Writing a Stellar Guide: Some Hints

Writing a Stellar Guide: Some Hints
A First Draft: Please post corrections, criticism, improvements, grammar, etc.
By SuF​

Introduction:

Sharing your knowledge with others can be a very tricky process, even if you know everything there is to know about a particular subject. A guide is worthless if it does not communicate its content in an effective manner and being able to write a guide that does is not easy feat. Putting knowledge in front of a person is not what writing a guide is about. Rather, it is about putting focused, organized and thoughtful information in front of a person in a way in which it is easy for that person to read and comprehend. A computer might like it if you put your entire guide in one paragraph with no layout at all, but a person does not. Becoming good at presenting information requires that you actually present information, in this case by writing guides, but there are some hints that can help you along the way.​

Choosing a Topic:

One of the biggest issues that hamper people when they try to write a guide is their choice of topic. If one does not fully understand the information that they are trying to convey it is much harder to make someone else understand it. When choosing a topic you should keep this in mind and select a topic that you have a firm grasp on. Writing about something that you do not like also hampers your writing ability. It has been shown that people write better when they want to be writing (such as blogs) than when they are forced to write (them damned English papers). If you are knowledgeable about what you are writing about and you like what you are writing about your guide will already be in good shape.

Once you have an idea of something that you like and know about, you must consider the scope of the guide you are going to write. Scope is essentially how wide or narrow is your focus going to be. Anything you write about the history of the entire world from beginning to end is going to keep fairly bad. You will not be able to go into any details about specific events that you might enjoy and you will only have a chance to mention the biggest, most important events. The same thing holds true when you are writing a guide on any topic you like.

If you try to make the guide’s scope too wide, you are going to gloss over details that will make the guide harder for the reader to understand. Just because you know what you mean when you skim over the top subjects does not mean someone who does not have your knowledge will. It is generally better to go into detail about how something is done (i.e. How to MM a gold trade) instead of trying to give an overview of a larger field (i.e. How to MM any kind of trade in existence). The second guide may make the person into a decent MM, but it will not make them into a great one and they will have to figure out any specifics on their own. On the other hand, the first guide will make them into a much better MM and you will most likely enjoy writing about the narrower topic that you know more about.

You can also look at scope from the other direction by choosing a topic that is too narrow for which you will have too little to write about. This is fairly straightforward as it is clear that writing a guide on how to upload a picture to Imageshack is not going to be very good as it is too narrow. However, if that guide was a part of a larger guide on how to take, edit, and upload screenshots the guide would be much better and there wouldn’t be about 10 of the same guide made.

In summary, just make sure you are following all of them bullets and you should be having a good start.

• Choose a topic that you know about
• Choose a topic that you like
• Choose a topic that isn't too wide
• Choose a topic that isn't too narrow
• Narrow your topic down by choosing the subtopic that you enjoy or know about the most

​

Choosing a Title:

When people are looking for a guide, the first thing that they are going to see is the title that you give your guide. In order to make people want to read your guide (which you should want people to read it) you must create a title that is meaningful, concise and pretty. You title should inform people about the content of your guide taking into consideration the scope that your guide is on. If you entitle your guide “History” and it is actually about how to write an amazing history paper, people are going to be misled from before they even open your guide.

To counter this problem, you may be lead to think that your title should be long to try and summarize your guide so that people know exactly what it is about just by reading your title. Consider this title: “A how-to guide on writing a long research paper for history class focusing on prewriting and note taking and lesser so on the actual writing”. Now, that is an extreme example of plain stupidity but it demonstrates a point. Although you may be focusing on organizing your thoughts before you write that doesn’t mean that you need to spell it out to the person before they even open your guide. There needs to be a balance between under informing someone and over-informing them.

One method that is widely used to not only keep titles concise and informative, but also pretty, is adding a subtitle to your title. An example of this is the title I chose for this guide, “Writing a Stellar Guide: Some Hints”. My main title is “Writing a Stellar Guide” and my subtitle is “Some hints”. The main title conveys the content of the guide, in this case writing a guide. However, notice how I added the word “stellar” into my title even though it would have made sense without it. This word choice was deliberate, to give readers the sense that I was not just writing a guide on how to write a guide but rather on information that is needed to write a great guide.

