| Chapter 7: Basic Actions |

| 7.15. Kinds of action

Especially when people need to react to events going on around them, it is helpful to be able to categorise actions into whole areas of behaviour. The following example, indebted to the late Georgette Heyer, is suggestive:

> "Dearth and the Maiden"

> The Chequers Inn is a room. "The room is panelled and ceilinged in oak, with blue curtains to the windows and blue cushions on the high-backed settle by the fire."

> An oil painting is in the Inn. "An oil painting hangs upon one wall, a lascivious work from the Indes in which a very bendy, sloe-eyed courtesan - but no."

> A man called Mr Carr is in the Inn. "Standing bashfully aside is one Mr Carr, who we have been led to understand is by profession a Highwayman (yet whose visage oddly recalls Lord John Carstares, disgraced eldest son of the Earl of Wyncham)."

> Kissing Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour. Doing something to the painting is unmaidenly behaviour.

> Instead of unmaidenly behaviour in the Inn, say "How unmaidenly! Why, one might just as wantonly strip a rose of its petals, letting each fragrant leaf flutter slowly to the ground."

Here a new kind of action called "unmaidenly behaviour" has been created and then used in the description of an instead rule. The convenience of this approach is that when further actions suddenly occur to us as also being unmaidenly - say, attacking Mr Carr - we only need to add a single line:

> Attacking Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour.

And this will automatically be reflected in any rules which concern the consequences of failing to be ladylike.

Note that we were only allowed to say that "Kissing Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour." because Inform already knew from earlier sentences that Mr Carr was a person, and therefore that "kissing Mr Carr" made sense as a description of an action.

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| Example Mimicry People who must be greeted before conversation can begin.

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