A thread about writing

[Paganini]

This thread is about applying existing writing skills to RPGs. This is not a thread about writing skills in general. Those are... not exactly easy to come by - you have to work at it - but the tools for acquiring writing skill are everywhere. So, I'll only say little bit about that.

To develop basic writing skills, study grammar. Read books about words. Actually, just read. But don't read mindlessly; read and think. Ask yourself: What is the author's point here? Does his text help or hinder my understanding? Why? If you find a word you don't know, grab the dictionary and see what it means.

Communication is the point of writing. When you start, you have an idea, something that exists only in the abstract - it lives in your mind. When you write it down, your goal is to reproduce that idea as exactly as possible in the mind of another.

So, here are some basic points:

1 - Before you can communicate anything, you must have it clear in your own mind.  You can't figure out *how* to communicate, until you know exactly *what* you're going to communicate.

2 - Clearness requires simplicity. Don't use complex sentences and uncommon words. Run-on sentences are bad ideas.

3 - Inconsistency is confusing. Don't contradict yourself. When you pick a term, stick with it. The same thing applies to a larger scale. When you pick a voice, stick with it.

4 - Be professional in your dialect and syntax. Don't use slang, don't use conjunctions, don't be "chatty," etc. For an RPG, if you have a specific tone you're trying to convey (say, oh, Elfs) you will add such nuances during revision. Your draft should be as clean and simple as possible.

5 - On the other hand, don't be dry. The Way of Clarity is the most meaning with the fewest words. Meaning is what keeps readers interested. If you invest a lot of words (which correlates to a lot of time spent reading) without the meaning changing (i.e., to make a simple point) the reader will get bored. ALWAYS[/i] look for superfluous text. If you're not saying anything new, your page shouldn't have words on it.

Back to my teaching analogy. Now, it's more than an analogy. When you write an RPG, you are teaching by proxy. You are, through your written text, instructing another person how to conduct an activity. Another way to say this is, when a person gets done reading your text, they should have a clear idea of what a play experience using your game will be like.

Here are some basic teaching principles that apply:

1 - Start big, get smaller. Or alternatively, begin with the abstract, and get specific. Learning is a structural process. You should never reference something that the reader is not already familiar with. Forward referencing is a Bad Thing (TM). Don't do it!

2 - Be contained. When you are describing a structure or procedure, don't wander around defending your reason for doing it that way; don't wander around pontificating on the connotations that this particular mechanic has when combined with some other part of the game; don't mix in references to special case rules that supersede your current rule. Stick to the point.

3 - Reinforcement is important. Reinforcement means letting your reader know that yes, he did get it, his idea is the right one. Earlier I said that if you're not saying something new, you shouldn't have words on your page. Reinforcement is when you re-articulate an idea in a new way. Basically, in an RPG, we're talking about examples. It's very important that your examples match your procedural and structural descriptions. It's also important that they have physical proximity in the book to the mechanics that they exemplify. It's no good to run down the whole system, then have a whopping example of play in the back. Reinforcement works best while the initial idea is fresh in the reader's mind. Our goal here is to take something that is foreign and make it intuitive. Once a concept has been internalized in this way, it can be used as a foundation for explaining more game concepts, without risk of confusion.

(Music analogy: If you haven't internalized the relationships of chords and scale degrees within a key, then you're going to have real trouble understanding modulation.)

4 - Don't be self-conscious. You have made your decisions about how the game goes. Don't burden your readers with your own emotional baggage. They have your book. If it is well-written, they will see your intent. Extend your readers the courtesy of allowing them to decide for themselves if what you've created is worthy.

Layout is important, insofar as it supports these goals. Obviously, you want your layout to indicate the tone of your work, and so on, but primarily, the function of layout is to guide the eye. You don't want to have too much text on one page; you don't want to use a font or text size that causes eye-strain, you don't want to have your lines be too long (or too short) since that can cause your reader to lose his place. I know a lot about writing, and a little about layout. I know there are some experienced layout guys on the Forge. I invite them to weigh in here - but in the context of how layout supports written text. I'm not interested in "production values," or "how art sells a product" or anything like that.

As far as further discussion goes, this is a fairly abbreviated introduction. Other people need to add points to my list, pick apart points I've already made and add details to them. Also, it'd be appropriate to talk about games that do a good or bad job of teaching, and identify specific content that helps or hinders the reader forming a coherent picture of that gaming activity.

[clehrich]

As far as further discussion goes, this is a fairly abbreviated introduction. Other people need to add points to my list, pick apart points I've already made and add details to them. Also, it'd be appropriate to talk about games that do a good or bad job of teaching, and identify specific content that helps or hinders the reader forming a coherent picture of that gaming activity.  [emphasis mine]

Well, you asked for it!  No, seriously, I like where this thread is going, but we all have to bear in mind it's going to take some nitpicking.

