guest star for the mission), but specifying on the first or second posts you send out for that character will help eliminate confusion and make sure you get credit for the posts you worked on. Of course, if you want to specify it's you in every single post I certainly won't complain, because then I don't have to rely so heavily on my memory of recently-used NPCs, or try to go back in the archives and figure out who wrote for the character in the past. Oftentimes when that happens, I'll just give up and move on to the next post.
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