Just a few thoughts..

A word count can help a player monitor and learn how much is acceptable - the only way to learn to improve is to give themselves a goal, and if they can visually see the amount that the post needs to be in order to reach that goal, than it will help.

Of course, to reach that goal it must be coupled with adequate teaching and guidance. I think everyone has a different style in which they chose to role play in, so introducing the many different approaches can be useful in giving the less experienced role players a good starting point from where they can branch off with their own creativity and originality as the ideas come to them.

Also, when teaching, perhaps they can start off by following a sort of a template that gives them something to follow. It can be manipulated to their choice of structure, but they can follow the basic concept, such as describing the location their character is in, their character's appearance and actions, their character's thoughts, their speech and how they speak and so on. Perhaps a list of descriptive words would help, some to describe texture, some to describe speech, some to describe physical movement and others to describe facial expressions.

<3 Makeda