I put together some writing tips to help guide you on your merry way should you wish to Write For Us.
In general we’re looking for well written, clear articles that take about 1 minute to read. The articles must be relevant to games development and be written by someone with a good industry track record. Prior experience of writing isn’t important.
In order to make something exciting, here’s a few tips
- Create Something Unique – Don’t just do what has already been done and expect people to think it is cool. If you have found something like it then expect that your readers have too!
- Create Something Useful – Make sure that the resource you create is something your readers actually need. Ask yourself if the resource would ever be used by yourself? My favorite and most successful resources and posts are often the ones I like to go back to myself! (I know it’s kind of vain )
- Create Something Citable – A post that can be referred to over and over again. Great posts are often quoted, linked to, and referred to in other blogs and future posts. So make sure it is formatted so your best content is easily found and links and references would be enticing.
How To Write
- Be Human
- Innovate
- Tell a Story
- Fix a Problem
- Listen to your audience
Types Of Post
While we are happy with pretty much any contribution from a games industry veteran we are always on the lookout for a few things, which will typically get posted up first.
We are currently desperate for giant list posts with over 100 items in them, we’d ideally like to post up one of these per month. E.g., tips for new starts, naming great people, UK developers, Top Freelancers, etc.
Indepth
- Long (1000+ words)
- Evergreen, content is always fresh, relevant for months, years to come.
- Comment Worthy. Inspires discussion. Active subscribers.
Long tail blog post
- Problem Solver (How To, Product Review)
Fun blog post
- List Posts: 40 best tips, Top 10 videos, 17 people you should follow
- Video / Audio
- Interview
HTML Post Formatting
Here are some guidelines on how to format you’re HTML version of your article. All articles will end up this way and it’d be appreciated if you could find the time to tweak it so it’s to your liking.
Explanation of Post Tags
In our posts, we like to include a lot of different HTML tags to make our posts look great. Here is an explanation of the ones we use the most and how to call them.
h3 Tag
The <h3> tag is the heading tag used to talk about the most important information
h4 Tag
The <h4> is used usually within the h3 tag to display lower leveled information.
h5 Tag
The <h5> tag is usually used within the h4 tag to display even lower leveled information
h6 Tag
The <h6> is used to display the copyright information of any images used from other sites such as Flickr for example.
To create a drop cap for the first letter of the first paragraph in your post, just use this piece of code and place the first letter of the word within: <span class="drop_cap"></span>
When you are quoting someone, it is usually acceptable to use the >blockquote< tag to wrap the quoted text in. There are three different kinds of formatting of blockquotes we use here that you can easily use to display your quotes.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
This is a pullquote that floats to the left of text
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
And this text floats to the right of the paragraph
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt.
<blockquote>Text here</blockquote><blockquote class="left">Text here</blockquote><blockquote class="right">Text here</blockquote>
If you have any notes you would like to include in your text, just wrap that text in a new paragraph within this tag: <p class=“note”></p>
If there is an alert of special warning you need to emphasize, wrap a new paragraph within this tag: <p class=“alert”></p>
Hi, my name is Simeon Pashley and I'd like to introduce you to my blog. I've been professionally developing software since 1986. After an extensive career in Game Development, I switched to Web Development in 2010.