Houses & Fashion Part Two
The two most prevalent fashions inside new houses these days are:
- Having a connected kitchen and living area (and usually the dining area too). As someone who gets up to fetch snacks during a movie, I love this. The down sides are: Firstly that kitchens are messy and this layout makes that mess very public. Secondly, kitchens are noisy (jugs, dishwashers, mixers, etc). To me it’s worth it.
2. Marble. I don’t hate marble, but there is SO MUCH and in my opinion it should never be on more than one surface in a room. And, more importantly, it should never EVER be used for flooring. It’s too smooth. Black marble is clearly ‘super classy’ in the minds of some designers (or just black generally). It’s certainly super dramatic, which I generally like, but it’ll show dirt way too clearly and (for those who care about that sort of thing) it will 100% date the house to this precise era. Despite this, a shocking number of bathrooms have marble floors AND floor-to-ceiling marble tiles. It’s too much!
This bathroom brilliantly manages to combine all the most extreme trends into one face-slapping monstrosity.
Not only does it look revolting, it’s so reflective that it’s a little like trying to navigate one’s way through a goth mirror ball. It’s genuinely dangerous (especially if you have to take your glasses off to shower, and therefore can’t see very well in the bathroom). But at least when you smack your face into the shiny shiny walls you’ll know it was fashion that killed you.
The trend of floor to ceiling tiles is good, however. It’s practical in a bathroom, and I appreciate it. Ditto the ‘floating’ vanity thing—SO much easier to clean than the vanity with an annoying gap on one or both sides.
Another trend related to the two items above is the trend to have a walk-in pantry. It’s obviously related to the trend (several decades old) of having a walk-in wardrobe, especially in the master bedroom.
When I first started looking at houses, I was dead-set against WIRs. I hate all corner cupboards! Corners are bad! I love a kitchen where people have carefully designed it so there are no corner kitchens (eg by using that corner space for a cupboard facing in the other direction). I am very large and very uncoordinated (to a medical degree) and it hurts for me stand up for more than about twenty seconds. So (a) the slight awkwardness of retrieving something from a corner cupboard can turn to a dangerous ordeal (think I can’t seriously injure myself doing a simple task? Think again), and (b) if I’m in a WIR and someone else wants to access their clothes, I am trapped in a standing position until they move, which means they are directly causing me pain. This is not helpful for family relationships as I feel like I’m getting tortured.
There are some enormous WIRs out there, and I’ve been won over. Some have chairs, which is excellent. Some are so big they have a table in the middle for wanky white guys to display their cuff links and/or watches. Those I hate: it’s a barrier to movement, and if there isn’t a full metre of space between the table and the cupboards then I’m claustrophobic again.
I really like WIRs with a window, open shelves, and full-length hanging space.
WIRs are often used as a buffer zone between the bedroom and the ensuite, which is excellent because ensuites turn real nasty real fast if your loving lady wife is laying bricks loudly exactly 70cm from where you’re trying to sleep. In my view, the perfect main bedroom has a ‘flat’ cupboard with the ensuite behind it, like this:
In practice, Chris and I hang most of our clothes on hooks. We like to be able to glance at them all (and I get tangled up in coat-hangers with remarkable speed). So for us the cupboard would have shelves for part of it, but no doors. Doors get in the way.
(The trend to leave doors off an ensuite, however, is simply wrong. Ew. For hygiene reasons, and for steam-from-the-shower-getting-into-your-carpet-and-clothes reasons.)
I spend a LOT of time in bed, so ideally the master bedroom has a nice view (so I can feel less imprisoned if I’m bed-bound) and total privacy ie the window is into the yard, not the street. And/or maybe tinted? That would be super cool.
In a perfect world, every single bathroom in every single house is wheelchair accessible. But even the most luxurious bathrooms rarely are. So at least the main toilet and bathroom should be—for guests, if nothing else. Because disabled people shouldn’t have to request a detailed floor plan to decide if they can visit their friends’ houses. And because everyone who lives long enough WILL BECOME DISABLED. Having at least one fully accessible bathroom in every home should be international law.
Going back to the topic of walk-in pantries… at first I hated them. More corners, bleaugh! But I have warmed to them, because you can put the noisy devices in them AND your dishwashing sinks and dishwasher… and then suddenly the kitchen’s noisiness AND mess is magically much improved. More importantly, if the walk-in-pantry has a door that looks like the rest of the cupboards, it’s a secret room. Every house should have a secret room!
I once saw a walk-in-pantry that had a door to the laundry room at the other end. I liked that a LOT because it would massively reduce my claustrophobia. Plus I adore circuits in a house. The more circuits the better. A window in the walk-in pantry is very helpful (for my anxiety) too.
A lot of modern kitchens have an island bench, which I love. It’s a barrier to stop people wandering willy-nilly into my space (I get super stressed cooking because there is time pressure plus the claustrophobia thing, plus pain from standing… even though I also love cooking). It also naturally gives me an escape route: if someone comes around one side, I can exit the other way.
Some island benches have the main sink on them, which is bad. It means all the dishes would be on the bench, virtually on display (and making it useless as a working surface). However, having a non-dishes sink there is great. Handy for grabbing a glass of water or washing hands. Assuming one can train one’s family not to put their dishes directly into that sink.
I HATE island peninsulas, because of course anything that makes me more trapped in the kitchen is bad.
Kitchen floors should probably have tiles (ditto bathrooms). Three-quarters of my immediate family is both uncoordinated and has medical-grade memory issues (eg ADHD). So yes, we will spill water. And yes, no matter how hard we try, we will not always remember to mop it up immediately.
I adore wooden-look floors, AND they’re not as cold as tiles, which is excellent. It’s particularly important as my daughter is not super in touch with her own body so her feet get extremely cold but she usually refuses to wear shoes, slippers, or socks because of sensory issues. She’s so unaware of her own cold feet that she gets chilblains! Not okay! So MAYBE whatever the very very best non-vinyl (because vinyl feels cold) wood-looking floor is would be best for our kitchen/living/hall.
(Most bedrooms have carpet, which is usually good unless you want to use them for someone who has severe mobility issues, as the friction of carpet makes movement a lot harder.)
