Safire wrote a set of famous rules. I had seen them before without his name attached, and now I propose them to you with proper accreditation[1]:

William Safire’s Rules for Writers:

• Remember to never split an infinitive.
• The passive voice should never be used.
• Do not put statements in the negative form.
• Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
• Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
• If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
• A writer must not shift your point of view.
• And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
• Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
• Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
• Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
• If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
• Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
• Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
• Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
• Always pick on the correct idiom.
• The adverb always follows the verb.
• Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

[1] http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/research/groups/protein/pert/safire.rules.html

It got me thinking about Gaelcon, and about writing con scenarios in general. Xaosseed suggested this a while back, but I thought I would put down my observations on how I think scenarios should be written to help GMs at cons run better games.

Structure & Length

The recurring question when faced with a blank, mocking page is how to fill it. In my experience, I tend to find that I tend to wait ’til much too late and then totally over-write.

A Con scenario is a particular thing. It needs to fit into a three hour slot, which can in reality be as little as two and a half hours. I think that it can be useful to break up the scenario into a set of scenes.

One scene can be something like a fight, or a conversation, or a travel or something of that sort. They need to be discrete and purposeful. Ideally, you can flesh out the interstices between scenes for the GM, but they should be able to do some of that themselves as well, and will need to given the way players can dance on a scenario writer’s intentions.

For length, I would recommend 5±2 scenes for the complete scenario. That means that there needs to be at the absolute minimum a beginning, middle and end, but that’s probably not enough. A five scene structure might look like this:

1. Setup
2. First Task
3. Reveal / Conflict
4. Second Task
5. Conclusion

Scenes

Setup means getting the characters sitting down, making it clear who their characters are. In your timing, you should budget for time getting into character and solving setting questions. Some parties are very slow to set up, while others get in within ten mins.

Tasks are how I am describing extended system oriented events. These could be combats, sneaking events, interrogations or long puzzles. I think two of these is enough in most scenarions, but obviously some scenes might look more like tasks as well.

Reveal/Conflict depending on the shape of the narrative, this is where the initiative will normally change, either with the party or their enemies taking charge for the remainder. Normally this should be where the party can say ‘we know what to do, now we need to do it’.

Conclusion is commonly forgotten. It’s more than the epilogue, though that is also good. Ideally, you will have built the scenario towards this scene, and have shown as much as possible in advance to the players. Player anticipation is arguably the most important way to build a railroad scenario like a con game, and so the more they know that their characters only suspect, the better.