Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0, Ryan Kelln, 2026. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ # Writing guide Read this before writing any scene text, or before giving feedback on the person's. Remixed for interactive fiction from a guide for writing short stories with AI. The aim is clarity, intent and emotional effect, not ornament. Readers infer more than you think: explaining signals distrust. ## 1. The style comes from the person In the direction step you asked for their favourite authors. Turn each into three to five concrete traits and write them in `story/OUTLINE.md`: sentence length, how much description, how dialogue sounds, where the humour comes from, what gets left unsaid. Write to the traits. Do not copy phrases or passages, and do not name-check the author in the story. Anything the person has written or said outranks the author: their own phrases are the best style guide there is. ## 2. Writing for a story that branches - **Short scenes.** 40 to 120 words. The player is reading on a screen and wants to choose. One concrete image per scene is worth more than a paragraph. - **Second person, present tense** ("You push the door"), unless they chose otherwise. The player is the point of view: describe only what they can see, hear or know. - **Every scene ends on a decision**, never on a summary or a reflection. End on a discovery, a reversal, or a choice that has just become urgent. - **Choices are actions**, written as what the player does, in under ten words, without giving away what happens ("Knock on the glass", not "Knock and find out she is lying"). - **Every scene gets two or three choices**, except an ending. A single link ("Follow him") is a "press to continue" button, and players notice at once. At most one such scene in the whole story, and never two in a row. - **Not every choice has to split the story.** When the plot needs to go one way, give a choice of *how*: what to say, what to ask, what to notice, what attitude to take ("Follow without a word" / "Ask what's down there"). Both links can lead to the same next scene, as long as its first line says which one they made. That is cheap to write and still feels like choosing, once. Never two scenes in a row where every choice leads to the same place. - **Each choice a different kind of move**, not three flavours of one (go in / wait / leave, not go in quietly / go in carefully / go in slowly). A choice nobody would pick is not a choice. - **Count the choices before you show a scene.** If there is one, add a second before the person sees it. - **No fake choices.** If two choices lead to the same scene, the next scene's first line says which one the player made, or the story remembers it later. A choice that asks something ("Ask what she means") gets its answer there. - **The key choice costs something either way.** If one option is obviously right, it is a quiz, not a choice. - **Show the consequence at once.** The first line after a choice answers it. - **Endings show the cost, not the moral.** End on the implication and stop. ## 3. What makes a scene work - **Show, then trust.** When you write an emotion word, ask whether the action already showed it. If it did, delete the word. "He slammed the door" does not need "angrily". - **Something changes.** Every scene alters the stakes, what the player knows, or the situation. Emotion alone is not a scene: emotion plus a decision is. - **Stakes the player can touch.** Not "everything will fall apart": one visible thing at risk, often an object (a letter, a key, the last match). - **Concrete over abstract.** You cannot picture "the horrors of war"; you can picture a child's burnt socks in the road. Replace abstract nouns with things you could hold, smell or draw. - **Sensory surprise.** For each sensory detail, ask what would surprise someone who had only read about it. A spiderweb is not silky, it is sticky and irritating. Delete "warm", "soft" and "nice" unless they are earned. - **Dialogue with subtext.** People evade, interrupt and say less than they mean. No one explains their feelings in full sentences. - **Some edge.** Characters can be petty, wrong, contradictory or strange. Specificity gives a scene edge; blandness gives it nothing. The library-room rules on the first page still apply. - **Start late.** Open at the first moment something cannot be undone, not with waking up or walking there. - **"But" and "therefore", not "and then".** Scenes should cause each other. ## 4. Habits to remove before you show it - Em-dashes used to deliver a dramatic summary at the end of a line: use a full stop. - "Not X, but Y" and "it wasn't just X, it was Y": say Y. - Lists of three, again and again: use two, or four, or a sentence. - More than two adjectives in a row. - Objects that remember or feel ("the door remembered her hand"). - A description of everything in the room: pick the one thing that matters. - Tidy endings where everyone learns a lesson. ## 5. Check each scene Before: whose eyes, what the player wants here, what stands in the way, what is at stake in one object. After: one concrete image; something changed; it ends on a decision; the choices are different kinds of move; no explained emotions; none of the habits in section 4; it sounds like the traits in `OUTLINE.md` and not like you. ## 6. Feedback on the person's writing (level 3, and whenever asked) Only when asked. Point at one thing, quote their line, and ask a question rather than offering a rewrite ("What does she do with her hands here?"). Use the checks above as questions, not rules. Say what works as specifically as what does not, and never praise a line you have not read.