Writing Salon Week 5: Room Descriptions

This post is for the May 29-June 4 writing event of the 2016 AIF Writing Salon.

When your game starts, the player needs to know where he or she is. Establish the setting. Write a paragraph describing where the sex scene takes place. Is it an empty room, or do you want to have interactive objects in the room too? Post your descriptions for everyone to read.

Since traditional interactive fiction is built around moving between different rooms and interacting with objects in them, interactive fiction often has a strong sense of place. By focusing heavily on where you are and by forcing you to examine and interact with things, traditional interactive fiction immerses you in a world. Twine uses a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure model of the world, so Twine stories tend to emphasize plot more.

Although rich room descriptions with many interactive objects can help with immersion, don't feel obligated to spend too much time there. AIF stories are unusual in that they focus mostly on character. The setting isn't too important, so many AIF games provide only brief descriptions of your surroundings. What is important though is that you describe any exits that are available and any characters or objects that can be interacted with. One side-effect of this is that room descriptions sometimes read like dry lists of stuff, which is fine.

To help get you in the right mindset, I have grabbed a random assortment of room descriptions from some public domain novels. These descriptions read like traditional interactive fiction room descriptions, so you try to adapt them to your needs.


The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Charles Dickens

In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns’ House: a venerable brick edifice, whose present appellation is doubtless derived from the legend of its conventual uses.  On the trim gate enclosing its old courtyard is a resplendent brass plate flashing forth the legend: ‘Seminary for Young Ladies.  Miss Twinkleton.’  The house-front is so old and worn, and the brass plate is so shining and staring, that the general result has reminded imaginative strangers of a battered old beau with a large modern eye-glass stuck in his blind eye.

Dracula
Bram Stoker

There are certainly odd deficiencies in the house, considering the extraordinary evidences of wealth which are round me. The table service is of gold, and so beautifully wrought that it must be of immense value. The curtains and upholstery of the chairs and sofas and the hangings of my bed are of the costliest and most beautiful fabrics, and must have been of fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old, though in excellent order. I saw something like them in Hampton Court, but there they were worn and frayed and moth-eaten. But still in none of the rooms is there a mirror. There is not even a toilet glass on my table, and I had to get the little shaving glass from my bag before I could either shave or brush my hair. I have not yet seen a servant anywhere, or heard a sound near the castle except the howling of wolves. Some time after I had finished my meal—I do not know whether to call it breakfast or dinner, for it was between five and six o’clock when I had it—I looked about for something to read, for I did not like to go about the castle until I had asked the Count’s permission. There was absolutely nothing in the room, book, newspaper, or even writing materials; so I opened another door in the room and found a sort of library. The door opposite mine I tried, but found it locked.

In the library I found, to my great delight, a vast number of English books, whole shelves full of them, and bound volumes of magazines and newspapers. A table in the centre was littered with English magazines and newspapers, though none of them were of very recent date. The books were of the most varied kind—history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law—all relating to England and English life and customs and manners. There were even such books of reference as the London Directory, the “Red” and “Blue” books, Whitaker’s Almanac, the Army and Navy Lists, and—it somehow gladdened my heart to see it—the Law List.

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte

The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion.  A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany.  Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane.  Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.

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