I’d also like that fake-wood floor surface for my cat rooms, because cats look GORGEOUS on wooden floors… but they also spill water, throw up, etc a lot so it needs to be extremely waterproof and able to be mopped. (Carpet holds a lot of sins, including the incredibly resilient ringworm fungus, so it’s a very bad choice for a cat-fostering or cat-encounter space.)
So! A perfect kitchen has waterproof yet warm floors, an island bench with a sink, and a large walk-in-pantry with a secret back entrance, window, dishwasher, noisy devices, and dishwashing sink (and it had better be a double sink with a draining space because that’s the most practical thing).
A perfect master bedroom has a cupboard in between the room and the ensuite, so the toilet is as far away as possible while still being close. I like a high window that lets in light (and a view of the sky) without anyone being able to see inside. And full privacy but with a great view from the bed. It should also be a reasonable distance from the living room, so other people’s TV watching doesn’t disturb you. That’s true of all the bedrooms, of course, but in my opinion kids’ rooms should be modestly sized (bigger for kids with ADHD or mobility issues) and not toooo nice because that just builds up expectations that may not be met when those kids grow up. Because one of the hardest things for my generation (elder Millennial) onwards is living in a house smaller than the house where we grew up. Being worse off than our parents despite doing the equivalent amount of work is incredibly depressing. Which is not the topic of this blog, thank goodness—too sad.
Moving on.
To me, the perfect bathroom (and kitchen) design has a pale floor, white walls, and feature tiles that should be blue or green or both (water colours for the bathroom; the kitchen should have a different colour palette), with a mixture of ceramic and glass. I love that. And I have almost that in my actual house, which was built in 2012. Sadly, this particular style has gone out of fashion.
When designers aren’t adding fake wood (which I love) or marble, or pure black to things, they are ALL ABOUT DAT BEIGE.
Which is boring. Obviously. Also obviously, they’re trying to create a ‘blank canvas’ so the homeowner can imagine themselves in the house. Which makes sense. And it’s super easy to paint over beige. But still, boring.
I personally adore feature walls, which still appear sometimes in modern houses. I love deep, rich, heady colours that are far too potent for a whole room. They’re also great for photos, of course.
Speaking of bathrooms, our house has ‘lever’ style taps, which are sort of really great because they’re super easy to turn on and off. But I’ve realised they require a different sort of finesse: you need to veeerrrry carefully not put the lever up too high, or it splashes everywhere. So actually they’re a bit dumb.
But the dumbest possible thing in a bathroom is having a glass shower door that opens directly onto the door handle of the bathroom. (To be fair, we have this in our house and we haven’t shattered the shower door yet, even after twelve years, so yay us.)
I love:
*Wall niches.
*Internal ‘window’ holes from one room to another. (I love them even more outside, especially when they frame a view.)
*Arches, both inside and outside.
*Internal garages with two doors leading inside (options are fun and it instantly creates another circuit—and thus less claustrophobia, as getting in and out of the car is awkward and crowded and painful too). A double garage with one giant roller door is great, which I believe I mentioned last entry.
*Fabric walls. This is a rare and weird trend which is silly as the cats would shred them… but the cats would have so much fun climbing the walls, AND it’s great for people who are hard of hearing as fabric dulls sound. Hard to clean, though.
*More sinks. Sometimes it’s a kitchenette, sometimes it’s a sink niche in a wall near the toilet, sometimes it’s a bonus section of kitchen slightly separated from the main kitchen, sometimes it’s a ‘bar’. I love them all. Partly for convenience, but mostly because any space with a sink can become an additional laundry and/or kitchen. It is GREAT to be able to divide a house into a flat that can accommodate an adult child who can’t move out yet but wants independence. Or that can be rented out for extra income. Or that can be used as emergency accommodation (during fires, or for newly-arrived refugees, etc). More sinks means more freedom.
*Round or arched windows. Not particularly practical, but awesome.
*Secret passageways. Strangely, these have not appeared in any of the houses I’ve seen. (Or were they there all along, but SECRET?!?)
*Curved walls. The “Arte” display home by Prof Homes (currently open in Denman Prospect) is really excellent, with curves both outside and inside. Even a vanity has curved edges, and I love it!
*Lofts. I love the feeling of being up high (although my body REALLY can’t handle stairs—and both my kids have hyper-mobility, so stairs are bad for them as well) and I love the funny little nooks you get at the top of stairs, and I love it when a living area has a room above it with an internal balcony. I also love a murder hole. In medieval castles, these holes overhang the entry so defenders can pour boiling oil over invaders. In modern foyers, there is often a double-height section which gives a feeling of grandeur but could also potentially be used to pour boiling oil on unwelcome guests. I love that! Both the grand foyer thing, and the hint of an ancient castle. It warms my fantasy-novel-writing heart. And would be terrible for the next time Canberra is the site of a major smoke event. I really like split-level rooms for that ‘high-up’ feeling as well, but they are so bad for me, because of the stairs—and they are really inefficient space-wise.
The Arte house does the loft thing really well, with a rumpus above the ‘formal’ lounge room. This is the view from on high:
I was finally resigned to refusing all dream houses with stairs when I discovered that Chris also adores stairs. So they’re back on the menu, boys! Of course that means I need a space for a lift, and a spare $100,000 or so to buy it. But cats also adore racing up and down stairs, which is fun.
The other option is to buy a single-level house on a steep block, so you enter the house from ground level but the back of the house is well above the ground (and with, one hopes, wonderful views from the back windows). It should have the front of the house facing south, too, so the back (and lots of big open windows) faces north.
*Chandeliers are cool. I really like the French/art deco ones. A lot of modern ones are tubed fluorescents in unusual shapes. I don’t really like them as the fluoros are too bright and can cause migraines for me. But I appreciate the creativity.
*They’re probably terrible energy-wise, but I love high ceilings, especially slanted, especially with high windows (north-facing, one hopes!) for indirect sunlight and glimpses of sky. I also LOVE skylights that show the sky.
*A lot of houses have an electric ‘fireplace’. I love that. The cats and kids would love it too.
