Posts belonging to Category Description
Posted by Ravyn on April 23, 2013
This is somewhat similar to my old “driver’s license” exercise, only slightly less restrictive. What it boils down to is this: even if we don’t necessarily all agree on what colors there are and what categories they fit into (this coming from a person who was raised on the Crayola marker spectrum who occasionally gets [...]
Categories: Characterization, Description, Exercises, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, description, Exercises, Technique, writing | 
2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on March 4, 2013
Weather is one of the easiest things for a writer to forget. It’s all around us, but while it impacts us, it doesn’t always impact us much—modern conveniences tend to work around the worst of it, unless it’s reached the point of catastrophe. As a result, a lot of us—particularly those of us in “Weather? [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: plot, roleplaying, scening, weather, World-building, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on February 19, 2013
A long time ago, I suggested an exercise in which the object of the game was to come up with a character’s retelling of an event, in voice. But no story is told in a vacuum, and few are told without someone to hear them.
For this exercise, then, choose two characters and one event. It [...]
Categories: Character image, Characterization, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Mood, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: characterization exercise, Exercises, retelling | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on December 4, 2012
Reruns due to Finals Week continue.
Originally posted November 18, 2009.
Into any story, a little epic scenery seems to fall. Okay, not fall exactly. More come crashing down into view at just the right moment to make everyone use it and take the audience’s breath away. Either way, it’s pretty much a staple of stories in [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Places, Scening, Technique, Voice and Style, World-building |
Tags: description, reprise, roleplaying, scenery, Technique, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 27, 2012
A lot of the time, you can tell a great deal about a character from what she’s wearing—rank, country of origin, social class, occupation, personality, and a lot more. And let’s face it, authors and GMs aren’t immune to the lure of this sort of thing—not just because it makes sense in whatever worlds we’re [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: clothing, description, roleplaying, writing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on October 27, 2012
UZ’s guest posts continue.
My background in fantasy and the weird means that I often write about upsetting things; I’ve discussed some of these in the past with our illustrious host. When we write about wondrous things – that’s really our mandate in fantasy – often we write about scale. The fifty [...]
Categories: Concepts, Description, For Writers, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: guest posts, metatext, Technique, UZ, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on August 9, 2012
Originally published on November 24, 2009. Blame the server issues.
I hadn’t been going to post this one for a while, but then I blundered onto ChattyDM’s riff about managerial skills and GMing, and he asked for it in the comments. Never let it be said that I turn down perfectly good requests.
The fun thing about [...]
Categories: Characterization, Cross-discipline, Description, Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Technique |
Tags: Characterization, Cross-discipline, neuromarketing, roleplaying, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on July 9, 2012
Sometimes, you have time to come up with the huge nasties that dot your world. To figure out their biology, their natural enemies, what would get them in conflict with the main characters, to come up with awesome powers that make them a challenge and a description that makes everyone who so much as reads [...]
Categories: Biology, Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Technique, World-building |
Tags: giant monsters, roleplaying, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on June 6, 2012
Originally posted on February 22, 2010.
I play games in which grand and dramatic is pretty much the gold standard. It’s part of the system, I can deal with that. I see a lot of people writing in ways that are grand and dramatic, and hey, power to them. But there’s one thing [...]
Categories: Description, Dialogue, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Mood, Player Advice, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: drama, reprise, roleplaying, subtlety, Voice and Style, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on May 23, 2012
The other day, I found myself railing at a bit of boxed text in a game module I was being run through (at least, I hope it was just the boxed text and not my GM’s addition). It described a place, lots of visible details that made it obvious that we’d just walked into the [...]
Categories: Description, Exposition, For Roleplayers, GM Advice, Tactics, Technique, Voice and Style |
Tags: exposition, hand-holding, role-playing | 6 Comments »