Okay, first a point to narrow discussion slightly.  Let's not, repeat not, discuss the use of fiction within RPGs.  That kind of writing has totally different constraints.  I suspect you agree that fiction wasn't what you had in mind, for the same reason you don't mostly want to discuss art and layout.  Right?  Now on to your points:

To develop basic writing skills, study grammar. Read books about words. Actually, just read. But don't read mindlessly; read and think. Ask yourself: What is the author's point here? Does his text help or hinder my understanding? Why? If you find a word you don't know, grab the dictionary and see what it means.

While I am skeptical that studying grammar will help much, I agree with the rest.  To it I would add the following:

[*]When you see words listed as synonyms, ask yourself quite specifically why they are not synonyms, by asking what the connotations of the two different words are;
[*]If you like something in a piece of writing, try to express clearly and specifically what it is you like, as a writing exercise unto itself;
[*]If you know exactly what you like about a piece of writing, try imitating that piece of writing slavishly until you can produce the same effect yourself.  Most such imitation writing will be uninteresting, but you can learn a lot about technique and control;
[*]When thinking about writing style in other authors, ask yourself specifically about voice.  What sort of personality, authority, and mood does this author's writing project?[/list:u]These things apply to all writing, but here the presumption is that what you are imitating and analyzing will be particularly RPG writing, with other writing selected for specific reasons applicable to the genre.

1 - Before you can communicate anything, you must have it clear in your own mind.  You can't figure out *how* to communicate, until you know exactly *what* you're going to communicate.

But remember that trying to write out an idea will often reveal to you just how unclear it is in your head, and help you make it more clear.  Writing is also a form of thought.

2 - Clearness requires simplicity. Don't use complex sentences and uncommon words. Run-on sentences are bad ideas.

Here I don't agree with you.  Clarity has nothing to do with simplicity.  Clarity is a matter of adequation between the complexity of the prose and the complexity of the ideas.  If you can express all your ideas in exceedingly simple prose, your ideas aren't very complicated.  That may or may not be a problem, of course, but if your ideas are very complicated then you should use appropriately complicated prose.  No one ever accused Claude Levi-Strauss of writing simple prose, but it's hard to imagine that his really major works could get much clearer.

Most of the time RPG prose should be very simple, because the ideas expressed are of the form, "Do this, then this, then this."  This kind of instructional text should indeed be very, very simple.  But if you wish to explain a complex game concept, that same exceedingly simple style may not serve you at all well.

"Uncommon words" as a category is unhelpful; the only standard of common usage is the genre you are examining, and that's not very helpful unless you are sure that the genre accurately reflects its readers.  I suggest that you not write words you would not normally say.  I suggest that if you use a word you would not normally say, you had better be damn sure you know what it means, in terms of both denotation and connotation.  But if a reader says, "I don't get it because he used the word 'convoluted' and I don't know what that means," the reader can get stuffed.

4 - Be professional in your dialect and syntax. Don't use slang, don't use conjunctions, don't be "chatty," etc. For an RPG, if you have a specific tone you're trying to convey (say, oh, Elfs) you will add such nuances during revision. Your draft should be as clean and simple as possible. [emphasis mine]

I think you mean "contractions," e.g. don't, won't, couldn't, etc.  Incidentally, because you shouldn't be using these things, you can set your grammar-checker for "formal".  You can also do a find-word search in your document for the word "it's", which can only mean "it is" as a contraction.  Since you will not use contractions, if you mean "it is" you must change this; if you mean "its", the possessive pronoun, you must change this.  Either way, there is no reason that "it's" should ever appear.

As to tone and nuance, the most powerful example I can think of is kill puppies for satan.

5 - On the other hand, don't be dry. The Way of Clarity is the most meaning with the fewest words. Meaning is what keeps readers interested. If you invest a lot of words (which correlates to a lot of time spent reading) without the meaning changing (i.e., to make a simple point) the reader will get bored. ALWAYS[/i] look for superfluous text. If you're not saying anything new, your page shouldn't have words on it.

True, but there is a limit.  You can over-compress, to the point that readers actually find the stuff bewildering because it moves so fast.  Unless you are very sure you are doing so, though, you should err on the side of compression.  Brevity is the soul of wit and lingerie.

Another way to say this is, when a person gets done reading your text, they should have a clear idea of what a play experience using your game will be like.

As a homework exercise, there are at least two grammatical errors in this quoted sentence.  Find and fix them.

1 - Start big, get smaller. Or alternatively, begin with the abstract, and get specific. Learning is a structural process. You should never reference something that the reader is not already familiar with. Forward referencing is a Bad Thing (TM). Don't do it!

I strongly advise that one avoid jargon and buzzwords, more particularly the latter.  For example, while "to reference" as a transitive verb meaning "to refer to" is solidly attested, as is "to impact" as a transitive verb meaning "to affect", both are also recent buzzwords strongly associated with business jargon.  Stick with using words the way they have mostly been used, not how they have recently been used as a cool thing.  For example again, "to disrespect" is an attested verb some centuries old, but if you use it most people will think it is African-American street slang used by someone who wants to sound cool.

2 - Be contained.

