# [Meta] "Seems" and other eccentricities of my story hour



## el-remmen (Jun 26, 2006)

A while ago I had a thread on here about editing your story hour, but it was lost in the board crash last month - but anyway, in it I talked about how I was in the process of editing the hundreds of pages (over 1000) of the 'Out of the Frying Pan' story hour - mostly for typos and inconsistencies, but also for clarity of language whenever possible and updating the extensive footnotes I include in my updates - but anyway, in reading it over I also found some other funny things - patterns in my writing that make me groan and smile when I notice them.

For example,  everything I describe has one of more qualities that "seem" like something. I almost wrote "it _seems_ like everything. . ."

The hallway _seemed_ about sixty feet long, the sounds _seemed _to be coming from behind the third door, the alderman _seemed_ to get angry at the accusation.

Things hardly ever simply "were".

I think this comes from my penchant to try to use neutral language when describing things as a DM both because sometimes I don't want to give things away and other times because I don't want the players drawing erroneous conclusions b/c of the way I happen to describe something - and that works for describing things in game - but in terms of reading a story it comes off as kind of passive and repetitive - so I cut out a lot of those "seems"  throughout the edit and made my language more immediate and certain wherever possible.

I also went through a whole section where the characters seemed (there's that word again) to be rolling their eyes at one another constantly.  I guess maybe the players were getting fed up with each other and that energy rubbed off on my descriptions of the scenes - but it just got ridiculous.  This is something else I am changing - substituting a different expression of frustration when needed and eliminating the phrase when not.  There are still a few in there, but not nearly as many.

Another thing I do is use alternate ways of refering to the characters so I don't have to repeat their name over and over in a battle description, and don't have to risk confusing the action in terms of who is doing what by using "him" or "he" or "her" or "she" too much.  So, for Ratchis the half-orc ranger/priest (called Friars) of the goddess of freedom, I might refer to him as "Ratchis" in the first sentence of a paragraph describing his action, but use "the half-orc", "the freedom fighter", "the friar", or "the woodsman", etc in the following ones. 

I definitely went through phases where I used one too much or too often - or there was just one I used for a bit and then fell out of use for no reason I can think of in favor of another.

This also goes for the description of certain objects or actions.  For example, Ratchis' player once described the half-orc's fists as "big as hams" - so I took to describing him as "ham-fisted" whenever there was hand-to-hand combat to be described, and I think I even used the term "ham-handed", but now that I think about it that doesn't mean the same thing - so I should see if I can find those references and change them.


There are other patterns that have developed and evolved over the years of writing the thing.  An increase in dialogue: moving away from describing characters' internal states (i.e. no "he thought" or "he felt") and using dialogue, mannerisms, expressions and actions to convey that kind of thing, and there have certainly been some patterns in way I describe some blows in combat descriptions: armor crunching, forearm cuts, bruises swelling, blood-coughing, grunting, bellowing, roaring, hissing, parrying, down-chopping, and all that fun stuff.

Anyway, what patterns of language have you noticed in the way you write your story hour?  How has it changed and how conscious a change has it been?  Are there any that are particular funny, or that have become a recurring theme that you actually like and want to keep around?  Like a particular turn of phrase for something?  

Turn an eye on yourself and share.


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