The Verbosity Game

Linnaete

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Lauded playwright and storyteller William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet that 'brevity is the soul of wit / And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes'. In other words, don't waste the reader's time with your unnecessary long and inane ramblings and excruciating detail. You don't need to have half a dozen sub-clauses, a dozen adjectives and just as many adverbs to describe the action of someone sitting down on a sofa with a cup of tea and about to flick through a newspaper.

Typically being too verbose is looked down upon in the literary world. It reeks of the writer being too self-indulgent in their efforts to sound overly flowery and sophisticated, and carries all the hallmarks of just bad writing. Actual skill comes in the form of using as few but appropriate words as is necessary to convey something without utterly bringing all form of pacing to a total standstill. The reader just stops paying attention at that point and is no longer invested, because the author has just bored them with a regurgitation of as many thesaurus entries as they could muster just to describe what a certain character's car looks like.

I mean, look at me! I've just spent my last two paragraphs being mildly verbose!

But let's ignore what Shakespeare and the literary world have to say.

Now it's your turn to play the verbosity game!

RULES!

  • Each poster leaves a simple sentence/activity/whatever for the next person. For example, I could leave behind the sentence: "I got into my car and turned on the engine to go to work."

  • The following poster's task is to take that simple sentence or activity and stretch it out into something tortuously long. After which they suggest a short sentence or activity for the next poster.

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TIPS ON HOW TO BE VERBOSE


See here.


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EXAMPLE!
Short version:
Wait. That's illegal!

Verbose version:
Immediately cease and discontinue your present action at this present moment. This activity you are embarking flouts judicial and legislative legal norms, guidelines and authoritative declarations that hold jurisdictional effect over this particular geographical location.

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FOR NEXT POSTER:
Short version:
I have a dentist appointment next Friday.
 
I have a dentist appointment next Friday.
At a prior time, I registered my interest for attendance at a location frequented by medical professionals trained in the art of inspection & maintenance of human teeth. On the fifth sunrise within the passing of roughly 1/52th complete planetary revolutions around the star located in the centre of our solar system, the aforementioned attendance shall occur. I owe this to the fact that my successful interest registration has precluded other beings from occupying the time & attention of the selfsame medical professional.


---
I'm going grocery shopping tomorrow.
 
I'm going grocery shopping tomorrow.

As is necessary to address an actual or potential shortage of nutritional foodstuffs, beverages and other essential to nonessential household resources residing in my fridge, freezer, pantries, cupboards, closets, drawers, miscellaneous containers and other locations within the house where one commonly retains such items in storage for later general usage or for sustenance in order for their organic bodies to remain functional and alive, come the following day that will likely not share the same calendar date number as this current moment in time, I shall endeavour to journey to an establishment that will allow me as an ordinary consumer to acquire a plethora of edible and inedible items through means of a transaction using a commonly understood and legally recognised currency.

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(for next poster)
Your Honour, I am not guilty of this crime!
 
Your Honour, I am not guilty of this crime!



It must be declared clearly and definitively before thine dignified presence in front of me and every lady and gentleman breathing the selfsame life-giving and delicious oxygen in this chamber and enjoying this selfsame glorious and most remarkable light, be it natural from the sunlight piercing through the blinds of the windows or artificial emitting from the electrical lights placed at even intervals above our heads, before all do I stand here now on my feet attached to my legs attached to my body crowned with my talking head, as it is necessary for me to stand, my legs straight and not trembling, my heart proud as a kingly lion and not shaking like a cowardly mouse, for I shall assert with full confidence and belief in myself and my wits that mine self is not in any way culpable of presented scandal of this most heinous and uncivil nature on the day of which your tongue doth speak unless, unbeknownst to me, and it would be exceedingly uncharacteristic of me if this have even a tiniest grain of truth to it, I suffered a state of wild intoxication or a case of befuddlement unlike anything seen in the history of the human race of which we all share!


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(I'm no good at this! :sad2: It is late, to be fair)



I want to pet a cat.
 
