Perfume bottle and splash of freshness by pixabay.com/Sponchia

Today I want to share a simple technique for elevating your narrative text.

It requires you to follow just two rules:

  1. Ignore the sense of sight for as long as possible.
  2. Don’t use a noun or a verb unless you have already described the object using rule 1.

Sounds too simple, doesn’t it? But let’s give it a try:

A D&D Example

Echoes trace the shape of a large room. A grinding mechanical noise from the right is punctuated by the clunking and clanking of some sort of clockwork mechanism powered by the gurgle of running water. From somewhere in the distance comes the sharp metallic tang of treasure or blood. Your blood runs cold and your heart skips a beat as a moaning whisper emerges from two rows of human skulls suspended from ceiling chains, causing the hairs on the back of your neck to stand on end. You’re certain there’s something hostile in the shadows…

Now, let’s try it without the techniques described in those two rules:

You enter a large room; your torches can’t illuminate the corners or far end. Your eyes can just pick up a golden gleam in the distance. There’s a water-wheel powering a clock set into the right wall. A series of human skulls is suspended from chains in the ceiling. Every time the clock advances with a clunk, they emit a moaning whisper. Something moves in the shadows…

The scenes are the same. There’s nothing wrong with the second description, which I’m sure most GMs would have used without a second thought. But it lacks the mystery, the menace, and the poetry of the first, and that’s because describing scenes without recourse to visuals, engaging the other senses of the PCs, compels the use of evocative language that stimulates the imagination.

I think that’s worth the 27 extra words, don’t you?

It works with any genre, though the effectiveness can vary. To demonstrate, let’s try a Pulp example, with the straightforward visual version first:

A Pulp Example

The water shimmers in the moonlight by the docks, casting harsh shadows within which almost anything could be hiding. From one of those shadows comes a burst of light as a suspicious character in a trench-coat lights a match on the sole of his shoe before bringing the flame to a cigarette lodged in the corner of his mouth. For a moment, the end glows red before the match is extinguished, ground beneath a heel, and the figure vanishes back into the recesses of cargo waiting to be loaded onto the African Freighter.

You should note that I have deliberately made this as evocative as I possibly can, emphasizing the dynamics – the motions and changes – within the situation. In particular, the NPC is not part of the furniture, some static fixture – he is doing something, even if the PC observer(s) don’t know what it is, beyond the superficial.

Now, let’s try rewriting that scene using our two rules:

The salty tang of the air lingers about the rotting timbers of the old docks. Waves crash softly against the pylons and reflect the harsh moonlight that plunges much of the surrounding area into twilight. Every nerve is stretched taught as you reach out with all your senses to penetrate the gloom. Suddenly, the sound of a match being struck against the sole of a shoe is followed by a dazzling burst of light beside one of the crates, followed moments later by the acrid scent of burning tobacco as a trench-coated figure ignites a cigarette wedged into the corner of his mouth. The deck creaks as loading cargo aboard the African Freighter continues; there is the soft squeak of a leather shoe as the shadowy figure turns and vanishes behind the crates awaiting the attention of the ship’s crew.

Although it appears considerably longer, in fact there is just a single word’s difference in word-count between the two. While the first is easier to imagine, visually, the second places the listener/reader more clearly into the scene. And the second provides the additional information that cargo is currently being loaded onto the “African Freighter” – the first gives the impression that this is not yet occurring. That gives a sense of a more compressed timescale, i.e. that the players have less time to act than they may have thought – and that’s usually favorable to the Pulp genre.

If I were to further polish the second version, I might throw in something about “the distant voices of the crew, stifled by distance and a settling mist on the way to becoming a fog” – for the added atmosphere and the verisimilitude of not implying that they are functioning in an improbable and suspicious silence. Or – depending on the situation – I might make a point of noting the absence of those voices, just to clarify the situation and elevate suspicions amongst the players.

