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Writing Style and Narrative Voice Guide

This guide outlines how to write engaging and thematically consistent prose for The Seven Spells of Destruction. Whether you’re designing a town, writing a crypt crawl, or penning the blurb on a magical scroll, your words shape the player’s experience. This guide will help you write in a way that complements the game world — tonally dark, occasionally wry, and rich in implied history.

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🎭 Tone and Style

Seven Spells is set in a fading world — one where the past is a mystery and magic is both a tool and a threat. The tone should reflect that:

• Grounded fantasy — avoid flowery high-fantasy excess.
• Bleak but not hopeless — show the cracks, but don’t overdo the doom.
• Occasional dark humour — used sparingly, this adds levity without breaking immersion.
• Implied depth — hint at lore, don’t dump it.

“The walls weep with moisture that isn’t water. You decide not to touch it.”

“Once, this place had a name. But it was traded for silence.”

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🧱 Sentence Construction

• Prefer present tense: You walk into the room. A smell hits you.
• Keep paragraphs short and readable — no walls of text.
• Use second-person perspective: You see… You feel…
• Use active voice unless deliberately being passive.

Wrong: “A key was found by you.”

Right: “You find a key.”

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🌐 Show, Don’t Tell

Let the player draw conclusions. Don’t write “This place is spooky.” Show it:

“The candlelight bends, as if trying to flee the room.”

Avoid listing facts. Instead, embed them in the environment or dialogue.

Instead of: “The temple was built in 233 AI and abandoned in 301.”

Try: “Dust obscures a cracked plaque: ‘Dedicated 233 AI, by the faithful. May their devotion outlive stone.’”

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🎭 Characters and Dialogue

When writing NPCs:

• Give them motivations, not monologues.
• Use distinctive speech patterns or vocabulary.
• Let their dialogue reveal the world indirectly.

“Course I know the tunnels. But knowing ain’t free. What’ve you got that bleeds?”

Avoid direct exposition. Let them be unreliable, secretive, or mistaken — just like real people.

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📘 Lore Delivery

Players can read books, overhear conversations, or notice strange symbols. Spread your worldbuilding across:

• Environmental description
• Toast messages
• Passive effects
• Books and scrolls
• Optional side areas

Make lore something the player discovers, not something they are given.

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💬 Toast Messages

Use toast() only for important flavour moments or impactful changes. Keep them short and dramatic or humorous:

“The mirror stares back — and it blinks.”

“Your stomach churns. You probably shouldn’t have licked that rune.”

Avoid overusing them, or they’ll lose their impact.

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✨ Examples

Bad:

You are in a dark room. There is a skeleton. It is scary.

Better:

Something shifts in the dark. A brittle clatter, like teeth on stone.

Bad:

The village is poor. They want help.

Better:

The villagers eye your boots with a kind of hunger. One dares approach.

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🔚 Final Advice

• Trust the player to connect the dots.
• Let locations feel lived-in and slightly broken.
• Ask: Would this make someone curious? If yes, keep it.
• Less is often more.

This world isn’t one of heroic grandeur — it’s one of old ruins, broken pacts, and uncertain choices. Let your writing whisper that truth.

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Next: Creating Game Locations

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