To my mind, a more effective way of putting this is "do not qualify unnecessarily."  Say what you think, what you want, what your point is, and so forth.  Do not say that you think it.  In a conversational medium like the Forge, it's helpful to be less overbearing; for example, I began this paragraph with "to my mind" partly to indicate, "I don't entirely agree with you, but I see that you have a point."  When you write for publication, however, there is no conversation.  This is where the teaching model ultimately breaks down.  So just say what you have to say and get on with it.  If you genuinely think that many readers will find your musings on why you're doing what you're doing useful and interesting, then you should include them, but you should seriously consider the possibility that this is narcissism rather than valuable communication.

3 - Reinforcement is important.

Other ways of describing this that help some people are "hand-holding" or "sign-posting."  You say, without actually putting it so gracelessly, "I have just done X, and that was important for Y reason, and now I'm going to talk about Z, and here's why, so let's go on to that now, everyone with me?"

4 - Don't be self-conscious. You have made your decisions about how the game goes. Don't burden your readers with your own emotional baggage. They have your book. If it is well-written, they will see your intent. Extend your readers the courtesy of allowing them to decide for themselves if what you've created is worthy.

Insofar as what you mean is that we shouldn't waste time wringing our hands and begging the reader to like us, you're right.  But reflexivity and self-consciousness in game design and prose can have their uses.  I don't mean that one needs to think about what one is doing; that's obvious.  I mean that there are times when it is legitimately interesting and valuable to discuss the nature of the game as a project within gaming.  Such things should not be common, nor should they slide into hand-wringing, but they have their place.

Layout is important

I have only one thing to say about layout, and I realize most people here will disagree with it, but you asked for comments and opinions so here's mine.  I hate the vast majority of art that appears in RPGs, and I find it distracting and irrelevant.  I would like to see trade paperbacks in which everything is text.  No excess white spaces, either; that wastes paper.  Say what you have to say in compact, precise prose, include a genuinely helpful chart or table in the back, have a good index and TOC, and stop there.  Everything else is tripe.

No, I don't expect anyone to agree with me, and I won't derail the thread by arguing about it, but there it is.  A picture is worth 0 words.

--
A few suggestions for reading; I just give fast versions of the references so I don't have to look them up, but if someone needs a full bibliographic reference I will provide it:

Strunk and White, The Elements of Style.

Fowler's Modern English Usage.

Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

Joseph Williams, Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace.  His longer version, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, sometimes becomes needlessly Messianic.

Here is a final suggestion, which is in many respects the most important thing I or anyone could possibly say on this thread:

Keep close at hand a set of three to five texts of the approximate genre you wish to write.  These should be texts you would happily sit down and re-read.  Ideally, there is also at least one section in each that you consider a masterpiece, one of the best pieces of writing of that kind ever done.  These should be the kind of texts that it would make you very proud to be compared to, even if weakly, as in, "Well, it wasn't as good as X, but it was pretty good."  And remember that we're talking about prose: these texts might have awful mechanics, but the prose must be very, very good.

Every time you struggle and get stuck, go back to these texts.  Every time you need to revise and edit, force yourself not to read your own writing until you have gone back to these texts.  Every time one of these texts loses its zing for you, replace it with another.

There is no such thing as "my personal style" among serious writers.  All serious writers steal from other styles, and construct their own styles, and have multiple styles, and change those.  Your style is a tool.  If you cannot manipulate it, drop it, and alter it at the drop of a hat, it is not a style; it is a heavy iron collar around your neck and wrist that makes you a bad writer.  Repeat: bad writer.  You must control your writing, and to do this you must emulate the best in your field.  So keep those three to five texts at hand always, and read them again and again.

[Paganini]

Note, assume that I agree with anything in C's post that I don't specifically mention. Because it's a great post. :)

Okay, first a point to narrow discussion slightly.  Let's not, repeat not, discuss the use of fiction within RPGs.  That kind of writing has totally different constraints.  I suspect you agree that fiction wasn't what you had in mind, for the same reason you don't mostly want to discuss art and layout.  Right?

Absolutely.

...remember that trying to write out an idea will often reveal to you just how unclear it is in your head, and help you make it more clear.  Writing is also a form of thought.

Yes. In fact, a lot of times the notes I put together for myself look like what most people would call a playtest draft. Writing things down *to yourself* is a great technique for thought clarification.

2 - Clearness requires simplicity. Don't use complex sentences and uncommon words. Run-on sentences are bad ideas.

Here I don't agree with you.  Clarity has nothing to do with simplicity.  Clarity is a matter of adequation between the complexity of the prose and the complexity of the ideas.  If you can express all your ideas in exceedingly simple prose, your ideas aren't very complicated.  That may or may not be a problem, of course, but if your ideas are very complicated then you should use appropriately complicated prose.  No one ever accused Claude Levi-Strauss of writing simple prose, but it's hard to imagine that his really major works could get much clearer.