*Quite a few houses have a ‘theatre’ room which I adore as we are an extremely screen-oriented family (sometimes it’s the only way to self-regulate the neurodiverse mind). A theatre room could also be a brilliant business space (cats & movies = perfection) or fundraising space (a movie fundraiser in my home would be quite cool and also extremely easy for me to run).
*Obviously, I love views. I have decided there are four types of views: City lights at night; greenery (eg a lovely enclosed backyard with great plants); hills (near enough to see trees and grass and maybe pretty rocks); water views (either a pool/water feature or an ocean, lake, or river); and mountains (distant grandeur that changes with weather conditions). My heart leaps when I see a pretty hillside, so that’s the most important type of view for me. I like a really nice tree too—lots of beauty for very little maintenance. And I’m obsessed with sunsets, so although west-facing windows are terrible for someone like me who’s super sensitive to heat… I want them. I have a portable spa outside in my real house which I use several times every week. Spas were originally invented for the relief of chronic pain, and they are GREAT. It also forces me to sit still for at least half an hour, without a screen. Just looking at the water makes me feel good, but I always face west (past our DIY cat space and the power lines) and cross my fingers and toes for a great sunset show. This is my happy place.
*I’m always enchanted by a pool, but I live in Canberra so it needs to be (a) heated, and ideally (b) literally inside. I guess the perfect pool has one of those roofs that can open and close, and cafe-style clear plastic blinds that can be down in winter (to keep heat in) and up in summer. And it should be a swim spa, so I could get actual exercise in there, but big enough for the kids to play in with their friends too. This was another idea that I’d decided was simply too silly until it turned out that Chris loves a house with a pool (“If we’re looking for a fantasy house, then it has to have a pool”). And yes, I’d like it to be visible from inside, because looking at water always lifts my spirits. With a fake waterfall over rocks! Bonus points if you can convince moss to grow there.
*And I want a spa bath, because although I still use our outside spa in winter I know it’s a huge energy drain to heat it up (the portable spa takes at least six hours to heat, so sometimes I’ll turn it on first thing in the morning but it still won’t get hot enough to use), and it’s VERY hard to get myself to get out of the spa when it’s super cold. Plus a spa means having to shower afterwards, whereas in a spa bath there’s no chlorine so I could actually just go to bed afterwards.
At the moment, my favourite house is 55 Annabelle View, Coombs. Coombs is a good suburb for us, as it’s close to Chris’s work in Woden. These days he spends at least two hours every work day going to and from work (either by bike—much kudos to him—or bus). It’s also close to his parents, which is a big plus as we see them at least once per week. And it’s still on the Western side of Canberra, so hopefully we wouldn’t lose our entire West Belco community.
It’s close to a high school (good for Tim) and in Primary Enrolment Area for a college that’s right next to Chris’s work. It would be weird for me to live on the South but I’ve done it before (we lived in Farrer when we first married). The Molonglo Valley district is funny because one suburb—Whitlam—is North side and the rest is South. There are bus stops on that street.
Anyway, it’s an enormous house which has a theatre and a pool and the most beautiful views ever. I think that hill is Bold Hill, and there are more to left and right. With bike paths, that we would all definitely use.
The Molonglo River is RIGHT THERE—this photo has the river on the right and the house (white) on the left. I think the gravel road is a fire access road. And there’s a half basketball court, which is awesome too! Tim got into shooting hoops during lockdown back in 2020, but of course our dinky little hoop is far too small for him now.
It’s somewhat boxy-looking, but I could have someone paint cats directly onto it, which would be cool. Assuming Chris let me, lol. It has a massive laundry (a great full-quarantine room) plus a large rumpus room which would be a great room for customers to meet cats, especially as it has a toilet nearby (I empty kitty litter about six times a day sometimes, and it’s very difficult to carry litter leavings through a door when kittens are clamouring for attention/escape) AND an upstairs guest room with ensuite (great for soft quarantine). Plus a large master bedroom with a huge ensuite (big enough for a spa bath MAYBE—the floor plan is wrong; there is no bath there so far) and huge windows looking at that amazing view. And a theatre room with a SINK (ie kitchen… which I’d use for washing cat dishes separately to human dishes… and as part of a separate flat when someone needed it). And it has a library room (the gym, which has no windows because it’s basically underground) with a wooden floor *swoon*. And a pool which I think is a swim spa. And two balconies, one of which has a door into the ensuite and is above the garage (so should be strong enough to hold a spa). And the kitchen has views of the pool, and a giant island bench, plus a pantry with sink and dishwasher. And the master bedroom has a his-and-hers WIR, which is excellent. And the garage is giant, which would be helpful for storing furniture for refugee families before they arrive in Canberra. It also has a really wide foyer with a murder hole and a chandelier which I quite like.
The flaws include a steep driveway, too much marble in the bathrooms, marble on the left-hand balcony (extremely slippery and stupid), and real wooden floors which are probably not moisture-resistant enough to handle my family (I’d put rubber-backed mats down in the kitchen to try to keep it safe). It needs a lift (I’d put one from the garage to Bed 4) and a spa bath. I don’t think the pool is heated (but it is possible to buy pool heaters for an existing pool). I’d also put a lockable door in the hall to the left of the stairs on the ground floor, so if we wanted to host refugees we could keep completely separate (traumatised people from other cultures who don’t speak English tend to be a lot of work and we would definitely accidentally mutually offend each other). The cat spaces have carpet, which isn’t ideal hygiene-wise but obviously that’s not a fatal flaw. The ‘living’ room would make a perfect study for Lizzie—separate from the main room’s noise, but also public enough that we’d be constantly walking past and seeing what she was doing/watching. It has three ovens (good for either a tiny bit of cooking or a lot—I’d love to host big events sometimes) and an ice maker (great because my kids love ice). The family/meals area is super spacious without feeling so big it’s cold.
This floor plan has a shocking number of mistakes. North is to the right, not up (good). There is a large front window in Bed 1 (good), and no bath in the ensuite (good). There is no joinery in the office. There is a sink in the WIP (good). The ‘bar’ in the theatre room only has benches along the walls, not sticking out (which is good). But you get the gist.
