The writing hangover lasted 4 days (a cheap NES FAQ doesn't count) and I almost forgot to pay my yearly condo insurance, too. I hope I didn't forget to, uh, proofread this.
I enjoyed working with my teammates very much, and I am glad their styles were different and contained a lot of something that might help me. And that they were willing to share it, and to share in the disappointments of maybe not doing everything I'd hoped with a review. Thanks for no finger pointing or questions about "what are you doing writing odd review/FAQ x with a team tourney going on." I'll be rooting for you guys in RotW for a long time, and to finish 2nd/3rd to me in contests I enter, heh. Thanks to Suskie for picking me despite my potential lack of range and True for putting up with my red ink on his reviews. They were fun to read, and anyway, first drafts should be about ideas. I have a feeling I could've gotten to know you guys even better, but what I did know, I liked very much.
But there were a lot of other teams' reviews I wished I'd read more in-depth. People who were just a name to me, I have a feeling for their styles. I'd like to read more. I may play old school games exclusively, but I enjoy reading vicariously about the new stuff--the innovations that work and don't--and seeing what remains constant and what doesn't. I've already seriously considered being a judge for next year, for this reason.
I'd have a lot to live up to of course. The judges this year had good comments and a variety of personalities and tastes, and while it was inevitable we might say Judge X would like this more than Judge Y, you couldn't really tailor a review for The Judges overall beyond, well, doing things right in general. And I think that's good. I also think the judges did not box themselves into any one personality, and I hope for all their work they had fun. Judging is tough, as it's not like baseball where an umpire calls a consistent strike zone. That is tough enough, of course, but writing is about changing that strike zone. Judges need to be the umpire AND the batter who hammers lazy predictable pitches out of the park. They were.
By the way, Jerec, your waking up early to post the team tourney stuff had a bonus side effect. From the topic, I realized the date was 8/30 and not 8/31, so the $10 PetSmart coupon I thought had expired 8/30--brain farting on the date after putting off using the coupon til the last day--was indeed still valid! I had maybe an hour to get to the store. So I did so, planning a thank you post later. I forgot the $10 bit--actually $15 as it was the last day of a cat food sale too.
Thanks to the commissioners, too. They had some controversy at the beginning. It was soon forgotten. They rolled out schedules in a timely manner and still captained their teams and mixed things up neatly with their own reviews.
Thanks to Zigfried for detailing his review writing process. It's an excellent formula that has obviously helped his reviews NOT read formulaically. You can't break a formula successfully til you've mastered it, and nailing this down could help many people avoid the trap of doing something different for difference's sake. When I remembered to read this, I usually was pleased with my review. On weeks I didn't, judges pointed out stuff I could've weeded out by reading it.
Thanks to the admins who added game info to the site, so I could write odd reviews, and thanks also to overdrive and bluberry for putting up with my 2nd rate trash talk--there may've been others--and everyone with a kind word for my stats topic and my preview. I found how hard previews are to write. A day later I looked at it and thought "I didn't mean THAT, did I?" So I appreciate drella's starting it--especially given he had an excuse to walk away entirely--and zippdementia continuing it, and the tongue in cheek playoff previews too.
It's useless and vain to go into details on my own strategy, and how much you may want to take from someone who went 4-5 with votes 13-14 is debatable, but for those who may compete next year:
1. Reviewing for a bunch of systems keeps things fresh. I didn't know how much I had in the way of variety, and old school stuff can have a lack of variety. I got 7, and quite bluntly the games that would've rounded it all out, Order of the Griffon for the TG-16, Tower of Myraglen for the IIgs and Xyphus for the Commodore, didn't have as much to write about as the games that overlapped them--Wasteland and 2400 AD and (a platform I hadn't planned) Robotron.
2. Writing for a game you've FAQed makes the knowledge bit easy, and those who get "you need more meat in your reviews" would be helped by this. I planned to review games I'd written FAQs for. I wound up getting 7 of 9--Robotron and Decathlon are ones I can probably write pretty easily for.
3. I was supposed to learn this lesson in college, but "write it a few days before it's due" really does allow more ideas to filter in, and it lets you say "what the -- was I thinking" to the more obvious blunders. It also lets you try new weird stuff, so any blunders as a result of just letting yourself go can get filled in. I rushed things a lot less now than I have before.
4. Writing a review every 6 weeks & focusing on it to polish it should have you set for next year. I was very exhausted by the end. It's also good backup for a week when you want to write a new review but can't. Anyone who's written good reviews through the course of the year deserves this break.
5. Modifying a review from 5 years ago--chopping it up considerably--is quite a time saver, especially if people don't know about it. That's what I did for 4 of the last 5 weeks. It should also give you confidence that you've gotten better in the last few weeks.
6. Proofreading should be a positive as well as a negative exercise. While you can probably cut 15-20% off a first draft, because lots of stuff can be duplicated/merged, there's also what you'd like to hear more of, etc. I tried putting a strict upper bound on what I wrote, and having something to add--without bloating a review--gives urgency to eliminating the stuff that isn't terrible but--doesn't quite belong.
7. There will be dead ends, so don't panic about that. I vaguely considered reviewing Robot Odyssey, an educational game based on Atari's Adventure. I also considered reviewing Ultima V, which was the first "moral choice" game, but Suskie noted I relied too heavily on knowledge of Ultima IV.
8. Any dead end, you should have confidence it can eventually get recycled into something good. The two reviews above--they'll get done.
9. Word 2000 and a cheap/simple text editor are a HUGE help. The first, for the negative proofreading/grammar police stuff--there may be other freeware proofreaders like StarOffice, I don't know--and the second, for simply organizing everything you want to do. I use NoteTab Standard, which cost $20 (well worth it) and lets you use outlines in a simple text document as well as tabs.
10. Have fun. Don't feel obliged to keep your old style or find a new one. There'll be ups and downs. They are part of the experience. Even when you get better at writing, the downs will still be there. You just won't notice they're higher than before. If you have writer's block, take a few screenshots of your favorite stuff. That lets you ask what's most important without Being Important.
So I wrote reviews for new systems--FDS, SNES, TG16, TI99--and have some planned for others. I found side projects for a few FAQs and reviews, and I nailed down future plans. I approach reviews a lot differently than 9-10 weeks ago. It was definitely worth it.
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zigfried - September 03, 2009 (05:45 PM) Glad my blog helped you out! //Zig |
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