My point of view is that most complex ideas can be broken down into components that can be communicated with simple language. I'm not necessarily talking about small words here. More like, I'm talking about keeping yourself to one idea per sentence, and expressing that idea with as few words as you need. Basically, what I'm talking about here is sentence parsing. If your sentence is difficult to parse, then you need to rework it. Since, as a writer, you always know what you mean, it's often hard to judge sentence parsing. This is one reason I suggested studying gramar. It's also good to get other people to read your text, keeping special lookout for difficult sentences.

"Uncommon words" as a category is unhelpful; the only standard of common usage is the genre you are examining, and that's not very helpful unless you are sure that the genre accurately reflects its readers.  I suggest that you not write words you would not normally say.  I suggest that if you use a word you would not normally say, you had better be damn sure you know what it means, in terms of both denotation and connotation.  But if a reader says, "I don't get it because he used the word 'convoluted' and I don't know what that means," the reader can get stuffed.

I like this. Good catch on your part, and I agree with your attitude. :)

4 - Be professional in your dialect and syntax. Don't use slang, don't use conjunctions, don't be "chatty," etc. For an RPG, if you have a specific tone you're trying to convey (say, oh, Elfs) you will add such nuances during revision. Your draft should be as clean and simple as possible. [emphasis mine]

I think you mean "contractions," e.g. don't, won't, couldn't, etc.  Incidentally, because you shouldn't be using these things, you can set your grammar-checker for "formal".  You can also do a find-word search in your document for the word "it's", which can only mean "it is" as a contraction.  Since you will not use contractions, if you mean "it is" you must change this; if you mean "its", the possessive pronoun, you must change this.  Either way, there is no reason that "it's" should ever appear.

Yes, you are right. I even thought the right word, the wrong one just came out my keyboard. A good example of why everyone needs an editor. :)

Another way to say this is, when a person gets done reading your text, they should have a clear idea of what a play experience using your game will be like.

As a homework exercise, there are at least two grammatical errors in this quoted sentence.  Find and fix them.

The big one is number agreement: "a person / they." But it's an all around choppy sentence. "Gets done." Gah.

4 - Don't be self-conscious. You have made your decisions about how the game goes. Don't burden your readers with your own emotional baggage. They have your book. If it is well-written, they will see your intent. Extend your readers the courtesy of allowing them to decide for themselves if what you've created is worthy.

Insofar as what you mean is that we shouldn't waste time wringing our hands and begging the reader to like us, you're right.  But reflexivity and self-consciousness in game design and prose can have their uses.  I don't mean that one needs to think about what one is doing; that's obvious.  I mean that there are times when it is legitimately interesting and valuable to discuss the nature of the game as a project within gaming.  Such things should not be common, nor should they slide into hand-wringing, but they have their place.

I agree with this, and I disagree with this. As an inventor of a game, I don't think that you should tell the potential players of the game why you designed it the way you did *at the same time* that you are teaching them how to play it. I approve of Ron's "hairy RPG theory" section at the back of trollbabe. I disapprove of games that start out "this is different! Looky looky! We do this and this and this, we are cool!" etc. etc., as you mentioned. Probably this is the best way to say it: Don't be defensive about your game. Teach it, then explain it if you want, but don't agonize to your readers.

Layout is important

I have only one thing to say about layout, and I realize most people here will disagree with it, but you asked for comments and opinions so here's mine.  I hate the vast majority of art that appears in RPGs, and I find it distracting and irrelevant.  I would like to see trade paperbacks in which everything is text.  No excess white spaces, either; that wastes paper.  Say what you have to say in compact, precise prose, include a genuinely helpful chart or table in the back, have a good index and TOC, and stop there.  Everything else is tripe.

I like art. But, this thread isn't about art. To me, art isn't really part of the layout, except that it takes up page space. Art exists only as dimensions on a page, in terms of layout. When I'm talking layout, I'm talking spacing, font choice, and so on. I think white space is pretty important. I'm not talking huge expances of unfilled white, but cramped text really bothers me.

[clehrich]

Ah, the joys of clear writing -- we've come to essentially total agreement exceedingly rapidly!

Note, assume that I agree with anything in C's post that I don't specifically mention. Because it's a great post. :)

Now swap my name with his, and vice-versa, and you've got my opening remark.

My point of view is that most complex ideas can be broken down into components that can be communicated with simple language. I'm not necessarily talking about small words here. More like, I'm talking about keeping yourself to one idea per sentence, and expressing that idea with as few words as you need. Basically, what I'm talking about here is sentence parsing. If your sentence is difficult to parse, then you need to rework it. Since, as a writer, you always know what you mean, it's often hard to judge sentence parsing. This is one reason I suggested studying gramar. It's also good to get other people to read your text, keeping special lookout for difficult sentences.

Yes.  At the sentence level, you are exactly right.  I do think that "one idea per sentence" is, at times, an undesirable restriction, but once you have mastered this kind of clarity you can play with complexity all you like; the usual problem is "one idea per eight or nine sentences, except maybe for the other thing I stuck over here."  Before you get on to deliberate complication, compression, and density, the rule you need to master is KISS:

Keep
It
Simple,
Stupid[/list:u]

I agree with this [about saying why you're doing what you're doing], and I disagree with this. As an inventor of a game, I don't think that you should tell the potential players of the game why you designed it the way you did *at the same time* that you are teaching them how to play it. I approve of Ron's "hairy RPG theory" section at the back of trollbabe. I disapprove of games that start out "this is different! Looky looky! We do this and this and this, we are cool!" etc. etc., as you mentioned. Probably this is the best way to say it: Don't be defensive about your game. Teach it, then explain it if you want, but don't agonize to your readers.