Being a firm disbeliever in all that literary criticism and critical reading crap they teach you in English class, I didn’t think my word smithing was enough to get my point across. The subtitle I chose narrows down what the guide is about, in this case, about hints and tips about how to write a stellar guide. These allow you to further focus your title without making it long and unattractive. Consider this improved title: “Writing a research paper: An Organizational Approach”. This title is fairly short, flows nicely, and conveys fairly well what your guide is about.

Some more examples of real titles (from my college text books):
Introduction to Programming with Java: A Problem Solving Approach
The Norton Introduction to Literature: Shorter Tenth Edition
Western Civilization: A Brief History

Note: Using tags ([How to guide!], [Recipe]) just look bad, so don’t use them. Scowl.

In summary, make sure you follow the following bullets and your title should be at least semi-decent.

• Get your point across in as few words as possible
• Make the words flow and sound nice
• Use a subtitle if you need to focus more
• Do not try to say exactly what your guide is about, that’s what your introductions for
• Don’t use tags!
• Make sure you capitalize it correctly, with all but the smallest of words (a, of, ect) capitalized

​

Organizational Structure:

The way in which you organize your guide makes a very big difference in its readability. There are many different ways to layout your guide and depending on your personal preference and your topic you should choose accordingly. I am going to go over three different writing styles, but there are many more that you could think of yourself.

Read-Through:

These types of guides are ones that are made so that you simply read it from beginning to end slowly learning and building your knowledge along the way. If you give the writing a conversational tone, people will enjoy reading through the entire guide and it will be easy for them. This type of layout will not work for anything that has steps along the way such as any “how-to” guide but does work for most other things. Some readers will like this layout better than the more organized ones and they are much easier to write as they have no organizational structure, but I generally do not like them and rather more thoughtful, divided guides.​

Steps:

A “steps” guide is essentially a how-to guide. Since any guide that shows you how to do something will almost always have steps, it makes sense to layout these guides by step. Divide each step into its own paragraph or section and explain how to do that task in that section. Depending on how in-depth each step is, you may want to simply number them and use a list sort of format or you may want to formally divide the guide up and name each section.
​

Reference:

The guide that you are reading right now is essentially a reference guide or at least it is written in a reference kind of way. What this type of guide is trying to achieve is the organization of important information that is easy to find and understand. It is different than a steps guide or a read-through guide in that you do not have to start at the beginning. You can jump down to whatever section interests you and read from there. This means that when writing a reference guide you must divide up the information you are trying to convey into meaningful sections and write each section as if it stood alone from the rest (for the most part). Then, a reader could just read what he needed to know instead of having to read the entire guide to find what he wanted. This makes the guide much more appealing and more people will read it.​

Your guide’s look and feel:

The most important part of your guide (if not the content) is what it looks like and how it flows. A massive block of text puts people off and they will just simply not even bother reading your guide in the first place. Massive, unclear images thrown everywhere will also make your small amount of text almost impossible to read comfortably and will also turn your reader right off. I’ve divided this section into three subsections that cover the basics of laying out and making your guide look nice as well as making it easy and enjoyable to read.

Color:

Using color in your guide will make it stand out from the rest as well as make it prettier, if you do it right. Most of the time when people use color, they color each section a different bright, annoying color that jars the reader each time they finish a paragraph. That is bad. I repeat, that is bad. Very bad. No bueno. Shitty. Get it yet? If you are going to use color, use it smartly! Choose colors that do not clash with Sythe’s theme (anything black or blue is a no-no) and that help whatever organizational structure you choose. Coloring all of your headings a different color than your body text helps users see those headings more easily and faster. I’m just going to list some tips on how to use color in an effective manner:

• Use colors that are not harsh (no bright yellow please)
• Use colors that complement each other (Google it for help with that)
• Only use color if it has a purpose, not because it is fun

​

Pictures:

Just like color, pictures do have a purpose but are easily messed up and normally do more harm than good. Since the rules for pictures are similar to color, I’m just going to bullet some ideas to think about when you want to use a picture:

