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[RevIron]

I'm having some trouble with describing locations. I just can't seem to decide what to include in more decorated scenes like an armoury, a treasury or an art gallery.

http://www.storycrafter.com/story/index.php?storyid=1445&all_acts=true

My personal best:
From the Act Foyer in Amnesia:

Physical Description
The foyer has a set of double doors in the south wall, one single door in each of the east and west walls and three seperate single doors in the north wall. A staircase runs up the middle of the room to a balcony that encircles the room. There are three windows on the south side of the balcony and three doors off each of the other sides  

Current Decor...
The foyer is currently decorated as follows: The floors of both levels and the stairs are carpeted with a midnight blue wall-to-wall carpet, on the walls of the lower level is sanguine wallpaper, the upper level features gold-effect paint with gold-effect fleur-de-lys bosses. All the doors are solid oak and have been varnished in Brown.

[argyle2001]

[RevIron]

[RevIron]

On reflection - just because those are my longest posts doesn't make them my best, but of the two I felt the Foyer was better than the Dining Room.

Also my attempt at applying your technique seems fractured and disjointed when I read it again.

I was intending to put in some information about my bedroom here as another attempt, but I'm worried it will give too much away.

Let me try both the Foyer and the Dining Room again instead - as the mood I want to evoke isn't present for either yet. My attempt to describe the foyer will explain why the carpet won't need to be replaced annually.

As you push open the massive doors to the former theatre, that is now being used as a mental hospital for but a handful of patients -yourself included, you are greeted with a carpet the colour of a night sky.

At first you think the walls are dripping blood, but then you realise they have just been decorated in that shade of red up to the balcony. Above the balcony, they appear to be covered in gold leaf. Where they are embossed with the traditional French pattern they make you think of childhood illness.

Returning your attention to the carpet, you note it runs up the overly shallow central stairs, that raise not even an inch at a time, and you see continues throughout the encircling balcony and indeed, the space beneth the staircase. Peeking further round it you see a trio of doors in it's shadow. These doors, like the rest of those in the room, are of solid oak must once have kept the public from the wonders of the stage - now who knows what personal demons they keep in.

In some ways discovering them relieves the feeling of unease, perhaps caused by expecting to find but a single door there, which would have brought the total to thirteen.

Once the door has shut behind you and you look upward to discover the source of the flickering light, you discover what would once have been a chandlier has been replaced with an earlier candalabrum, complete with a quartet of guttering candles spaced at roughly equal points.

You step into the shadows of the staircase and open the central door.

From where you stand in the shadow of the grand staircase, as you open the door labelled Dining Room you are first hit by the cold air coming from inside then relieved to see the floor is, well you take it for ebony - the traditonal black wood.

The walls are a hideous yellow on blue polka dot, and you swiftly avert your eyes, trying to avoid looking at the paper - although it could be paint, but you don't really care enough to risk another glance. They quickly settle on another door, this one of stainless steel with a porthole window near the top reminds you of those that lead to the kitchens in many modern restraunts.

Then you force your eye to move across the floor. Eventually it hits a patch of white, this proves to be a table cloth on one of the four long tables arranged in a square around a statue of a woman, carved entirely of ice - which explains the chill as merely earthly and for her benifit.

Looking straight up and scanning a ceiling that matches the table cloth, you are worried as you can see no visible source of light. Then it hits you, those weren't real polka dots, they were wall lights. Looking to confirm your suspicious proves that in fact, it was a mixture of the two, and that the dots were bigger than you first thought, being roughly six inches in diameter each with the wall lights in the centre of those that have them. The pattern is growing on you.

[Shanna]

Stylistically, is there a need to describe them from the 2nd person point of view?

[argyle2001]

[Shanna]

Bang.  Dead on.  :)

...especially the part about telling people what they think or feel, in response to a setting.  Everyone thinks and feels differently - telling people what they should think usually has the opposite effect, or worse, turns them off the description entirely.

Again, this is stylistic, so your milage may vary.  :)

[RevIron]

Actually, with that in mind, a first person perspective might be best. The person who's being told what they think is an NPC so I didn't even give it a second thought, but I know enough I'd send a PM to okay that if it had been a PC in a solo game or if I'd been describing it for a single character - best I think to re-write it from that NPC's point of view.

I don't mind the change of colours for these purposes of distinction - as it happens I'm English and most of the characters speak English dialects except two who are supposedly from Rhode Island.

The post might now read something like this, since it's being describe by the character after the event to another patient (really it should be done in a Rhode Island dialect, but I decided to keep things simple and have them speak American English with a mild accent). Normally I wouldn't let an NPC rumble on for so long, but since it's an all NPC scene, I'd let it go in this case. (I'd pause at the end of each paragraph for PC input and react to it). She's speaking to a character she assumes is unfamilliar with the foyer, but familliar with the dining room.

"This is what struck me as I walked here from the front door: as I pushed open the massive doors to this former theatre, I was greeted with a carpet the color of the midnight sky.

"At first I thought the walls were dripping blood, but that's just because they'd been painted blood red below the balcony that encircled the room.  Those raised sections of wall above remind me of mumps and chicken pox, what is the proper name for them and that pattern, traditional amongst the French isn't it, anyway?

"When I looked away, back down at the carpet I noticed the stairs it runs over are far too shallow. Heading underneath the staircase I saw it continued.

"Looking round at the exits I noticed they were doors of quite solid wood, in the usual stain. Before I noticed those under the stairs I'd been panicking, thinking that there would be just one, but the three there took it to fifteen.

"Relising the door had closed behind me, I looked for a source of light. Where I would have expected a chandlier, there was an old-fashioned candle-holder with four flickering candles spaced evenly around it's edge.

"After I'd finished surveying the room, I stepped into the shadows of the staircase, and opened the door labelled dining room. Expecting to find the dining room behind it I did, but I know this place doesn't follow the laws of geometry and if I'd expect something else it was just as likely to be there - look at how we left through that same door yet arrived in this armory.

"As I entered the dining room, I was relieved to discover the floor was ebony, but struck by how cold it was.

"The walls were what I thought at the time was a hideous yellow and blue polka dot, and at first I tried to avoid looking at them, to start with by focusing on what would normally be the door to the kitchen, a modern restraunt style, you know, stainless steel with a porthole type window in the top.

"With great effort of will, I shifted my gaze across the floor to a white object which proved to be a table cloth on one of the four tables arranged in that intresting square pattern around the ice sculpture of the naked lady - she reminded me of myself - I wonder who the sculpture was inspired by?

"I snapped my head up to the ceiling, but could not find a source of light, I then started to look at the paper more closely, and relized the dots were big enough to hold a wall light in the centre of some. I was just thinking that the paper wasn't so bad after all, when Nathan arrived."

[argyle2001]

If the story has multiple character POVs, it's usually a *very* bad idea to write first-person.  It can be done, but it's not an easy thing to do well.  You might be able to do it, but not with the advice that I've given you, which was simply not applicable to first-person writing.

From a first-person perspective, this scene no longer makes any sense.  The first thing Hannah notices is the CARPET?

Re-read that with a fresh eye.  Nobody speaks that way.  Narration sets the tone, so the language needs to flow.  Dialogue has to sound like a person.

"This is what struck me as I walked here from the front door: as I pushed open the massive doors to this former theatre, I was greeted with a carpet the color of the midnight sky."

Real person:  "Was this place a theater once?  The carpet and walls are really dark.  Disturbing, even... like the walls are dripping blood."

[RevIron]