I agree completely.  Reflexivity and self-conscious theoretical stuff can be integrated into one's prose, but most of the time they shouldn't be.  Would you agree with the following?

There is a fundamental baseline of clarity and simplicity in RPG writing.  The expectation is and should be that you, the writer, will say what you have to say clearly and efficiently, with minimal mess and distraction, such that the reader can as quickly as possible get up and running.  In a sense, the baseline ideal of RPG writing is a game that makes itself obsolete: it is so clear and so efficient that very soon the players do not need the text at all.  

If and when you choose to stray from this baseline, the burden is upon you to justify it.  If you actually need a lot of theoretical reflexivity, that will distract from the efficient baseline.  This means that there must be a very good reason for such reflexivity.  In Sorcerer, where as you mention the theory is at the back and clearly demarcated, Ron has a clear and important reason: he wants to explain how others can do what he has done, in terms of game design and publication.  If he were doing it to show off that he's clever, that would suck and be pretentious.  Bear in mind also that there are, I am sure, not a few readers of Sorcerer who even so think the theory stuff sucks and is pretentious; I don't agree, but I'm certain there are such readers.  If you stray from the baseline, you must justify it, and you will probably still lose some readers.

The baseline is clear, simple, and straightforward, with no distractions.  If you do something else, know that you are being distracting and have a very good reason for doing it.

I like art. But, this thread isn't about art. To me, art isn't really part of the layout, except that it takes up page space. Art exists only as dimensions on a page, in terms of layout. When I'm talking layout, I'm talking spacing, font choice, and so on. I think white space is pretty important. I'm not talking huge expances of unfilled white, but cramped text really bothers me.

I apologize.  Actually, I admit that I wrote that in the full expectation that you would rightly call me on it.  It's just that I get very few chances to let RPG writers know that "Should I have art?" is actually a question, that one does not have to begin with "Where shall I put the art?" which all too often turns into, "What sort of prose should I use to frame this art?"

As to layout, I admit that I like pure text and no mess.  I would prefer to read an RPG book like any other book, sitting in a comfy chair and just reading the prose straight through.  I know of very few RPGs that are actually readable in this way, and I think that's a great pity, but I know I'm in the minority so I will now shut up about it.

Anyway, back to writing.

[Paganini]

Would you agree with the following?

There is a fundamental baseline of clarity and simplicity in RPG writing.  The expectation is and should be that you, the writer, will say what you have to say clearly and efficiently, with minimal mess and distraction, such that the reader can as quickly as possible get up and running.  In a sense, the baseline ideal of RPG writing is a game that makes itself obsolete: it is so clear and so efficient that very soon the players do not need the text at all.

Yes! That's it exactly!

As to layout, I admit that I like pure text and no mess.  I would prefer to read an RPG book like any other book, sitting in a comfy chair and just reading the prose straight through.  I know of very few RPGs that are actually readable in this way, and I think that's a great pity, but I know I'm in the minority so I will now shut up about it.

My friend Alexander (The designer of Fastlane) feels exactly like you do. I see your points. Actually, I fully agree in the context of electronic products. I print out most of my electronic games. I hate wasting ink on art that looks good on screen, but comes out of the printer looking like crap. I'm trying to think of an example of an electronic game that does this right, but... I can't. The closest I can think of is Risus, and even that has some art.

Basically, when I buy an electronic game, I'm buying the text. I don't want a conversation piece. TROS might look good sitting out on the coffee table. My bent, loose-leef, hole-punched, black&white run of Trollbabe doesn't. When I'm buying text, I want text with no hassel. I want to be able to fire that sucker up, print it, read it, understand it, with no mess.

That said: Just because your product isn't spiffified with art doesn't mean that it can't still look professional. The text can be spiffified. You can use a nice font. You can have side-bars (if appropriate) page numbers, headers, footers, collumn dividers, etc. It doesn't have to look like you whacked it out in MSWord this afternoon and had used adobe's online pdfdoc service.

[timfire]

Hopefully this is still on topic, but I have a question. (Arguably) a rpg is inherently instructional. How does writing with teaching/instruction in mind differ from other forms of writing?

I don't think I see anything above that shouldn't be applied to instructional writing, but it seems to me that instructional writing would have a different focus/form than other forms of writing.

(Does this deserve a spin-off thread?)

[clehrich]

Hopefully this is still on topic, but I have a question. (Arguably) a rpg is inherently instructional. How does writing with teaching/instruction in mind differ from other forms of writing?

I think this gets back to our little back-and-forth about the baseline of simplicity and clarity, or the idea that this sort of text wants to make itself obsolete.  That isn't true of a lot of other kinds of text.

