"My tips for writing magazine articles" Topic

With all the Christmas and New Years celebrations, family commitments and school holidays to contend with, I'm a bit behind on reviewing the January editions of WSS, WI and MW(w/BG). I will endeavour to get them out but if not, it'll have to be the February editions.

In the meantime, here are some things I've learned about what makes a good wargames magazine article and what doesn't. If you're thinking of writing one, I hope you'll indulge me for a moment while I share my thoughts.

1. DON'T WRITE A "GAMES WITH MY MATES" ARTICLE
Even if you had a brilliant time playing a particular game and you want to tell the world about it, but articles that recap in detail some past game is like being told about a great party you weren't invited to. I have no idea who the participants are, so recounting their terrible dice rolling or whacky tactics or how Dave's wife is a wonderful hostess and the beers, cigars and fine chat you all had means very little to readers who weren't there.

2. GIVE THE READER WHAT THEY NEED TO RECREATE WHAT YOU DID.
The best wargames articles should inspire the reader to emulate what the author did in a game and to that end it should be like a starter kit or reference point for them. Try to include maps or an overhead photo of the table with terrain and forces deployed at start. Orders of Battle, a list of commanders, special game specific rules and where to source figures, specialist terrain and other useful bits of information are all musts.

3. INCLUDE ONLINE LINKS AND RESOURCES
Of course, editors are assessing their precious page space and you might not be able to include everything you want in the article. In that case, try to point the reader to a website or two that can furnish whatever information got cut from the article. While we're at it, a select bibliography is always handy.

4. TRY NOT TO TRASH SPECIFIC GAMES
We all have a list of detested games and it varies from person to person. One man's Flames of War is another man's Rapid Fire so to speak. But railing against a specific game is divisive for the readership: You're either slamming and annoying people who enjoy the game or else preaching to the converted. In the context of reviewing games, fair dos: If you've play tested a game and it wasn't to your liking then include that in your review. However, there's a tendency to rubbish a game based on a pre-existing view and not in the context of reviewing. This is where the article goes from review to a sermon. Like I said, once you do that then a whole section of the readership either gets annoyed or tunes out. It is better, in my opinion, to praise a worthy game rather than trash one you don't like.

5. NEVER ASSUME YOUR READER KNOWS THE PERIOD YOU'RE WRITING ABOUT.
Part of the joy of reading a good wargaming article is learning about periods of history I hitherto wasn't knowledgeable about. Assuming your readership knows all about the Wars of Succession, the Chaco War or the Great Northern War and that you can skip the backstory and get on to the minutiae of the battles puts the reader at a disadvantage if they don't know what you're talking about. If the readers were that knowledgeable in the first place, then they probably have some detailed tome on the subject already.

6. INSPIRE AND ENTHUSE, DON'T PREACH AND HECTOR
This refers to a kind of article I call "Do things MY way!" Putting a thought out there is different from writing about how you've found the right way to do things and therefore everyone else is wrong. Do try to explain why your way gets good results. Like point #4, accentuate the positives.

7. AVOID MOCK-VICTORIANA SPEECH
This is a personal bugbear: I hate articles that begin something like "being in the main a set of principles for gentlemen gamers to resolve fisticuffmanship on the tabletop. God save the Queen! Huzzah!" Once was amusing in a small way but it's getting tiresome. Andrew Hoare gets a free pass because he's well into the "Savage Wars of Peace" series and a style change at this late stage would be pointless. Let's get to the end of that and retire cod-Victoriana writing.

8. EXPLAIN THE JARGON
This is true when writing historical pieces or scenarios (especially Vietnam war games which have a lexicon all of its own) but also DIY scratchbuilding articles as well. I get lost reading stuff such as "then you take your flushed grollings and sand them using pre-text all weather grilk until the grollings are the colour of the tappy found in the region". Likewise, slipping into French, German or whatever other language without explaining what you just said is equally frustrating.

9. MAKE IT A 'KEEPER'
I mean, make the article hard to throw away. I don't read wargames magazines as a past-time whilst travelling on trains or sitting on the loo, I want them to give me the tools to go out and recreate the games.

Anyway, that's my tuppence there: Right, I'm off to play that pile of crud Napoleon's Battles with Dave, Barry and Kevin "oh no, rolled a double 1!" whilst his wife Beryl makes us delicious flapjacks. We're doing Wurmser's second advance into the Cisalpine region which I'm sure is very familiar to you and using my new system of frontage calculations WHICH ARE THE MOST ACCURATE EVER! We've made mountains out of vac-stressed plastack and it'll be three hearty cheers and a what-ho in the Gandamack Club tonight, pip pip!

Great points about writing articles for wargame magazines. Loved your concluding paragraph!

"Well chin-chin, do carry on…"

Ted

Very well done notes, thanks. You've covered some very good points there which I hope writers will follow.

To editors:
Please print articles that are mostly about gaming and not mostly about history. There are plenty of history magazines that contain no gaming whatsoever. If I want to read about the historical background of an event no matter how obscure I'm sure I can find something about it on the web if not in a book or historical Magazine. We need to have text about about the gaming aspects of the event; only a bare-bones history description is needed.

I think the trend is more towards this. I have not seen articles recently that give three pages of historical background and then say "use your favorite rules to play this game." This was all too common in years past.

Also please put articles completely in one issue. At least don't let them fall between two subscription years, sometimes people will lapse getting the second one. And then they're gone.

Point number 2, above, is the crucial one of all. Without this an article is pretty much worthless.

I will use these tips for my AARs. I tend to do just that, write about the core players at our Club. Thanks for this article. And the problem I have is that I have been captioning my AARs and there is no spell check within the pictures once I write them. I am going to get better and its cool that someone puts out notes like this. Thanks again. Hunter4a (Dan)

Most magazines are hurting for submissions, and will probably ignore one or more of your rules, if provided with pretty pictures.

