Monster Writing Guide: Page 2
Repeats are annoying. Repeats are annoying. Repeats are annoying.
Consider this description of arms (sans hand):
"The fit and trained humanoid arms show noticeable shapes of veins on top of the hard musculature."
That sounds fine, right? Quite does. Now take a look at the description of these legs:
"The fit and trained humanoid legs show noticeable shapes of veins on top of the hard musculature."
Still fine! That's a fine set of legs there. I want to have that kind of legs.
And you go to describe the rest of the critter. It's all trained, toned, muscly.
I'd tap it. Or knowing the creatures around, they'd probably tap me first.
But how does it look when it's complete?
"The torso is fit and trained, showing noticable shapes of veins on top of the hard musculature. The fit and trained humanoid arms show noticable shapes of veins on top of the hard musculature. A runners' legs, humanoid, fit and trained, show noticable shapes of veins on top of the impressive musculature."
See how this got repetitive and annoying? And I even mixed some wordings around,
and changed a few, not even making all those descriptions exactly the same. But
large parts and word constellations are identical enough to show what can be
perceived as laziness or lack of care. It is just tiring to read, as if somebody
repeatedly says the same thing into your ear.
Always remember, the individual body parts must look nice and descriptive by
themselves, since they can be mixed individually on a player, but they -also-
need not to turn out to be repetitive in their descriptions if they all get put
together to form the complete, single critter.
A good help with preventing this from happening is, among things, the use of
different words on the different bodyparts to describe the very same thing,
along with changing order and tone of the description. Always keep a thesaurus
at hand when doing critters, as it is a great aid for finding synonyms. And not
even just synonyms, but different words that bring up the same image. Something
muscular can be toned, athletic, trained, predatory, something a runner or
bodybuilder would have, something that looks like the result of hard workouts,
simply strong, perhaps even of a lethal, predatory strength!
But you know what else takes part in making the above so repetitive? The last
example just now might have shown it; The length of each part's description. The
shorter each description, the more you're prone to repeat yourself when having
to describe the next, potentially similar themed and toned bodypart; A long
description makes it easier to make the descriptions seem different, less
repetitive, even if they are perhaps not. And how to make long descriptions?
See the previous page of this guide!
Okay, consider this:
"The torso, broad and athletic, would make an athlete proud. It is very toned, yet not overly bulky, with the muscle's strength coming from an inherent, compact powerfulness more than sheer size, the pattern of trained muscle flowing down over the hard abdomen and back. The arms' shapes are firm, shapely tedeons beneath the exterior, able to deliver quick and dangerous blows at a notice. The legs, just like the arms, are powerful and predatory, clearly built for chasing potential pray, and chasing it with an impressive speed."
There we go. The exact same kind of build was just described, but simply was
made more interesting with sheer variation. You might have noticed that not only
was the wording varied and the descriptions lengthened, but also the whole thing
was spiced up with short mentionings about what the limbs look like they could
potentially do or be used for. If I describe you a metal hammer that could be
used to hammer a nail in, and a metal hammer that could be used to tear down a
wall, I immediately gave you a good idea about how each hammer might be shaped
and sized.
So, that's a fine description, isn't it?
NOT!
We fell into a little trap there that shall be pointed out on the next page of
this guide.
Page 1 - General description guideline
Page 2 - Repeats Are Annoying
Page 3 - The Hills Have Eyes; Your Arms Don't.
Page 5 - Keeping Things Interesting
