Looking for a guide for writing guides

Hi there. I was looking for a guide that well, guided the writing of guides. =) I decided to dispatch my experiences to the community and in the process help refresh some of the AT guide sections (Namely the scrapper section) because so many of the guides are so old by now and with I19, many things might be out of date.

I attempted to search for it, but got lots of results, but nothing that I was actually searching for. If there is not a Guide to Writing Guides, can you guide people guide me in the guide making business. =)

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Your character does not have capped defense. Depending on your AT the cap is between 175% - 225%. Your defense is not teal in the combat window, it can go higher. STOP SAYING IT IS CAPPED! The correct term is Soft Cap.
I enjoy playing in Mids. I specialize in Melee Characters, other AT's usually bore me.

I'd say just read a few other guides and follow suit.

The first step, though, is making sure you're not reinventing the wheel... find out if a guide already exists on the forums or the Wiki. You can do that by asking in Player Questions.

And the other caveat is to make sure you label strategies as strategies and guides as guides. When people post a 'guide' on how to beat a specific Task Force and they say things like "You need a healer!" -- that's strategy, not a guide.

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Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides

There are as many ways to write a guide as there are reasons, types and subjects.

If you haven't written one before, my first bits of advice would be:
- Consider your subject.

For instance, you said you wanted to write guides for scrappers. A "Guide to Scrappers" would be... well, simply a huge undertaking. You probably don't want to tackle that on your first outing. Trim it down to (say) a "Broadsword scrapper's guide" and see how that goes.

- Consider the subject, part 2

What do you have to say about it? There IS such a thing as a guide that's too short or otherwise.... well, not to be unkind, but useless. Or one that's long but says nothing. What do you have to say about it? What CAN you say to make the guide better?

- Give yourself an outline.

This helps with the second part, especially with initial guides. If I were writing a BS scrapper's guide, for instance, I'd probably break it down much like my fiery aura overview. Something like:

• Intro - who am I, why am I writing this
• Powers - The set itself
• IOs that may be useful
• How it works with secondaries (/SR does this, /Regen does this) and what pools may be helpful
• Special info (You can customize, you can get custom sword graphics by doing XYZ, etc.)
• Exit/thanks/acknowledgements

Just for a rough idea before getting started.

- Stay on target

Are you saying enough? Are you starting to ramble? Is what you're talking about totally off base? (I can be bad at going off on tangents. I know it. I talk.)

- PROOFREAD and SPELL CHECK!

Seriously. if i red ur gide an ur spelin lyk this an have no punshuashn bcuz its online not englesh klas so losen up lozr lulz.... I'm stopping after the first sentence or two and considering you rather dense. I don't mean the occasional spelling error here, either - everyone does that. But this is you presenting yourself - do you want to be taken seriously or not? If not, why are you spending time on this? (This does also include using the proper form of words - there is not the same as their or they're, to, two and too mean completely different things, and if you say you're going Rouge I'll point you toward a Mary Kay salesperson.)

- Tone

Try not to be preachy. You can be informative without it. It can be somewhat dry reading, though - so put a little personality in it. Hell, I like to be downright conversational in mine. For another fun to read guide, go find "The MFing Warshade."

- Beta readers!

I *usually* put mine up in the appropriate section before putting them here. The Kheldian lore guide, for instance, was in the Kheld forum for a while getting chewed over before I put it in the Guides section. I'll often ask one or two people to look it over before doing THAT. And don't be afraid to make changes AFTER it's posted - I'll point at my FA guide for this. You'll see in the comments people saying "Oh, that's this way for scrappers," which - since I was writing it primarily from a tank viewpoint - needed changing for the Brute and Scrapper variants. Take criticism for what it is - an attempt to help out, not an attack on you or your guide (unless someone IS being that way.) And be nice and give some credit, too.


- Have fun

Really. If you're not getting paid to do it, you should be doing it for fun (or to make money later, but that doesn't happen with guides.) If it feels like work, step away from it for a while. When I did the MA tutorials for the release of the Architect issue, I didn't want to write another guide ever again. You can see them in ParagonWiki, as well as searching here - that was a long set of guides, and things have changed since then. I haven't gone back to change them because it is, again, a LOT of work.

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