Personally, I don’t really have a limit with which I’m overwhelmed by explicit content. At least, I’ve never found it personally.
@Galador
Here’s an excerpt from my book.
"You descend through the air, your staff outstretched, but as collision is imminent, a peculiar feeling overtakes you. The beautiful witch turns to you, her doe-like eyes inexplicably captivating you. Your intent falters, and you are dimly aware of your staff slipping from your grip, before you collide violently with the ground, which breaks you from the malicious reverie. You skid heavily across the starved soil, shuddering to a stop directly in front of the curvaceous witch, who smirks gleefully down upon you. You leap to your feet, only to be locked into an iron strong neck hold by the brutish hag, who managed to sneak up behind you. You splutter in exasperation and desperately claw and pull at her arms, but the astounding strength that your aggressor possesses is such that your resistance is futile.
Your vision begins to dim as she tightens her hold on your neck, but you manage to pear through your peripherals to see Beckham engaging the skeletal elder in combat. He rears up on his hind feet and subsequently slams his metal plated hooves into the fragile chest of the unwary assassin, sending her careening into a tree with a sickening thud. The assassin shrieks in pain as her ribs break against the arboreal structure, and slides violently down to the cracked terrain. Beckham then charges forward for another assault, but the skeletal witch lets out a high pitched scream, accompanied by an effusion of putrid green fumes. As the noxious gases propagate towards your boggart, he diverts from the toxic gases, though his eyes are visibly irritated and you see foam running from his mouth. You are lurched back into focus as the brutish assassin changes her position, preparing to snap your neck! Your progressively weaker struggles are in vain, and you feel the frigid hands of death beginning to close in around you. How do you escape from this near certain death?"
What do you think?
1 Like
@Samuel_H_Young Overall I think it is pretty good, but there are a few things that I would change. Before I get into specifics, I think in some places you simply use too many adjectives. Not every noun needs to be accompanied by an adjective to describe it. I love editing, and I simply can’t resist putting in my input here…
You definitely don’t need both “iron” and “strong” to describe the neck hold in the first paragraph. I say remove the word “strong.”
What kind of assassin is “unwary” unless, of course, that assassin is meant to be a terrible assassin who doesn’t understand what an assassin actually does besides just kill a person. Is this meant to be a hopeless assassin who just can’t figure out how to be a real assassin? If not, don’t use unwary to describe her.
You do not need the commas before “before” or before “which” in the first paragraph in the sentence about the staff. In fact, you should definitely take them out because those are subordinate clauses which should not have them, otherwise the middle clause becomes an appositive, meaning that the slipping of the staff rather than hitting the ground is what causes you to come back to your senses.
Also, since that first independent clause is so short, you do not require a comma at the end of “Your intent falters.”
I would also change “which breaks” to “breaking” since that flows better. If you do that, you will indeed need the comma before “breaking.”
In the first line of the second paragraph, “pear” should be “peer.” That’s just a spelling error; nothing big.
You should remove “subsequently” because “and” already indicates that it happens after lifting his feet.
This whole sentence can be removed: “The assassin shrieks in pain as her ribs break against the arboreal structure, and slides violently down to the cracked terrain.” It is an additional detail that doesn’t really serve a purpose. We already saw her hit the tree with a sickening thud, and that’s all that matters with her. If you insist on keeping it there, make it much shorter. I suggest “The assassin shrieks as she [collapses/slides] to the cracked terrain.” We already know from the previous sentence that she is against a tree, so there’s no need to restate that part.
Higher level, academic vocabulary is better, right? Of course! Except when it’s not. “Propagate” sounds awkward here, and I don’t suggest using it. It’s okay to use something like “expands” here, better in fact. An awkward word like that will not make the sentence better.
“You are lurched back into focus” is simply inaccurate. You have an entire paragraph before filled with observations. You are already quite focused. Better would be to say something along the lines of being brought back to your own situation.
When your struggles are “progressively weaker,” we already know that it is in vain: your attacker is not getting weaker, and you are. There’s no reason to have both of those there.
That probably seems like a lot, but there’s actually not a whole lot typed above. It’s just a few minor changes, mostly.
@Galador I appreciate that. I’ll definitely take all of that into account, EXCEPT Do you know what unwary means? It doesn’t seem like it… She’s unwary because you ambushed her
I’m guilty of half that list over the years. Mainly #5 these days. But not because I try too hard its more like I just like describing things and is something I’ve really tried to tone done with my game.
@Samuel_H_Young I absolutely DO know what “unwary” means. Where is the part where the player character ambushes anything? It seems to me that the character is getting the snot beaten out of him, and the boggart attacks the assassin while she is trying to strangle you. Since this passage is completely out of any context, it is possible that I am just missing something about who this assassin is, but as of right now, I stand by what I said before.
@Nocturnal_Stillness I’m all for having fun and enjoying what you are writing! Don’t get me wrong on that! If descriptions of objects and such are what you like to write, go for it! I agree with what you said at the bottom though- especially in an interactive fiction, you have to be sure that the reader will not lose interest with a drawn-out description of a bowl. It is unfortunate that what the readers will enjoy is not necessarily the same thing that the author will most enjoy to write. As I’m sure you realize, there are readers who will certainly enjoy reading descriptions, so there is a certain niche for that. It just isn’t an interactive novel.
oh I must certainly write for the love of it. Its too easy adding fluff when trying to pad out a story. These days I try and write basics first then add detail afterwards.
I don’t strongly care about the amount of detail in as I tend to skim through the CoGs, but within reason detail is a nice thing to have.
@Nocturnal_Stillness I’m glad you write because you live writing! I’ve tried that method of writing, but it didn’t work for me. I got bored with writing it because I had the whole thing already “written” very poorly and was following a guideline that I made while I still had inspiration, but when that day’s inspiration was gone, suddenly I hated filling in the actual story for it.
I think explicit sexual content for a typical Choice Game is completely unnecessary.
Unless your game is supposed to be ‘Choice of Erotica’ or something, anything too graphic will just seem gratuitous and detract from the experience.
The same goes for violence. I killed the vampire by driving a stake through its heart? Great! I don’t need to know in detail how I severed his arteries and broke his ribs and caused his blood to gush out in torrents like the crimson sea.
But then again, I do prefer a minimalist approach to storytelling. 
2 Likes
@evaporate
“severed his arteries and broke his ribs and caused his blood to gush out in torrents like the crimson sea” lololool xD
Explicit detail regards to sex and violent should rise as is appropriate in the story. You have to remember we are make choice novella, not writing novels or porn. I have enjoyed passionate lovemaking in many of my novels in the past (marion zimmer bradly is talented at that) but generally speaking I like stories to give me a glimmer of imagining and let my mind create the rest. What’s beautiful about the author/reader relationship is how we both make a scene, and it changes even though the words do not.
2 Likes