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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 7652012" data-attributes="member: 150">That's dy-no-mite.  Here's another example -- I just jumped into a copy of Dungeon on my computer already and picked one of the descriptions of a location from the first adventure I found in it -- so, very much at random -- so who knows what we're getting in to.  This is from Dungeon 213: The Dread Pirate Braxis, by Jeffrey Ludwig.  Dungeon is pretty well edited, so improving it won't necessarily be softball.  Here's the description (from page 40, encounter area 2, Approach)What's most important?  The whole thing is sort of atmospheric, really, but this is all about the access to the stronghold, which makes that squat stone tower that defends the causeway is the most important detail. That's what the PCs will have to deal with next, and it's buried in the description.  Assuming you lose listeners after the first or second sentence of reading this, they're going to know about a path, scrub, and a cliff, but may have entirely lost the detail of the ancient forest.  Of the information in that block, I think the tower, the causeway, and the ancient fortress are the three things we need to have. So, I pretty much want to start here: "Craggy Stone Causeway" is all right, but not great. I look long and hard at adjectives to see if they're really necessary.  Stone is probably not necessary, really -- not sure what else it would be.  And that gives us the alliterative "craggy causeway" which will resonate in the listener's ear.  Causeway, though, for a modern listener, is a risk.  How many members of my audience will have a concrete idea of what a causeway is?  "rising like a ramp out of the island's bedrock" well, we really don't need "like a ramp" and "rising" isn't my first choice here.  We want to give the sense of the cliff and fortress above, the ramp needs to climb, not rise. Rise sounds like you're floating up effortlessly.  "provides the only access to the stronghold above" Provides again is a gentle, polite word that doesn't really convey the flavor of the scene.  And, the idea that the causeway is the only access to the stronghold is buried here in the last third of the long sentence -- the idea has been lost again in the froth of words.  "its midpoint straddled by a squat stone tower" I actually like this -- it's very visual and evocative. Well, actually, midpoint seems a bit clinical, but the rest is great. But this tower is the thing that stands in the way.  Now... another element of the original description.  The description starts at the reader's feet -- "The ground beneath your feet slopes...", looks up to the cliff, the stronghold, it's battlements, the causeway, and the tower. So, the reader's attention is going from down (feet) to up (cliff) to up (stronghold) to up (battlements) jump all the way down (causeway) to up (stronghold) to down (tower).  That seems like a lot of redirection -- putting the causeway and the tower much earlier in the description also evens out that  progression a bit. Anyway... trying to put all of those thoughts together, here's a possible revision of the causeway section:That's 19 words vs 29, so not quite half, but you don't always hit that goal.  But, comparing this to the causeway section I started with, is any information missing? Which works better to make the important details memorable?  All that's left is to add the description of the cliffs and fortress beyond. So my final version might look like this:I don't want to cover the rest of that in the same detail, but some notes -- "ancient fortress" is really vague -- what kind of fortress? In what way is in ancient?  I made it a crumbling ruin, but that might not be the author's intention. "Crumbling" isn't one of my favorite choices I've made here -- tried a bunch of options there.  "Ruin" wasn't quite enough there, so I decided I needed it.  And it bring's the "c" sounds in from the beginning of the passage. I also eliminated the "stronghold" bit of the previous section, since I'm now describing that -- and that's also a fairly vague term.  What sort of stronghold is it? "Stronghold describes the pirate defensive position, not the visual image the PCs have before them, so it really doesn't belong in this description. Here are the two -- the original and my revision -- side by side. [table="width: 500, class: grid"][tr]    [td]The ground beneath your feet slopes gradually upward as you approach the pirate stronghold, and the thick vegetation of the island’s interior gives way to scrub. Ahead, a sheer cliff juts up near the island’s edge, and perched upon the rocky promontory is the ancient fortress, its battlements an extension of the cliff ’s forbidding face. A craggy stonecauseway, rising like a ramp out of the island’s bedrock, provides the only access to the stronghold above, its midpoint straddled by a squat stone tower.[/td]    [td]A lone craggy causeway climbs from island bedrock through a squat stone tower. Beyond, a crumbling ruin's battlements extend the cliff's forbidding face. [/td][/tr][/table]That's 23 words verses the originals 81.  I've eliminated one detail (the road at the audience's feet), but actually added concrete detail to the "ancient fortress", I've tightened the language, and I think the result is a better package. Of course, that's not enough.  When I read that to the players, I want to make sure I'm using good hand gestures to describe the causeway and the stone tower.  There's interesting tension between the way the tower squats and the cliffs and battlements rise.  I need to make sure my hand gestures support that difference. ###That's a lot of work to do for every bit of boxed text in an adventure you're going to run. You probably don't have time to do this for every encounter, but try it on some and pay attention to the engagement level you have with your players when you give them these descriptions compared to when you read them the originals. -rg</blockquote>

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