One of the cool things is that, because the block is steep, the balcony on the left is on the same level as the pool. I could hop in the pool for a swim, have a spa afterwards, and not get any of the wooden floors wet in the process (or have to navigate wet stairs).
So how much is this mansion of a home (including theatre, pool, epic views, and small-business spaces)? According to online calculations, it’ll sell for about $2.3 million.
Lucky I believe in miracles or that would be super depressing.
Houses & Fashion Part One
I have developed a full-blown Autistic special interest in houses—massive dream houses specifically, but along the way I have found many things that I now vehemently believe are simply INCORRECT… or in some cases, wonderful and brilliant.
I’m a white woman living in the Capitalist Western World, so of course I have that most basic b*tch of basic b*tch longings: a bigger house. Many people in my generation will never have a house at all (thanks, billionaires!). I actually own my house, which is amazing considering that I am a Millennial AND someone who is disabled by chronic illness. (My husband Chris has a decent job, which obviously is crucial, and we both have financially stable parents who have helped us greatly in many ways. Also I used to have amazing self-control eg I didn’t buy ANYTHING baby-related when I was pregnant with my first kid, because I knew I’d be super tempted but also receive some gifts.)
Pictured: Things I buy unnecessary toys for frequently.
I literally dream of houses, quite often—it started before we bought our own house and continued afterwards. Despite that I felt guilty about owning a house at all due to my awareness of serious third world poverty plus the fact I’m living on Stolen Land. From the age of 12 to 24 I was going to live in Indonesia as an unpaid aid worker, and I’ve never truly resolved the inherent injustice of my privilege compared to some of the Third World communities I’ve known.
But in 2019 I had an epiphany that I don’t have to suffer in order to help others. That very much led to the Castle of Kindness Refugee Sponsorship Group (aka, staying in Australia while still helping the 3rd world). At the same time, I personally have many unmet needs due to being disabled, and part of the whole 2019 epiphany involved thinking about what kind of home would best support my own needs and gifts. I designed a ‘Castle’ where multiple families could live. It had a pool and two spas (one inside and one outside, for enjoying the views and the outside world), with two lifts leading upstairs, a free food pantry, and the capacity for medium-sized community events such as big-screen movie nights and cooking classes (multiple ovens), etc. I wanted it to be completely wheelchair accessible, with features for Hard of Hearing and Vision Impaired people too, as I’m very aware that disabled people struggle to find appropriate housing. And it needed to be close to a shopping hub, so newly-arrived refugees could walk to the shops easily. I am also very aware that most refugee families have at least one chronic health condition (often poorly understood, much as fibromyalgia is poorly understood) and usually sore muscles from stress alone (plus prejudices against mental health care that take time to overcome)—so the spas were not just useful to my own chronic pain, but would be a resource for refugees and other chronically ill people. This ‘castle’ would also be able to act as an evacuation centre for disabled or autistic people who are especially ill-suited to the usual evacuation centres. And it would be built to excellent climate standards, with solar (and a solar power battery for protection as the weather grows more severe), and incredible air filters etc for the next time Canberra has a major smoke issue. And it would look like a castle (or otherwise iconic), because that would be awesome.
Since I have seen miracles happen before (particularly the financial kind as I’ve always been a low earner), I confidently expected this ‘Castle’ to someday, somehow come into being. Most of the time I still do, even though it’s obviously a huge expensive dream that I’m entirely incapable of working towards in any financial sense. And quite a selfish one too, so perhaps God would choose not to make this particular miracle happen.
Every so often, if there was a big house for sale in my area, I’d go to the Open House and think about whether it would meet any of the goals of this longed-for ‘Castle’. Over time my dreams changed quite a bit-for example, I definitely DON’T want to share a house with anyone, no matter how big it is (although having a separate, lockable section for short-term accommodation for newly-arrived refugees would be EXTREMELY helpful). And now I’ve fallen deeply into cat fostering, I want specific things that would help with that (both in terms of hygiene and in terms of cat joy… and a customer space for a small business running cat encounters).
And I’ve looked at houses more and more, and found that my husband also likes looking at houses, and so does one of my best friends, and I have dived deep into current house/design fashions, and started becoming more and more obsessed.
So here we are.
The first, most obvious thing about modern houses is that a LOT of them have a flat roof and are shaped like a box. This gives an impression of clean lines and can look cool, but it’s SO DUMB and is going to make so so many houses look extremely dated.
They only possible reason to have a flat roof is to have a grass roof on top, and no one is doing that, so there’s absolutely no benefit to this weirdly pervasive trend.
Even a little bit of originality can considerably improve the look of a house. This is a house that recently sold, and in my opinion the offset look of the boxes improves it considerably (but it also means it’s split-level, which is very bad for anyone with dodgy knees or balance issues).
A lot of homes have a slant on one side, which keeps the boxy look so many people are apparently so fond of, but doesn’t go as aggressively as some houses (which are literally rectangular from the front).
This particular house also demonstrates four other traits:
- Render: Render has been hugely popular in houses for a couple of decades now, and I confess I much prefer the ‘plain’ look of render to the ‘busy’ look of brick. Yep, I’ve fallen for the fashion. Also, you can draw on them with chalk really well, which is fun. And they improve your energy rating, which is good for the planet and good for your bills.
- White. There is a LOT of white in new houses lately. It is striking and looks super clean and new… for a while. I like the drama of a mostly-white facade, but I suspect I’d regret it in time (or just paint it another colour, which is a relatively easy way to instantly make a house iconic eg, paint it lime green).
- At least two textures. This house has white render, grey render, a bit of brick, and a bit of wood between the two upstairs windows. This is more than fashion—this is the law. Houses in new suburbs must have at least two textures. I actually like this, except when there are two feature textures next to each other, then I find it WAY too much.
- Wooden features are super cool, but also quite high maintenance. Worth it, though, in my opinion. I love wood. There are often stone or pretend-stone features, which I also LOVE. Wood and stone in the same building is great too, depending on what is where.
- Sandstone. In this case it’s the mailbox and a bit of retaining wall. There’s a lot of sandstone around and I LOVE it. Especially when the pieces are irregular rather than all rectangular. The only exception is if it’s placed somewhere that instantly stains (eg garden edging, where muddy water will run down over it).