I think compression and density are probably less important in instructional prose, and must take a backseat to simplicity and clarity.

But I also think that RPG texts are not exclusively instructional in a direct sense, and it is important to think about which parts of your game should be instructional and which should not.

Does that in any way answer or address your question?

[Nathan P.]

A quick post about grammer...

Something that both bothers me, and is a constant problem with my writing, is unintentional passive voice. It seems to me that a long stride towards making text less dry, more interesting to read and probably more clear is eliminating as many "to be" verbs as possible.

An exercise that I try to do in my academic papers, and that I really need to do in my other writing, is to go through the text and take out every "is". In most cases you can get a tighter and more effective sentence by taking out the "is", and finding another verb can really make you think about what exactely you are saying with the sentence.

Keep in mind that sometimes passive voice is desirable, but I think that the only way to find out where it works in your text and where it doesn't is to go through and try to eliminate it entirely.

Quick example - taking the passive voice out of my first paragraph, it becomes:

Unintentional passive voice both bothers me and continually dogs my writing. It seems to me that, by eliminating as many "to be" verbs as possible, a writer takes a long stride towards making text less dry, more interesting to read and probably more clear.

Looks a little stilted for a forum post, but in a published text, it reads a lot better.

[Paganini]

Tim,

What Chris said. And also, there are different layers of writing. At the lowest level, the considerations of word choice, voice, and so on that we mentioned already don't differ significantly from one type of non-fiction to another. Good essay-writing skills apply equally to technical writing, to instructional writing, to argumentative writing.

The whole "instructional writing" thing comes in at higher levels. You want to break down and organize your material in certain ways for instructional writing. You want to make sure that your reader has acquired the foundational knowledge necessary to understand your current point before you teach it to him.

Reinforcement and step-by-step learning (these two go hand in hand) are a lot more important for instructional writing than for, say, reference writing.

Imagine a good college C++ book. First chapter is basic stuff about what makes a computer go. Each chapter builds on the stuff in the previous chapter. The book doesn't just tell you something once and expect you to remember it. The book makes you use it again and again in assignments, it refers to it any time a future technique depends on it, and so on. Whereas "C++ in a Nutshell" will have very little repetition. It's goal is not to teach, but to facilitate recollection.

Nathan,

Me too! :)

[clehrich]

Nathan,

My students get an earful of "don't use 'to be' " from me, for exactly the reasons you state, and it drives them up the wall!  Thanks!

Let me make one caveat.  Eliminating "to be" produces compression and density without undermining fundamental clarity.  One can go too far with this, particularly in instructional-type text.  When in the earlier exchange I said that complexity and clarity do not conflict, I meant that such compression produces elegant, dense, clear text.  Paganini's reply, distinguishing general principles from RPG writing and instructional text in particular, hit the nail on the head: simplicity helps.

Try this:

Use "to be" when you can make it mean "is precisely and exactly identical to."  For example, "The sixes are hits: the number of sixes shows how many times you hit."  You could say "represent," of course, but what for?  You end up with a simple rule which, if we have read the text, does all it needs to do: the Quick Reference in the back of the book says, "The sixes are hits" and needs no explanation.

Another way:

Keep refining sentences as Nathan has proposed, seeking compression and clarity.  When you reach your ultimate goal in instructional prose, you will find that you can only change remaining instances of "to be" by expanding, i.e. by adding words or using longer words.  At that point, do not expand.  Just stop.

Does that work for you?

[And let's all notice that I have avoided "to be".  I get a gold star, because I am a good boy.  Agh!  I said it!  Agh!]

[Actually I cheated: "i.e." stands for "id est," Latin for "that is".]

[ChefKyle]

A quick post about grammer...

Something that both bothers me, and is a constant problem with my writing, is unintentional passive voice.
[snip]

Kyle's 223rd Law of the Internet says that in any post correcting people's grammar and/or spelling, there'll be a grammatical and/or spelling mistake.

It's grammAr, not grammEr, and the problem with your example wasn't the passive voice, it was the excess of commas.

Commas are used in two main ways.

They're used to separate sentence clauses. A sentence clause is something that could basically be a sentence by itself. If it can't be a sentence by itself it probably doesn't need a comma in the middle.

The second use of commas is in separating listed items. If you say X and Y, you don't need to say, "X, and Y." The "and" is enough. But if you say, "X, Y and Z," then the commas can go in then.

There's other uses for commas, but if you get those two right then you'll have avoided most of the most common mistakes with them. Beside the issue of spelling and commas, which can really make a text unpleasant to read, passive voice is minor - some will mind it, some won't.

Now here's your chance to apply the 223rd Law to me:)

All this demonstrates why it's a good idea to hire editors. Most of us understand the need to hire artists; few understand the need to hire editors.

[LordSmerf]

Just to get it out of the way...

There's other uses for commas, but if you get those two right then you'll have avoided most of the most common mistakes with them. Beside the issue of spelling and commas, which can really make a text unpleasant to read, passive voice is minor - some will mind it, some won't.

