the art of SMSing

Tired of short sms replies?
Don't know how to make your sms-es longer and more replyable?

This is the post to read! If you have friends who always send you short replies/smses and you're irritated and you want them to send a longer sms.. ask them to read this post! =)

What i'm going to say may seem extremely common-sense to you, but in lieu of those who still send short SMSes and because i'm bored, i'm still gonna say it =)


Now what i'm going to do is basically describe what makes a good sms, in my opinion. It may be completely different from what you think, but it is what i believe. This is under the assumption that you are not a totally boring person - i'm just giving you the skeleton of the SMS, the content is up to you. =)


For an ideal SMS*, there should be 3 components to it. The Answer, the Bait, and the Flair.

1) The Answer
One of the first things or at least the most important things you must do in your SMS is to answer whatever questions asked by the other party! There's no point typing a 3 sms long reply but you ignore any questions the other person asks, it's vexxing not to have a question answered.
This is not restricted to answering questions-- you can also just give a comment about something that was said by the other party.

2) The Bait
Ok this is a bad name, but i couldn't think of any other catchy name for this component. This is basically including in your SMS something that the other party can reply about.
2a) Personal Sharing
Share either something related to what the other party has been saying or something new and random. (e.g. i just cut my hair.. zz it's super short)
2b) Question
Ask a question! Can be related to what you said or what the other person said but if you have a question in your SMS, the other party will surely have something to reply about.
Basically, just have something that the other party can comment about or reply to. I think this is the most important part of an SMS.


3) The Flair
This is a very abstract component - it's basically adding your own flair to the SMS. This can be in the form of a joke, some kind of teasing, your own lingo, just something to personalise the SMS and make it 'YOU' :)

Not every single SMS needs to have all of these components -- e.g. some may have have 2 of them only, some may have 1.


Ok now to give you a real life example for better illustration. This was an SMS exchange between me and christabelllll. heh hope she's ok with me posting the SMSes here i never really asked her. Her SMSes most of the time fulfil all 3 of the above =) This just happened recently and it isn't the best of examples but .. just post lor.

The Answer - blue
The Bait - Question - red
The Bait - PersonalSharing- green

Alan:
Ok i'm getting bored. We at amk s11 waiting for jess and val parents to come.. and it's late.. i wanna go home.. zzz

Christabel:
How come jess and val are with you all? So their parents arrived yet? I just woke up from 5 hour nap.. sian.

Alan:
We went amk s11 to eat. haha grats to you. how you sleep lidat huhh. Sigh tmr is gonna be a long day.. gotta prac for night worship.. then i'm taking 1st and last shift.. zzz die die die.

Christabel:
Aiya can one just train your arms lor. lol the thing tmrw is starrting at 9.30 and ending at ?? Wed is soo near sian sian sian.


Haha ok you get the idea.

Buaiz~