BTW, it's "GAMES WITH *ME* Mates"…

And Piquet and DBM suck.

Got a particular magazine in mind there, John? *wink, wink*

…I'm almost finished reading MW January edition and there are some good bits, and some bad bits including what must be one of the worst Flames of War AARs I've read. And I'm usually forgiving of all things FoW…

Thank you gentlemen, most useful!

Guy

@ ubercommando

Your guidelines are excellent, so I'm sure Guy joins me in looking forward very much to receiving your submissions.

Henry

"This is a personal bugbear……."

It is what I like least about Black Powder

Sounds good common sense advice, so well done for for getting to grips with it – for magazine articles.

For Black Powder, I quite like style – just would not want it in every rule set

Yea – well yes you have all the important basics there – though I'd argue that you do have to put things into context – the 'me and my mates' stuff is fine when it's honest, and when it serves to tell you something important about the game.

The cod victoriana – can easily be overdone for sure – it's not a necessary feature of a Black Powder battle report anymore than anything else though. The reason I adopted that persona for the BP rulebook intro – and occasionally in the text – is because BP is a consensual game mechanic – which is very hard to explain in pure rule mechanic terms. The basic idea of, 'say what you are going to do and then try and achieve it within the number of moves available', doesn't lend itself to hard rules – only to principles and consensus. So – the idea was to convey the mindset with the language – it wasn't a casual or whimsical thing… perish the thought.

Dice rolling, lucky breaks, blow-by-blow description (Rimmer's Risk Game stuff as it is known). Talking about this sort of things does work so long as it informs the reader about the game mechanics or in some way tells you something interesting about tactics within the game. Sometimes, if a fights goes radically the wrong way you have to explain why – if it's because someone had terrible luck – well you have to say so. Explaining the dice rolls and mechanics is for the benefit of readers who may not play but are interested in the game – so it's a consideration to general readers. It should not be done for its own sake though… obviously.

There two things I'd add to anyone who wanted to have a go at writing a battle report.

Firstly – a bugbear of mine this time – a battle report of a wargame is a battle report of a wargame – and not an excuse to write second rate fiction. The author can slip in a fictionalized intro paragraph or box out or something similar if doing so helps set the context – but most people can't do this well. Best avoided on the whole.

Secondly – when you are asked to write a battle report – and I've done a few – you get a word length – say 2,000 or 3,000 words. So, the space you have compromises or dictates what you can do. Learning to write to a specific length is half the skill. As most bat reps are presented around pictures it helps to have the pictures first – then you can structure your bat rep in such a way that the pictures and captions tell much of the story.

And it always takes longer than you think:)

"This is a personal bugbear"

You call that a bugbear? This is a bugbear

Good guidelines ubercommando

Got a particular magazine in mind there, John? *wink, wink*

Not really. All of them?

…One is a more serial offender than the others.

Blimey: Guy, Henry and Rick responding. I'm thankful for the feedback.

Point taken on the Black Powder rulebook…I let some of the flowery text wash over me and usually skip right to the rules. And I did enjoy the article in WI where Rick faced off against Dan Faulconbridge in the AWI game (which my club re-fought just before Christmas…which meant the 'games with my mates' article DID have something for the reader to take away).

But where's the love for cod-18th century fpeak? I mean, the poffibilities are endleff for enriching articles and rulef. But I digreff. It'f a perfonal preference.

Well it takef all sortf!

But your (ubercommando's)lists of do's and don't is pretty much my brief when I commission battle reports – it's good list – 'inspire and enthuse don't preach and hector' is pretty much word for word what I tell folks who want to write for wargames – good advice I reckon.

Don't trash other folks games is another one I'm right behind – folks like what they like – it doesn't threaten anyone's world view that someone else has different preferences or enthusiasms. Sniping at specific games -systems – periods (those ancients plays huh!) – just makes the writer look insecure IMO. Write from what you like and what you know… spread the joy:)

And all ways remember, you dont need to no any special righting skils or even how too right in sentences, you can get buy with just one punctuation mark, the comma, unless there shud bee a comma. In which case, you shud all ways ewes a ful stop, and dont Forget to include sum Random capital leters.

Henry Martini
Now there's an interesting thought – would editors prefer a good article that they can adjust spelling, punctuation etc
Or would they prefer a poorer article but with decent grammer?
[leaving aside the obvious that they would like a good article with correct language usage 100% of the time]
Over to the editors
Gary

@Gary Flack

My guidelines are perfectly clear and available to all:

link

Henry

In the middle of indulging Ubercommando for a few moments, I recalled having read a similar post in another region of TMP.

Wargaming Addict posted a message and link on 30 October 2013. Here it is (fingers crossed that the copying and pasting works!)

Something a little different. 5 tips for writing AARs and making them more accessible to readers.
link

At the risk of appearing self-serving, I would appreciate expert (whether self-described or actually carrying credentials) assessment on this report. Does it fulfill the Ubercommando requirements?

link

Thanks in advance.

Chris

Gary – an article in part qualifies as 'good' because it's written according to the rules of written English, and isn't dependent on the semi-literate so-called editors of this hobby's print press (allowing for the odd exception, Henry).

In the case of at least one publication I've had the more than sneaking suspicion that the 'editor' personally un-corrects all submissions, so consistent is the pattern of illiteracy displayed in its content.

Chris. That AAR was just fine as it fulfilled the prime requirement that I think every wargame magazine article or blog article on the subject should have: Can I, the reader, take what's there and apply it at home or at a club? The great thing about a solo AAR is that there's no one to name check!

Chris, I agree wholeheartedly with ubercommando on your AAR. If only all such reports were so good!