Tips on the craft of article creation and post production. Post useful how-to's or examples of professional publications that we should try to mimic.
Focus. If you want a very professional publication, you're going to need a focus. Every news paper I've read, seen, or corrected had a main focus, or a driving point.
Try to have each issue revolve around a certain subject of Mapping/Modding???
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That's a very good comment, Pyro. If you have a mapping article about mobile grids, for example, Temple Siege would probably be a fitting map of the week, with some screenshots of its spells which utilize mobile grids in action.
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Oh my god... You just made me jizz on the computer with that comment. Mobile Grids in The Observer?!?! Sign Me up!!! I'd Write that! (Just kidding about the jizz.)
But I'd write an Article. When do you need it by, and what are the specifications?
Then again... Temple Siege uses only 1 mobile grid that I can think of....
Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 1 2009, 6:10 am by Pyro682.
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Temple Siege wouldn't be the best example really.
Ok, So Trash the TS thing. Focuses in the Zine?
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If we're going for a map of the week, we'd want something popular or otherwise excellent, probably not something no one has heard of before. I couldn't think of anything else off of the top of my head, and TS no doubt uses mobile grids effectively, if my understanding of them is correct which it definitely might not be.
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TS uses only 1 Mobile grid, and that's for the Mutant's Level 3 Spell. (Lurkers)
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LM L3.
LM L2 in 1.5.
I was thinking of all the spell effects, but they don't need a grid now that I think of it. Point taken, you really only need one example for it to fit but there's probably a much better fitting map.
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Those neither require nor use mobile grids.
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Really anything from lethal illusion
Don't use strictly academic language, especially on columns. You're not writing an essay, the goals here are both informing
and entertaining, so don't let it get too dry, but at the same time, you're still writing about news (probably). Save all the real creative language for fiction. Columns can and should be a little more on the informal side, since they're more like editorials, so throw some voice and intonation in there.
On punctuation: Stuff between commas, like this, should be able to be omitted without messing up the sentence; semicolons should be used to separate clauses that could be their own sentences but just don't quite make it.
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http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/dp/020530902XStrunk and White's Elements of Style. It's good.
The
1918 edition has fallen out of copyright and can be read here.