Now here's your chance to apply the 223rd Law to me:)

The contraction "there's" abbreviates the two words "there is".  The first sentence above reads "There is other uses for commas" which is not only a case of passive voice, but an example of a singular verb being applied to a plural subject.  This also serves as another example of why not to use contractions when you can avoid them.

Moving on.  I agree with Kyle on the point of commas.  Commas are by far the single most abused part of the written English language.  However, that in no way invalidates the call for active voice.  It is not that using active voice will obviate the need for correct spelling and comma usage, but just as correct spelling with proper comma usage is more professional than correct spelling with improper comma usage use of active voice improves the overall quality of a written work.

Thomas

[Green]

To add something a bit more abstract, I think that one thing that needs to be said is that the text of an RPG is both instructional and persuasive.  As the potential gamer reads through your game, he should be more and more eager to play the game rather than just read it.  As a previous poster said, you don't want to say, "This game is cool because..." or "We do [whater] differently from other games, and this is why it's so much cooler..."  Simply put, it goes with that whole "show, don't tell" idea.  The hard part is doing so in a way that does not obscure the game itself or grate on the reader's nerves.

This goes along with the point I made about RPGs being persuasive. Some things that tend to pluck my nerves in RPG writing is making assumptions about the reader's background and roleplaying experience, being derisive about other games, or telling players how they should enjoy the game.  It's one thing to give them the tools to make their own game which synergize with the concepts, ideas, moods, etc. you envision.  It's another to say something like, "Do it this way, or go back to playing D&D!"  Besides being condescending, it's pointless.  Roleplayers often adapt the tools given to them to create the game they want to play anyway.  The most you can do is be clear about the sort of thing the game is best designed to do.

I myself tend to work in layers.  Each time I revise, I do so with a different purpose in mind.  In one I'd try to make sure that the content I need is there.  Another revision has me going through correcting spelling, grammar, and formatting mistakes.  Yet another revision will be fine-tuning the prose so that it's neat and easily understood to my intended audience.   I do a lot more cutting than I do adding on in most phases.  I do more rewriting than creating material.

As far as focus in the writing process, my primary focus when writing goes into the character creation section because the players' direct interest will veer toward what they can do in your game and how to go about doing it.  Unfortunately, the trend is to devote the most interesting and evocative writing to the setting chapter, leaving the parts the players will use feeling lackluster in comparison.  As a result, a lot of games seem like they're more fun to read than to play.  I do not know how RPG writers can overcome this, and I welcome any ideas that can help in this regard.

[LordSmerf]

I am not entirely sure that this will be useful, but i thought it might be so i figured that i would put it up.  I have a thread over in Indie Design discussing my game Trust and Betrayal.  I finally got a first draft put together and thought "Hey, maybe having an actual example of game text to analyze will be useful for discussing writing..."  It should be noted that the only editing done to this text has been a single look over the text after completion.  I am not really all that worried about grammar or spelling, but i was really more interested in the points of this thread: Active vs. Passive Voice, Conceptual Order, Example Clarity, Reinforcement, and Simplicity.

The five page PDF can be found over here for those interested.

Again, i am not sure that this is necessarily useful to the discussion at hand, but i thougt it might be useful to discuss an actual piece of text.

Thomas

[clehrich]

Lord Smerf:

Many thanks for a concrete example, as well as the full-on guts to put your neck on the block.  I'd like to take you up on it, but I want to make one thing absolutely clear, to you and everyone else.

To quote The Great Santini, you got "gonads, boy, big brass ones!"  I'm going to rake you over the coals just a bit, but frankly, you get enormous points in my book just for doing this in the first place.  Besides, your writing isn't at all bad, and makes a nice example for the purpose.

Since you mention things like Passive Voice, you clearly know a lot of terminology, but my experience as a writing teacher tells me that a surprising number of readers out there do not know what these terms mean, so I'm going to explain as I go along.  I don't mean to patronize, okay?

Moving on,

In Act One: Trust the characters are introduced and a relationship of trust is shown between the Betrayer and the Betrayed. This relationship can be formed as part of the story (as happens in most romantic comedies) or can be preexisting and simply shown in the first Act. The key to Act One is that the relationship of trust is clearly illustrated. Act One concludes in a scene that embodies the relationship of trust, setting the story up for Act Two.

Now first of all, I've highlighted every instance of "to be."  Every instance except the second-to-last is Passive Voice.  The characters are introduced (passive) vs. X introduces the characters (active), and so on.  Passive voice is not a grammatical error nor a stylistic evil, whatever some English-teacher-Nazis may say.  The problem with passives, quite simply, is that they shift the force of a sentence off of the verb and onto a noun, and in English, verbs are more forceful than nouns.  For an example of my own, let's rewrite the last clause: "verbs do more than nouns."  Note that this wasn't passive voice, but "to be" is weak here just as it would be in a passive.  If you want really blunt, "verbs do; nouns just are."  If you see the rising force of these sentences, you understand why we don't love passives, and why looking at "to be" helps immensely in strengthening prose.