• Make sure your picture has a purpose: if it doesn’t, don’t use it
• Crop your pictures: show only want is needed to make your point
• Highlight the important parts: I like circling stuff in red, personally
• Explain them! A picture is worthless if the reader does not see what you do
• Make them as small as possible: if you hog the page with a massive picture, your text gets lost
• If you need a massive picture, use a thumb nail and link to the larger version

​

Layout:

The way in which your information appears on the page will make or break your guide. I’m just going to list some suggestions since layout could be a guide in itself:

Do not center anything but your title:

This is mainly a personal preference, but centering text makes it extremely hard to read. The lines start at different places and end at different places which has a jarring effect when there is more than one line. If you do choose to center your guide anyways, do not use bullets. Bulleting and centering do not play nice together and it looks stupid when people do it, so don’t.​

Make your headings stand out:

Underline them, make them bigger, change the color, change the font, do whatever. There needs to be an indication to the reader that something is a header and not more body text. However, do not go extreme with the headings. Do something subtle and just enough to get the point across. Large, underlined, bright pink headings just look ugly.​

Use indentation:

If you are left justifying your guide, indent your body text under your headings. It makes it easier to read your headings, which makes them stand out better and it just looks nice.
​

Use whitespace:

Whitespace is just any character that is invisible (tab, enter, space, etc). Use whitespace to break up your guide into reasonable sections. This makes it easier to navigate as well as read.​

General Tips:

• Make a draft and sleep on your writing before you edit
• Read and edit your guide to find places where it is hard to understand
• Take criticism well and respond to it: edit your guide accordingly
• Know that every guide is a work in progress: never stop revising and adding
• Have fun and it will be easy (this guide would be 7 pages MLA style and it took about an hour and a half to write)

​

 

Phenomenal guide, blows my simple one on guide writing out of the water.
I don't like the heading color, it just is hard to read against the blue Sythe background.
There's a lot of white that hits you at once, but when read, it all comes together.
Really well put together. Not a guide with pics, but try to insert some just as diversions. Add random images that just spice things up a little.
Impetuous grammer, very nicely done on that point.
Thanks, good guide!!

 

I hate choosing colors. I know white looks.... Well. White. But I really am just bad at choosing colors that look right, so I go for half decent. I didn't realize it was such a block of text till I read it on Sythe. Less text, more examples, more bullets. Maybe a picture of example instead of sythe examples just to make it less dense with text?

 

Great Guide SuF!!!!
Really well done, but then again YOU also have to use some of your tips

And I am actually going to read through my guide, and fix it up to be more balanced and more eye-friendly.
Thanks for this really!

Russian

 

Fuck. I had a huge response typed and it's gone

Be sure to use the basic bold and italic. They may be basic, but using bold for hard pint and italicize as well.

Yeah, add some pictures in there, not just ones that are completely relevant, but to keep attention.

Also, just try to pick a brighter color. I preview post A LOT, probably over 50 times during the process of creating a good guide.

Bullet lists work very well. vBulliten handles

• commands very well, and the bullets stack and keep things super organized.
  
  I hope I'm helping and not just ranting on, but simple cosmetic changes will make even the most informative guide better. People aren't going to be helped unless they want to read it.
  Good guide though once again

 

SUF, I am really impressed by this guide. Once again impressing me and showing everyone how to do things right.

 

The first good guide of the section! I wouldn't put any colours or even a picture. The simplest things work best.

 

I could use pictures as examples for how to use pictures. That might make it slightly less text-blocky.

 

I see that you changed the text.
It's not perfect, but it's good enough. I do remember you saying how impaired you are when it comes to choosing header colors, so we'll forgive you
Once again, amazing guide.
If you're looking for pictures, don't add them just for the sake of doing it. It's a great guide. If anything, just add some sporadic clipart-type images to soften things up. Maybe a banner at the top and bottom. Just mix things up, you know?

 

I hate adding pictures if they don't have meaning.

 

Wow,lots of information, exceptional guide SuF, thanks!

 

Bump.