Albeit not for the sake of the felidae, but for mine own temptation of the silken mane that I yearn to stroke.






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"I live in a van down by the river!"

 
"I live in a van down by the river!"

Whether by unimpeded free choice or by undue and unwanted duress as a result of any litany of personal and/or economic problems that necessitate little to no genuine choice or meaningful alternative arrangement, my current personal residence - which is to say, my place of habitation and dwelling - is that of a medium-sized, enclosed roadworthy wagon or motorised vehicle expressly designed for the transportation of light to medium quantities of supplies from one geographical location to another. This particular vehicle which also serves as presumably my only permanent shelter and residence, is currently situated on an embankment of safe, usable land on the immediate perimeter of a common natural geological feature, wherein an abundant supply of freshwater flows in the form of a continuous, sizeable, often meandering stream from a higher altitude point to another body of water, be it a lake, a sea or even an artificial reservoir.

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(for next poster)

"Hurry! You must call the police!"
 
"Hurry! You must call the police!"

By the hourglass of Father Time, by the swinging scythe of Saturn, by the TARDIS of The Doctor and by Bill and Ted, may you conquer the unremitting flow of time itself to aid us in this moment by being exceptionally expeditious like a cheetah sprinting through the savanna after a gazelle, or like Usain Bolt on the track whose haste should serve us more than adequately in this moment! Channel such energies into yourselves and remove your remote talking devices from your pockets in your trousers, or your handbags for those of you who are women where for some reason it is not customary to guarantee pockets in trousers, pick up these communications devices, with haste, and resist the urge to check out your Discord notifications or reply to that cute picture of a feline some strange person sent you, nay, such things would be a wanton distraction and instead thou must restore your device to its original intended use and type in numbers with your fingers in the form of the Arabic numerical symbols which have been adopted worldwide, type these in a most particular order which when successfully pressed should ring for backup in the form of those who say “ello ello ello!” but we must stop them from saying “what’s all dis den?” otherwise poor Scot Shott will bleed out and stain the pavement red with the iron-rich ichor of man. Ah… Alas, the poor wretch is already dead!



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@Linnaete

For the next person:

I hope you have a happy birthday, Liv! :linnerva:
 
I hope you have a happy birthday, Liv! :linnerva:

Through a unique arrangement and an array of processes involving chemical and electrical impulses surging through this complex organ stored within my cranium that governs my logic, reasoning and empathy, I am currently expressing a specific human emotion whereby I possess the simulatory, anticipatory desire for a general favourable outcome - with said general favourable outcome in this particular, salient context being that you, a fellow member of the Homo sapiens species with the given identifying moniker shortened into an informal, colloquial form known in most social circles as 'Liv', experience a fortuitous finite period of approximately twenty-four Earth hours that simultaneously marks the anniversary of a certain number of completed planetary rotations around our parent star since your successful evacuation from your biological mother's beleaguered uterus.

Additionally, I would like to mark this auspicious anniversary occasion as a sign of goodwill by accompanying this message with the small image of a fictional cartoon character that I created using an electronic interface of what appears to be a cat-eared bubblegum pink avian creature.

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For next person:

"I'm hungry. I think I might order a Chinese takeaway."
 
"I'm hungry. I think I might order a Chinese takeaway."

My gastric beast is growling, the creature in my belly is crying, though I be but a man of the human species rather than a seahorse, and accordingly do not possess such physical features which should allow me to become pregnant with a miniature human replica, so instead it must surely be my raging tummy troll demanding its sustenance, like some bubbling volcano threatening a cataclysmic eruption.

Much cognition within my skull is turning as my conscience that is my present state of mind has journeyed inwards and has fortified itself within, my furrowed brows acting as gatekeepers of contemplation, in such a situation I am forming the robust opinion that verily should I sate this fiend by examining a leaflet exhibiting a list of exotic foodstuffs and removing my wireless talking device from my pocket, I must call for backup by typing the numbers for a lovely restaurant stocked with recipes from the eastern land sometimes known in the age of Shakespeare as ‘Cathay' wherein there is an enormous wall which does make the stones of Hadrian look like a meagre fence. From here shall I be enjoying a meal. A succulent Chinese meal.