Of course, the best thing about new houses is they have increasingly impressive energy ratings—I’ve seen up to 7.5.
So, in conclusion: Render is great; white is risky but replaceable; wood and stone is great if placed correctly; boxes are extremely stupid.
This is the way.
Houses are increasingly large on smaller and smaller blocks, which is obviously bad because it doesn’t leave enough green space for human well-being or for the well-being of the suburb (eg the entire suburb will be hotter in Summer and colder in Winter). And, the street frontage is much smaller too, in some cases making places an absolute nightmare as there is not enough parking for even ordinary life, let alone a party or event. This will definitely result in major fire damage at some point, as streets literally become impassable. Sometimes there is not a single visitor parking spot—no driveway, and a street too narrow to park on the street (except people still do park on the street, obviously). Ugh.
Garages doors often have windows or something that looks like wood. This is great as they’re a big part of the look of the house. (I really like arches, but I prefer a double garage with one big door because that’s just easier to get in and out.)
Beginner’s Interactive Fiction, Part Two: ChoiceScript in Half an Hour
“ChoiceScript” is a tool created by Dan Fabulich, used by the company Choice of Games. I am not associated or affiliated with Choice of Games in any way, but ChoiceScript is my preferred writing tool and I believe it is better suited to long-form stories than any other. It is simple enough for non-coders to use and complex enough to have a great range of clever tricks and features.
STEP ONE: Go to ChoiceOfGames.com, which looks like this (the feature story varies):
Click on “Make Your Own Games” (in the top row of tabs) and the next screen will look like this:
STEP TWO: Download ChoiceScript following their instructions on that page. For me it looks like a folder on my desktop.
STEP THREE: You will also need to have or install a text-only program such as Text. I use a power Mac and the text program I use is called Sublime Text. It is free (although I chose to purchase it after using it for a while).
STEP FOUR: When you download ChoiceScript, it has a small piece of story already set up for you, so you can begin writing by simply replacing their words with your own. To access it, open your ChoiceScript folder, then the “scenes” folder (highlighted in the first image below), then the “startup.txt” file (making sure it opens in your plain-text program). It may just be called “startup”.
Inside, you will see something like this (after scrolling down):
So that you can compare ChoiceScript with Twine, here is the exact scene we started writing in my Twine in Five Minutes entry—as it would appear in a ChoiceScript file. This is what it looks like in ChoiceScript after writing the first paragraph and first set of choices:
Note there are line numbers on the left. They will be extremely useful when you are debugging your story, as the automatic testers tell you what line your mistakes are on.
And this is what it looks like after we’ve added another choice INSIDE the second choice (the same choice we did in the Twine story). Readers only see the second pair of choices if they took the second path.
That’s as far as we got with our Twine story.
As you can see, indents are extremely important in ChoiceScript. So are the symbols “*” and “#”.
Note that the word “choice” is always written in lower case. This is true for all the commands that you will use in ChoiceScript.
Tip: Programs need precision. Commands must always be in the exact same form (no capital letters, ever, and usually no spaces). A tab or space in the wrong place can break your game.
This section of story won’t actually work yet. You need to tell the program where to go after a choice is made. Your options are to go somewhere else in the file (you can even go back to the start if you really really want) or to another file. In ChoiceScript, you have a new file for each chapter. You can even have entire scenes that are only read if certain choices are made. Usually, you end a chapter with “*finish”, and the story automatically goes to the next chapter.
So here’s the same story but with all the loose ends tied up. One choice leads to a unique scene. The other choice will go to the next chapter.
From here, you can test the story if you like. Click on “index.txt” (or “index”) from your original ChoiceScript folder and it will open up your story.
You may have to select the ChoiceScriot folder to run it. The story looks like this for the player:
STEP FIVE: Now might be a good time for a break.
Okay? Okay!
Go to the very first line of your “startup” file and you should see three commands, each marked by an asterisk.
*title
*author
*scene_list
Write in your title and your name, with normal capitalisation, like this:
*title Pirates!
*author Felicity Banks
Your scene list is the list of… well, scenes. You can easily add to it at any time. I tend to use numbers, with some part of the title so they’re different to all my other stories. If I have ‘special’ scenes I’ll give them special names. The scene list tells the program what you want included, and in what order. They have to be lower case, with no spaces, and numbers must be written out in full. The first scene must still be called “startup.txt”. That can never be changed. Here’s an example scene list for a story that has four opening chapters and three final chapters.
STEP SIX:
Now we get to the use of statistics—the mechanism the program uses to keep track of the choices made by the player. THIS is what makes ChoiceScript so useful. Don’t worry—you don’t have to do ANY maths.
In the second set of choices above, both “Get off the ship—NOW!” and “Take a moment to fix a direction while I’m above the waterline.” go directly to the next scene. So, what was the point of that choice?
As writers, we should add some text to the choice to make it more worthwhile. But we can do more than that—we can establish through the text that the player character gains an advantage and/or a disadvantage from this choice.
FIRST we need to invent the stats we want. In startup, after the scene list, we invent our stats and their starting value like this:
*create faster_swim 0
*create punched 0
Writing Tip: You may automatically invent familiar statistics, like Health, or Strength, or Beauty, or Intelligence. But Choice of Games loves unique and interesting stats, like “Disdain” or “Drunkenness” or “Introversion”.
Then, in our choice, we can change the value of those two statistics, like this:
Later (probably in the next chapter but it may not make a difference for several chapters), when we want to show the results of those statistical changes, we do it like this:
The player who chose to look around before jumping overboard gets this text:
The water is shockingly cold and shockingly dark. You get your bearings and face towards that one glimpse you had of land, carefully noting the position of the sun since the ship is not going to remain a convenient marker. It is impossible to see the land, so you’re glad you took that moment to look around before you jumped, even if you can feel your eye swelling shut.
You swim, setting a steady pace since it won’t be a short journey. Your eye is throbbing, so you tell yourself the rhythm is handy.
The sun moves slowly, slowly across the sky, and finally you can actually see land blurring the horizon ahead.
Something brushes against your leg.
The player who didn't look around before jumping overboard gets this text:
The water is shockingly cold and shockingly dark.
