I noticed something in a recent RP; a shorter opening post is less discouraging to people. 

I usually write long opening posts, because I feel that I need to establish the setting, explain the sequence of events that bring the characters to the current situation. I provide a lot of background. It might well be too much background. I went from an intro of 3,000+ words to something under a thousand, about five paragraphs, and got instantaneous reaction and a lot more responsiveness. It was a deliberate experiment. I had a big RP with lots of moving parts to start, and I chose to consciously cut down the intro to five paragraphs and leave it there. I was thinking perhaps that would help things, and it seemed to. Within one day of posting it, I had multiple responses, whereas sometimes on previous RP's, I'd watch it all wither and die for want of posts from most of the players.

I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why this is, but I think it boils down to people feeling less pressure to post five or so paragraphs rather than, in their mind, match a very long intro, despite the protestations on the part of the original poster that state that it's perfectly okay to write less. People want to match the mark.

Has anyone else noticed this? Sound off. :)