Use sparingly

Of course, this will get old quickly, and the technique works especially poorly in deliberately static scenes. Sound requires motion to generate it (most of the time – electronic systems providing a notable exception). In fact, the absence of sounds and scents can imply mechanical efficiency – “A robotic cleaner glides silently across the carpet, lifting stray dust particles into its flattened bowels” – so don’t bother looking for footprints.

Here’s the thing: once players are embedded into a scene, it takes serious reliance on game mechanics to break the mood, especially if you reinforce it with a single non-visual reference when that seems appropriate. So use this technique early in a scene and then resort to mostly visual cues as the players interact with the setting. A skill check won’t shatter the mood – only combat, or a break in play, will do that, though it can erode away if not refreshed occasionally.

This is a good thing, because most of us find this to be a far greater stretch, creatively. It does get easier when you get into the habit, and it does function as a reminder to engage the other senses from time to time – a reminder that is often timely. In general, it requires you to think more about the scene, and it forces you to add dynamic, changing elements to what might otherwise be a still life.

Extra Senses

Extra Senses can be an additional problem, but that’s nothing new; you almost-certainly already have the problem of their not being shared by everyone, and have hopefully evolved techniques to get around the issue. What’s that? How would I do it?

The simplest approach is to tell the players that if they want to play Character X, who has the extra sense, to tell them all of what it reveals to him, that will make noise that others could hear, but you will assume the character is doing so automatically unless he indicates otherwise before it is too late – then append that description to the narrative generated using the technique I have described.

Even if this is a telepathic “noise” that those not attuned to it can’t hear, this uses one of the allowable senses – sound – to function as a delivery vehicle for the added sense.

A secondary technique that can be effective if employed consistently is to describe the findings of an additional sense in visual terms – the only thing that is so described when applying this technique. Making a deliberate exception for the extra sense elevates it above the “purely visual,” psychologically.

A secondary benefit to either of these approaches is that they streamline the process, and provide a consistent approach that ensures you are rarely caught off guard by “You forgot that my character has [x]” syndrome, while still permitting the character to retain control. All that has to happen is for you to then leave off the relevant paragraphs until the character with the extra senses acts. Then you can give them the additional information and let them act accordingly.

Yes, this is a compromise; ideally, you would be able to tell the PC with the extra sense everything that they detect in private and let them decide what to share with the rest of the table, but in practice this doesn’t work very well much of the time. Where there is the possibility of a character acting in a controversial manner, of course, you have little choice.

What does work is to develop a specific lexicon to describe a particular extra sense. This is the sort of effort that only needs to be done once, or once in a campaign if you are prone to redefining the nuances of extra senses from campaign to campaign like I am; the longer the campaign lasts, the more that effort will pay off.

It may be useful to assume that each race that possesses an extra sense accesses and interprets it a little differently, creating nuance that the players will rarely if ever actively notice – but that adds enormously to the depth and immersiveness of the campaign. Personally, I tend to think about that sort of thing when I’m developing a race’s presence within the campaign in detail and ignore it until then (or until I need it because of some spell or magic item).

A useful way of developing those lexicons is to examine the effect of the different color filters provided by photo-editing software. As you will have seen from past examples –

– the effects of these can be quite astonishing. There are three basic approaches to contemplate:

  • Duplicate Image – in which you make a copy of the image in a new layer and then use it as a filter to manipulate the base image;
  • Manipulated Image – in which you make a copy of the image in a new layer and then distort or manipulate it in some way;
  • Imposed Image – in which you apply some other image as a filter to manipulate the base image or part thereof.

And, of course, there are combinations of the above, and considerations of the severity of the impact of the change (most often determined by the opacity of the upper layer).

I could offer some examples at this point, but I think I’d rather save that for when I have more time to create a tour-de-force of image-manipulative techniques.

Additional Narrative Resources

This, of course, is hardly the first article that I’ve offered to assist GMs in polishing their narrative. Here’s a roundup of several related articles that may be of assistance:

(As you can see, it’s been about 3 years since I wrote anything on this topic – so this article can be described as “It’s about time!” – I hope it’s been worth the wait!)

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