You swim, setting a steady pace since it won’t be a short journey.
The sun moves slowly, slowly across the sky, and even when it sets you still can’t see any sign of land. You’ll be spending the night on the open ocean.
Something brushes against your leg.
Note the commands "*goto" and "*label". That pair of commands are extremely useful. Note also the command "*else". If you use an "*if" command, you also need the "*else" command to tell the program "continue here".
These two stats (“faster_swim” and “punched”) are boolean stats, meaning they are merely yes/no. Most stats are much more flexible, which gives your player the ability to build up skills or rapport or even their personality in a series of choices throughout the story.
You create non-boolean stats in the same way; by the “*create” command just under your scene list, and a numerical starting value. Often you have a starting value of zero, but for some statistics you might start with 50 (50%) to indicate a neutral starting position (so you can add OR SUBTRACT from that statistic) or some other value. Here’s an example.
First, you make the statistic.
*create swordfighting 0
Then, you create opportunities for the player to gain that statistic.
Later, you can test them, like this:
You can also vary a test to see if a player is unskilled, slightly skilled (has chosen swordfighting skill at least once), or extremely skilled (has chosen swordfighting skill at least twice), like this:
Note that you cannot use “*if” twice in a row. You need to use “*if” then “*elseif” then “else”.
Let’s imagine that instead of swordfighting, this “skill” was how well the player got on with a character named Agoye. This statistic started at 50%, with Agoye feeling neutral towards the player. Depending on the player choices, Agoye may hate them (due to choices that set the agoye statistic with a – instead of a +), love them, or continue feeling neutral. Here’s how a scene might play out towards the end of the game:
Note the command “*ending” which of course indicates an ending.
Writing Tip: In Choice of Games stories, your player must get about three-quarters of the way through the story before dying. “Bad” endings should also be well-written, so the player who chooses to lose on purpose still has a great story experience.
The brilliant thing about statistics is that seemingly minor choices along the way can slowly build up a statistic so that when tested, the player can win or lose in a dramatic (and earned) fashion. Some choices will branch off into unique scenes, but a lot of them will just have a line or two of unique text and/or a statistic. That means they remain meaningful choices without the writer actually going mad writing 100,000 different scenes in each chapter.
STEP SEVEN:
There is one more kind of stat that is important to Choice of Games, and relatively simple to do in ChoiceScript. This is the set of stats that lets a player choose their name and gender. These are boolean stats that include specific text. They are created in the same place as all the other stats—just below the scene list in the “startup” file.
*create name “”
*create he “he”
*create him “him”
*create his “his”
Here is the choice of name (including giving the player the option to type in literally any name they like), and then how to use it. Even though the name is coded is in lower case, using the exclamation mark means it will be capitalised for the reader.
With pronouns, you usually don’t want them capitalised, so it looks like this:
Note that I’ve used male pronouns as the base code. That’s because they’re more straightforward.
Note also that if you include non-binary pronouns (Choice of Games is very focused on diversity—and it’s a kind thing to do—so I recommend it) the grammar will sometimes not work, so you may have to rephrase some sentences.
Eg. you can say, “I took him to the shops” just fine in the various genders (“I took her to the shops”; “I took them to the shops”) but you can’t get, “That dog is his” to work, because “That dog is their” is incorrect.
The distinctions are subtle, so definitely get a native English speaker to check your work!
It is possible to avoid using pronouns for an entire story (I’ve done it) but it’s not easy and it tends to feel awkward to the reader.
Writing Tip: Speaking of gender, Choice of Games also expects you to have a roughly equal number of male and female characters. They will appreciate characters who are non-binary or otherwise gender diverse, too. And every other kind of diversity (IF it is done well! Harmful stereotypes are not appreciated, and if you’re writing about a minority group you don’t know very well then there will be a lot of stereotypes you don’t even realise you hold). You can get Sensitivity Readers, but it’s harder to get them for interactive fiction than regular fiction, and you can’t rely on Sensitivity Readers to fix everything. Also, if your entire plot is offensive then you can’t fix that.
The type of statistic you used to set the player character’s name can be used for other things too. In my cat breeding game, the player can type in unique names for every single kitten.
Beginner’s Interactive Fiction, Part One: Twine in Five Minutes
Interactive fiction is any story that involves the reader in the story, usually by giving them choices along the way that change the text.
“Twine” is a tool that creates a story map as you write your story. It’s shockingly easy to use (speaking as a person who has major struggles operating her own phone).
STEP ONE: Go to Twinery.org, which looks like this:
If you can, download it as a desktop app. Otherwise, click on “Use it in your browser”. Press skip (or don’t press skip, and go through a quick tutorial that is better than this) and you’ll get to the screen that looks like this (if you are using the desktop app it won’t have the warning):
On the top left, click on “+New”. You can type in a title if you like, or leave it as “Untitled Story”.
Your new story looks like this:
Yay! You are now writing a story in Twine.
STEP TWO: Double click on the box in the middle of the blue space. Then your screen will look like this:
In the white box (aka a bigger version of the little blue box), type the first few sentences of your story.
Writing tip: In interactive fiction, most readers want you to get to a choice as quickly as possible, ideally within 300 words. This applies to every choice!
I am starting with two useful story hooks: An interesting setting, and an interesting problem.
Writing tip: Interactive fiction is usually a game (even when there are no sounds or pictures or animations), so using tropes is a VERY GOOD thing eg. Dirty violent pirates; dangerous nature; femme fatales or mad scientists. Try to think of your story as a game. If you were writing a pirate game, you would definitely want fighting, alcohol, historical weapons, and danger—so make sure those things are present in your story. When I wrote “Scarlet Sails” I started with a list of every pirate trope I could think of: betrayal, rum, ambition, gold, evil mermaids, treasure, sea monster, storms. Then I made a plot that linked them all. That is my most successful story.
STEP THREE: Make at least two choices (you can make as many as you like, but it will get out of control extremely quickly, so I recommend starting with two).
I have chosen:
- Take Redbeard’s sword and challenge his friend to a fight to show how fierce you are.
- Sneak up the other ladder and dive overboard—perhaps you can swim the rest of the way.