So consider the first sentence:

In Act One: Trust the characters are introduced and a relationship of trust is shown between the Betrayer and the Betrayed.

What happens here?  What does stuff?  What gets done to?  Now I haven't read the game particularly carefully, but it doesn't look to me like the characters in the game are intrinsically pawns who get pushed around.  But this sentence, unfortunately, presents them that way; twice in one sentence, the characters find themselves on the receiving end, and can't do anything about it themselves.  What about:

We introduce Betrayer and Betrayed
Betrayer and Betrayed build a relationship of trust

Better, certainly, but notice that in the first we've added somebody new: "we."  Do "we" matter?  Or should we stick to the characters and keep "we" out of it?  That's something for the writer to decide, but let's suppose we decide to stick to characters:

Betrayer and Betrayed appear
Betrayer and Betrayed build a relationship of trust

Obviously, we can collapse the repetition

Betrayer and Betrayed appear and build a relationship of trust

A good start, but you know, "relationship of trust".... How about just "trust"?  See, now that we can instantly see that there are two characters and they are doing something active together, and that results in trust, how could it not be a relationship?

Betrayer and Betrayed appear and build trust.

Now we must add another piece, "In Act One: Trust".  This is what's called dependent; it's not a legitimate sentence on its own.  Further, it's subordinate, meaning that it acts to modify and describe the other part.  As a rule, subordination gets marked with a comma, certainly at the beginning of a sentence, so:

In Act One: Trust, Betrayer and Betrayed appear and build trust.

Compare once again to

In Act One: Trust the characters are introduced and a relationship of trust is shown between the Betrayer and the Betrayed.

The revised sentence has a lot more punch.  It's very simple, to the point, and wastes nothing.  We have also fixed the grammatical error, the missing comma after "Trust".

But is it too much?  This is a serious question, not fooling around.  The sentence has now become so short that it may seem blunt and inelegant.  If this game is about gangster-style betrayal, maybe we want sentences that hit like machine-gun bullets.  If not, maybe something else?

In Act One: Trust, Betrayer and Betrayed appear and build trust. This relationship can be formed as part of the story (as happens in most romantic comedies) or can be preexisting and simply shown in the first Act. The key to Act One is that the relationship of trust is clearly illustrated. Act One concludes in a scene that embodies the relationship of trust, setting the story up for Act Two.

Note how weird our revision sounds now.  How about:

In Act One: Trust, Betrayer and Betrayed appear and build trust. This trust might be new, as in a romantic comedy, or preexisting.  The characters illustrate the relationship clearly.  Act One ends with a scene that embodies the trust and sets up Act Two.

Pretty terse?

In Act One: Trust, Betrayer and Betrayed illustrate a new or existing trust and conclude with a scene embodying the relationship and setting up Act Two.

Of course, we've dropped the remark about romantic comedies.  If the next sentence will make the connection to Act Two obvious, we could drop that:

In Act One: Trust, Betrayer and Betrayed illustrate a new or existing trust and conclude with a scene embodying the relationship.

If we'd like to make the Act the central issue, rather than a subordinate:

Act One: Trust illustrates a new or existing trust between Betrayer and Betrayed and concludes with a scene embodying the relationship.

I could have changed "embodying" to "that embodies", but that would very similar in form to "concludes" and "illustrates" and it might be a little ugly and distracting.  Note that we no longer need a comma after "Trust", because now the phrase "Act One: Trust" is the subject of the sentence, and a subject and its predicate (basically its verb) should not get separated by a comma except in weird circumstances.

Note that the sentence has gotten rather long to lack any punctuation.  This is an aesthetic point, since the sentence is grammatically sound, but I think there would be a pause between "Betrayed" and "and" if I read it aloud.  Besides, that "and ... and" back to back looks very ugly to me.  So I'll just stick in a comma and a pronoun to clear it up:

Act One: Trust illustrates a new or existing trust between Betrayer and Betrayed, and it concludes with a scene embodying the relationship.

Pretty straightforward.  Not a beautiful sentence, but an efficient one.

To repeat, I now have two options to play with, depending on what I think is most important in this section of the rules:

In Act One: Trust, Betrayer and Betrayed illustrate a new or existing trust and conclude with a scene embodying the relationship.

Act One: Trust illustrates a new or existing trust between Betrayer and Betrayed, and it concludes with a scene embodying the relationship.

Finally, all this happens before we decide to put a voice on it, of course; that's a separate issue, for which see Vincent's games (esp. kill puppies for satan and Dogs in the Vineyard).

Did I hack too much?  Probably.  Could I have hacked more?  Certainly, given more than one paragraph to work on, but I wanted to keep focused.

Start by highlighting all the "to be" verbs and slash from there.  Go down until it's too simple, then compress multiple sentences together.  Keep doing this until it's too much, at which point the prose will seem too dense for your purpose.  If you're unsure, I'd say you can probably go farther, but admittedly I like dense prose.

Thanks again, LordSmerf.  Hope this was in some way useful!