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RF Generation Message Board | Gaming | Video Game Generation | Could someone teach me how to write better Game Reviews? 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. « previous next »
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Author Topic: Could someone teach me how to write better Game Reviews?  (Read 3813 times)
nupoile
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« Reply #15 on: January 07, 2013, 01:20:15 AM »

Seems like a popular topic. Everyone wants to help Redd to be a better writer  Smiley

Writing is a skill and like other skills, can be learned. How do people learn things? Practice.

I wanted to look up something I remembered hearing about Stephen King and found this article:
http://www.authormagazine...ayer_james_2009_04_09.htm
King, whether or not you like his books (not me) writes well. I don't think you would get too much grief putting him near the top of a 'best authors' list. Was he just born with this skill? Probably not. But he does claim to write at least 2000 words a day. Everyday. I would say that was practicing.

Good thing for you Redd, you are already doing this. Maybe you aren't writing 2000 words a day but you are at least putting up blogs and wondering how to do it better. It doesn't come instantly.

The internets are full of blogs and forums about being a writer. I'm sure there are videos short and long on the topic of author'n up documents.

And you can just ask the people on RFG, I didn't even know that....
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OatBob
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« Reply #16 on: January 07, 2013, 03:11:54 AM »

wall of text

Three things:

1) Be objective.

Keep the facts straight.  Write about elements you enjoyed, and the ones you didn't.  Compare and contrast against similar games from the same genre or other games from the console's library.  Try to pinpoint gamers who might be interested in this particular game.  Save the rants and raves for your personal blog.

2)  Use the "inverted pyramid" writing structure

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/735/04/

It's straight out of the AP stylebook.  It is taught in public schools and universities, and is used in just about every newsprint and magazine article you've ever read.  Give them the straight dope.  Dish it out right away, then give all the reasons to support it.  Save the trivial stuff for later.  It's not original, and it certainly isn't a narrative, but the inverted pyramid grabs peoples attention which is important since you're competing against the rest of the internet for reader's short attention.

3)  Proofread your work

Other people can't be bothered to read your writing if you can't even do it yourself.  Fragments and typos are distracting and take away from the point you were trying to make.  Wait 10 minutes, an hour, or even overnight before proofreading.  I'm always correcting my own stuff hours afterwords because I'm not satisfied.



Whatever you do, make sure you're qualified to review it.  Don't be like this IGN reviewer who credit-fed his way through an arcade game, then complained it was too short.  He didn't try to master it, and he certainly didn't get the true ending.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/07/26/giga-wing

« Last Edit: January 07, 2013, 08:59:34 PM by OatBob » Logged


it's thinking
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« Reply #17 on: January 07, 2013, 03:33:58 AM »

I think it's pretty awesome that you can look at your own writing and identify what's wrong with it. Next time you write something, leave it for a day (seriously), then come back and identify everything you don't like about it and simply re-write those parts. Once you have re-written the parts you didn't like, leave ti for another day before coming back to it and looking for anything else you don't like and feel needs re-writing. Rinse and repeat until you are finally happy with what you have written.

I know that it sounds really long winded, but after a while you will know if something isn't very good almost as soon as you write it.
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