In order to tell the computer that I want them to be choices, I type them up like this, with double square brackets at the beginning and end.
[[Take Redbeard’s sword and challenge his friend to a fight to show how fierce you are.]]
[[Sneak up the other ladder and dive overboard—perhaps you can swim the rest of the way.]]
Twine instantly creates two new boxes; one for each choice. You can rearrange the boxes by clicking on them and dragging them around. Here’s the same page after I’ve rearranged them so I can see everything better:
To write the next sections, I double-click on either box and start typing the next bit of the story. Here I’ve written a bit of story and another pair of choices. Because I used [[ and ]] again, Twine has made two more boxes for me.
And the story is up and running!
Let’s stop here and see how it looks for a reader. Click once to highlight the original box (the one with your title or “Untitled Passage”) then go up to the menu and click on “Test from here”. It will automatically open a new window.
The choices are in bright text, and I can click on either of them. I choose the second choice.
If I click on either of these choices I get a blank screen, because I haven’t written them yet.
Note the “back” arrow on the top left of the black screen. If the reader changes their mind about a choice, they can go back.
Aaaand that’s it! That’s how you write a story in Twine! Congratulations! Here’s a kitten picture to celebrate.
BUT if you used your browser, you MUST save after each session, because if you don’t touch your story for seven days it will be deleted.
STEP FOUR: Saving your story.
Close your ‘testing’ browser window so you’re back to your usual blue screen. Click on “Build” in the upper menu, then “Publish to file” on the menu that appears below it.
Your story file will go to your downloads folder, and if you open it, it will look exactly like it does when you test it online (but it will not require an internet connection to open). You can email it to friends to read.
Writing Tip: Did you notice the typo in the very first choice in this story? “chellenge” should be “challenge”. The easiest way to fix it is in the very first box, here, where the choice is written:
It will automatically fix the typo in the title of the next box.
STEP FIVE: When you’re ready to learn more, go back to Twinery.org and pay attention to this section:
There are great articles for beginners on the left.
And, Twine comes in four “flavours”: Chapbook, Harlowe, Snowman, and SugarCube. Once you’re getting better at Twine, you’ll need to pick which one or ones suits you best. Use the “Twine Cookbook” to decide which one you want to try, then use the online guide on the right.
STEP SIX: Time to join the community.
The interactive fiction community is pretty great. It is usually very inclusive (especially of women and LGBTIQA+ people). One of the places people hang out is https://intfiction.org and it is definitely worth signing up and having a look around, then joining in the conversations. (They’re getting a lot of spam at the moment, so it may take a little while to prove you’re human.)
Welcome, and enjoy!
The next lessons will include writing with ChoiceScript (which is better than Twine at book-length stories), the Choice of Games forum (for users of ChoiceScript), and how to keep your many many branches under control.
Going to Indonesia to teach Interactive Fiction
The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation is a not-for-profit that does all kinds of wonderful things to improve the IF community (which is already fantastic) including organising and fundraising for the IF Comp; keeping Twine running smoothly; and they’ve just started a micro-grant program.
I happen to be one of the first recipients of a micro-grant from the IFTF: a grant to go to Indonesia at the time of the Ubud Writers’ and Readers’ Festival and teach IF to Indonesians (and other speakers of Bahasa Indonesia).
This was the excuse I needed to take my whole family to Indonesia, as Chris and I have been planning to do since before we even had kids. From the age of 12 to 24, I planned to move to Indonesia as an aid worker/teacher, and before the IFTF grant I’d visited various parts of Indonesia seven times altogether. At one stage I was technically fluent in Bahasa Indonesia. Chris and I visited Indonesia briefly after a year of marriage, but that was more than ten years ago. It was the longest period of time I’d gone without visiting, but I’d also become disabled (and diabetic) in that time. And, you know, we have two kids now.
There are so many reasons I wanted to take the family to Indonesia that I’m not even aware of all of them. Holidays build resilience and flexibility in my kids, which is especially handy when they’re both autistic. And it’s valuable to spend some time in the third world, even in a luxury setting like Bali.
We’re home now, and our trip went really well. I taught about twenty students (eighteen in person including two ex-pats living in Bali) and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the “Oh!” on their faces as they saw how easy it is to use interactive fiction thanks to tools like Twine.
And my family all had a great time, complete with some of the classic challenges of travel to Indonesia (traffic, heat, food poisoning, communication challenges, unexpected obstacles, etc).
I’ll be doing a LOT of travel videos. This first one is about the Sacred Monkey Forest in Ubud.
Spoiler: it was excellent!
IF Comp 2024: Welcome to the Universe
I’m getting mixed messages from the cover image, title, blurb, and content warnings. What even is this thing?
The opening confuses me even more, as it sounds educational. However, it’s very interesting, talking about a different version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Which also doesn’t seem to relate to any of the information about this game I’ve been given so far. Is it comedy? Horror? Realistic? Fantasy? I can’t answer any of those questions, when normally I’d be able to answer them from the image OR the blurb OR the title OR the opening paragraph.
But there’s no typos and there’s some psychology, so I’m interested.
Okay! That was a kind of prologue, ending with a joke. So… comedy? Probably? I can certainly deal with that.
This is delightfully weird.
Here’s an entirely random example. What does it mean? I don’t know. But I’m enjoying the ride.
I enjoyed the ride all the way to the end, and was impressed when the game fed various choices back to me in a cohesive description. I’m not sure I’d recommend this game, but maybe I would?
I have to let it percolate for a while. The writing is interesting and solid throughout, so I suspect it’ll rate highly with me. I’m biased like that.
IF Comp 2024: Civil Service
Okay, this opens in a surprisingly atmospheric, interested, poetic-but-not-annoyingly-so way. I’m quickly hooked.
After a while, the poetic qualities grow stronger. It’s hard to know what the plot is, and sections seem disjointed. I’m not sure what my choices are doing most of the time.
…
Wow, that was WEIRD.
I think I sort of understood the plot in the end, and a lot of my confusion was due to the deliberately mysterious writing. I’m not sure it worked, not quite. But the writing suggests this author will appeal to some people, and has plenty of talent.
