Textadventure: playerInput Writing Advice

Examples and explanations on writing playerInput chunk content.
As the most important aspect of a basic player input is the verb coming right after the second person pronoun (or the third person pronoun or name for third person perspective), these will be used to organize this advice document.

'Internal' Actions

While physical actions performed by the player are easy to anticipate and write ('hit it with your axe'), 'internal' actions or 'actions of the mind' can be hard to anticipate, but with a little practice they offer a lot of flexibility and are often the only way to translate narrative prose into the textadventure format. As this specially useful for classic literature with different narrative perspectives, reformatting Melville's Moby Dick will be used here as examples.

'think (about)'

'think X', 'think about X' or 'think that X' are useful before sourceText that is in the perspective of the main characters ('you', for 2ndP) and expresses any kind of subjective assessment or elaboration. This works well for personal narrators' description of situations which are not 'currently happening', as well.
For example, the main character in Moby Dick is explaining their motives for going to sea in the first chapter. He - 'you' in the reformatted version - describes this in a subjective fashion, and thus 'think' seems most appropriate to lead to these sourceText passages.

> You think about what you like about sailing.
It is a way you have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.
> You think about why you want to go to sea now.
Whenever you find yourself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in your soul; whenever you find yourself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral you meet; and especially whenever your hypos get such an upper hand of you, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent you from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, you account it high time to get to sea as soon as you can.

'think (about)' is versatile for subjective descriptions, and can be used to refer to subjective knowledge, as well, as in the next example:

> You think about how others feel towards the ocean.
If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with you.
> You think of a place that is very close to the sea.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf.
> You think of how close Manhattan is to the ocean.
Right and left, the streets take you waterward.

Keep in mind to not use 'think' as a 'easy way out' - what is thought about must still fit with what follows in the next sourceText.

'ponder'/'wonder'

(WIP)

'want'

(WIP)

Referring and Pronouns

When to use and when to avoid pronouns and indirect references in playerInputs. (WIP)

> You figure out what this means.
But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Afterword

Keep in mind that this is only advice and not a strict guideline. The initial author of this advice uses these as they are sated above, but other reformatters/editors may use them differently. There is no objectively 'best practice' for this, as this is one of the first projects to create a dataset like this at all.