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For the next person:
I want to shower you with sugar lumps and ride you over fences.
 
For the next person:
I want to shower you with sugar lumps and ride you over fences.


I, in the sense of being Adam, Paddy McGee, clever Cookies - a member of final fantasy forums, a software developer and a man whom truly, truly believes in mental healthcare, support and the goodness of one's heart, desires intensely that I could allow myself to softly, gently begin to - in an asthetically pleasing way - begin to release above your large, long, deep head and rotund, elongated, muscular, powerful Nd dominating body semi solid, large, crystallised yet molecularly unchanged somewhat potentially unmeasured and even maybe in 3-d square (also known as a cube or block shape) gathering of dissacarrides made up of sucrose and fructose, along with this - or, as the much more upper class way of saying, "in addition to "or the more commonly said "and" - I, still being Adam, Paddy McGee, software engineer, member of FFF and a proud Irishman desiring freedom from 800 and more years of OPPRESSION - would desire to rest my rear side, using a saddle or some sort of seat rest for your muscular and powerful back, upon your mighty, intense frame - you, of course, being a horse of whom I adore - and, as humans tend to do with horses - proceed at a certain pace while seated on your back (also known as riding to one) whilst you, with those primal appendages you call your legs, with hooves and shoes adorned upon them and a bit in your mouth) decide, upon reaching the wooden, solid, dark and erect - extremely erect, you see, as it is used to mark one's property with property being the way one marks that they own a certain piece of land - item which some may a call a divider or potentially a barrier but, in the vernacular, we call a fence.

Essentially, I would like to ride - ride being the verb referring to what I clarified I would be doing upon your back earlier - you (being the large horse described earlier as well, as if I was in Equis) whilst you jumped majestically over those wooden erect markers of property - also known as a fence.

To simplify - I would like to shower you in sugar lumps, and ride you over fences.

---------------------------
For the next person:

I am a smelly fat oaf and would love to get a pizza right now.
 
I am a smelly fat oaf and would love to get a pizza right now.

At this current juncture, situation, moment and present circumstances - which necessitates the usage of the present tense to denote as such that I am referring to an event that is happening now as opposed to any past or future tense which would obviously refer to any other period of time immaterial to this particular topic this very instant - I am burdened by a number of personal physical qualities that are generally considered by most in present society to be undesirable.

First and foremost, whether simply due to an overconsumption of cholesterol and little to no exercise, or a more complex arrangement of psychological/economic/social/genetic factors coming together to produce such a result, I am what you would refer to as anywhere between overweight to obese, which is a spectrum covered by the more colloquial, monosyllabic word 'fat'.

Secondly, my body emits a perpetual odour that is typically masked, mitigated or temporarily removed by a process known as washing or a generous amount of anti-perspiration or fragrant body spray. In light of the fact that I am consciously aware that my body continues to produce unpleasant odours unabated, the presumptive conclusion is that I neither bathe nor conduct basic self-grooming.

Thirdly, I could be a person of relative lacking intelligence, or am a physically beefy figure who is unfortunately prone to causing unintended physical damage or insensitive harm to the emotional wellbeing of another individual.

Furthermore, and this perhaps bears some relation to my three qualities as listed and detailed above, at this very moment I desire the attainment of a particular savoury meal consisting of an oven-baked wheat-based dough topped with a variety of ingredients, with tomato sauce and cheese being the most common, basic elements of the meal. This meal may have any variety of toppings consisting of commonly found ingredients native to the local area or easily imported, such as beef, anchovies, mushrooms, pepperoni, peppers, onions...

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For next person:

Stop right there, criminal scum! Nobody breaks the law on MY watch! I'm confiscating your stolen goods. Now pay your fine or it's off to jail.
 
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