IF Comp 2024: Birding in Pope Lick Park
I’ll be honest: Pope Lick is a terrifying name for a park. But let’s do this anyway.
Putting the opening of the story on the title is an unusual choice, but fine. It’s also the blurb. Still fine, just unusual.
It’s a perfectly adequate opening.
Pope Lick Park seems to be a real park—so much so that there’s a link to the actual web site on the first page. I really like that. There’s loads more links after that (some informative, and at least one to a comic), which is also cool.
The pics are way too big for my browser, but that’s probably my fault. (Yup; I switched browsers and all is well.)
The accessible text is excellent.
There are some minor typos and a LOT of photos. The bird photos are excellent. The other photos are adequate.
For a little I felt like, “What’s the point of the story?” but clicking on the birds I saw along the way became more and more compelling. I hate repeating text (which I got a little as I wandered around) but the game clearly remembered when I’d been somewhere before, which meant I’d often see new text or even new birds in the same area. That was VERY cool. It really felt quite immersive, in the gentlest possible way. I began to find the scenery photos more compelling too, as it became clearer and clearer that this is, effectively, non-fiction. Everything here is real.
Okay, I’m finished my play-through and I’m totally converted. This is a great story that grows more fascinating as you stroll through it. And yes, it’s incredibly educational and beautiful too.
Cat calendar
JANUARY
Buttons was a bitey boy.
I found him in a shed. My friend and I caught him together. We both ended up bleeding a lot and covered in cat urine.
He was about four weeks old.
He taught me that fostering kittens is messy, tiring, bloody, stinky, stressful, and just as wonderful as I’d always imagined.
Buttons was adopted into a family of experienced and undaunted cat owners.
FEBRUARY
In February 2024, I started fostering the ‘Nature Kittens’: Dawn, Thunder, Cloud, and Midnight.
MARCH
While the entire Nature Kittens litter was still with me, someone I know caught another litter of five stray kittens that would have to be euthanised because no one had any room to take them.
They were barely a month old.
I took them to my house “for a few days” until I could find another rescue that could look after them.
One of the two calico girls (sitting up on the right) hissed and spat so much on that first day that she set off the others. She was so tiny and so fierce… and she sounded like popcorn. So I named her Popcorn, and her sister Caramel (second from the left, with some orange patches). Then I named the boys Violet (“Violent”) Crumble (left), Curly Wurly (top middle) and Sprinkle (bottom), the runt.
Two members of the Snack Pack nearly died from cat flu, but recovered. Little kittens are extremely fragile! Even if they can also rip a full-grown human to shreds when they really don’t want to be picked up.
APRIL
Thunder and Midnight were adopted together. Their new owner built a custom enclosure for them, which they loved immediately.
MAY
Cloud suddenly stopped eating and lost more than half her body weight. The vet suspected she needed major surgery, and would never live a full life. She always was smaller than the others.
It turned out she wanted a different kind of food.
She was adopted by a retiree who had cared for her previous cat for twenty-three years despite the cat’s health being poor for several years. So Cloud now has a devoted personal handmaiden… and that is precisely what she requires.
JUNE
Popcorn was the first member of the Snack Pack to be adopted. She doesn’t hiss or spit any more, but loves to purr and snuggle, and will cheerfully approach any human.
JULY
Sprinkle (left) was the second member of the Snack Pack to be adopted.
In the early days he was extremely concerned that I would neglect to feed him and would scream hysterically when I entered the room. He would sometimes forget where the food was located after I put the bowl down, and would scream some more.
Why is it that the smallest kitten of the litter always has the biggest personality?
AUGUST
Dawn was finally adopted in August… and then she was un-adopted, as her new owners discovered one of them was allergic to cats. Fortunately she quickly found another home, and is now settled in happily.
SEPTEMBER
Violet Crumble looks almost exactly like his brothers, yet still manages to be the prettiest. He was adopted next out of the Snack Pack.
OCTOBER
The last two kittens in the Snack Pack were adopted together.
So Caramel and Curly Wurly will continue to make a cuddle puddle daily for the rest of their lives. They are very lucky, and so are their owners.
NOVEMBER
In Spring, with no fosters left, I helped another rescue organisation by taking on four of their kittens: I named them Squirrel (fluffy tortoiseshell and white), Bunny Rabbit (her sister, a tortoiseshell very much like Dawn), Meeouse (white), and Monkey.
Monkey was so named because he liked to climb upside down across the roof of his enclosure.
I quickly discovered that he also loves jumping into the arms of the nearest upright human. Or onto their back. Or shoulder. He’s not fussy. But he’s shockingly fast.
DECEMBER
I hope all four Animal Kittens will find their forever homes by Christmas.
Edit: I shall add more pic/s of those four, possibly including a group shot or two.
IF Comp 2024: Doctor Who and the Dalek Super-Brain
Doctor Who is excellent so I was always tempted by this one (and somewhat concerned about intellectual property law). Inside the game, it says that it is fan-fiction and does not generate any revenue. But the IF comp DOES give out cash prizes, so doesn’t that count as revenue?
I do think the author is safe simply because they’re too small to bother crushing.
Of course, copyright lawyers and daleks both really, really enjoy disintegrating things. And Doctor Who is on Disney+ now, and Disney is famously fond of bringing the full force of the law down to exterminate even the most tiny and innocent of artists.
Hmm.
Anyway, that’s not really my business.
I very much enjoyed pushing the giant red button to start the game.
This is my third surprisingly visual game in a row! The visuals are basic, but enjoyable. However, the general experience is clunky. It feels like the choices I make are merely scrolling up and down a prescribed conversation.
I died horribly (in a genre-appropriate fashion). The death is totally fine (good, even) but this game required much more problem solving skill than I think I possess.
The ability to click on objects in the image to get more detail is very cool, even if I cordially dislike the entire ‘click such-and-such to get more detailed info’ system. Obviously that’s a matter of taste.
Some of the writing is pretty basic, but some bits are good.
. . .
I think this requires me to sometimes remember things, which due to my various mental issues means I can’t properly play the game. So I’ll stop here, and I won’t rate this game either.
Apologies to the writer.
Felicity Banks 