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1. "When writing a room description, the idea is to picture the room in your head and point out any and every little detail in the description. The only exception is if the player is in a completely dark room with nothing in it. Remember, YOU are the builder YOU get to decide what goes where. You, as the builder, just have to dig enough detail out of the picture in your mind to fill the descriptions."

   Gad of Age of Destiny

2. Walking, and standing

   Another problem that is generally, but not always, associated with the use of you is walking and standing. Some characters fly instead of walk. Unless there is something about the room that forces one or the other, it is better to write descriptions that could fit either walking or flying creatures.

3. Description length

   Descriptions should be a bare minimum of three full lines. In general, they should be four, however, a small concession is made for the fact that when avoiding duplicate room descriptions, four full lines may be harder to accomplish. Rooms should never be longer than 15 lines. Anything over that length runs the risk of scrolling off the screen before the player has a chance to read it. Only key rooms should have extremely long descriptions. Four to seven lines is a good length for most rooms.

4. Walk this way ...

   A pet peeve of mine is when a builder writes a room description assuming that players are coming from a specific direction. Unless there truly is only one entrance to the room, it looks odd to see "As you enter from the west" when you are leaving the area headed east. If you really want to have rooms that have more than one exit/entrance, yet have direction specific rooms, the answer is to create a room for each direction of travel.

5. Creatures and objects in room descriptions

   If a creature or object loads into a room, do not refer to it in the room description. If it is possible to kill a creature, someone will kill it, whether it was meant to be killed, or not. If you want to have, for example, a flock of birds overhead, add an extra description with the keywords flock and birds. The same general concept applies to objects. If they load in the room, do not describe them in the room description. If they are in the room description to add depth to the room, a common example is "a picture hangs on the wall," then make an extra description so that players can look at the "picture." My general rule of thumb for extra descriptions is that if it is in the room description, and it is a noun, it should have an extra description.

6. Secret Doors and Hidden keys

7. Avoid Copying Room Descriptions

8. Using Extras to Fill Out a Room