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Message: <blockquote data-quote="arscott" data-source="post: 3343914" data-attributes="member: 17969">I'm Pretty sure that Gary only wrote the G and D portions of GDQ.  Queen of the Demonweb Pits was by someone else. Monotone?  Hell, I'm four units away from earning a theatre degree and I still can't make RPGA boxed text interesting.We've all been done a horrible disservice by our sixth-grade English teachers.  With them, the mantra was always "Description and More Description".But good writing isn't about description.  It's about clarity.  In a choice between adding information and improving word flow, go with the flow every time.  Imagination can fill in the gaps in an incomplete description.  But a garbled description, no matter how complete, will disrupt the narrative flow and thus disrupt the imagination.I'll provide some examples based on the Jester's boxed text:how about:A bloodstained mound of earth and stone looms out of the mist.  Atop it lies the rotting corpse of a large beast, festooned with arrows.The big problem with Jester's passage was "Some kind of".  It's just filler--it doesn't make the sentence sound better, and it doesn't provide any information.Conversely, "looms" and "festooned" are excellent.  They provide a lot of flavor, but don't take up any more space than boring alternatives would.The delicate fragrance of roses wafts from a small clearing ahead.  Within the clearing, rosebushes entwine two statues of cloaked men with daggers upraised.  The headless corpse of a human woman moulders near the clearing edge.  Three other paths lead further into the forest.The Jester uses scent in his descriptions, which is excellent.  But the scent only embellishes the visual he's already established.  In real life, we'll smell or hear something before we see it, and the description should reflect that.If you've got more than one adjective in front of a noun, as the Jester does in "moldering, headless corpse", try to turn one into a verb instead.  Using verbs helps make the description more active.And as for the other paths, never talk about the exits until it's time to leave the room.  If there was a combat here, I'd wait on the paths until it was resolved.</blockquote>

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