A good voice is combination of word choice, tone (funny, serious, sentimental), and pacing. This is how you build an emotional connection to your readers. Your writing should sound natural. Don't over-slang things, but when people read your article they should know you wrote it. You aren't writing a legal document here - you are selling your personality. Anyone can get a good decklist. Anyone can have a great pick order. What you need to do is find a way to get people to read and enjoy your stuff first, and then let the content speak for itself.
If I took a random paragraph from articles from Zac Hill, Chapin, Menendian, Rizzo, ffej, and Gerry T, you could probably pick figure out who wrote which (assuming you've read a few of each of their articles). They each had very distinct voices, and that meant that their writing was something that was unique to each of them. When they wrote an article, the were the only one who could have written that article.
Presentation is about how you go about getting your ideas on the page. There are a million ways to present any given set of data (tournament report, decklist, pick orders, theory) - what you need to do is find one that is appealing to read. Personality alone can't carry text that is put on the page with no regards for its placement. Don't let things get too blocky and don't try and cram too much data into any given section. Find a pace that is both easy to read and gets the point across fast enough that people don't lose interest.
Did you know that people tend to actually rate TV shows higher when they watch them live? Those pesky commercial breaks give people a chance to relax and reflect on what they've just seen. You don't need commercial breaks in your work, but you should have some asides. After you've told people something complex, throw them a bone with either a quick story about what you've just talked about, or a bit of humor. Don't try and blow their mind with huge ideas over and over again in sequence. Your article will get muddled. This gives people a second to organize the thoughts in their head.It gives your work a sense of shape.
You start out with an idea. People don't mulligan well because they don't understand the math involved. Article done? Hardly. You need 1489 more words. How do you put that on the page so that people A) believe you and B) get through the whole article? You can fill it up with statistics, but people will read your chart and move on without taking anything from it. There is no emotional connection to the article, no easy take away for them that helps them solidify it in their mind.
You can throw in a lot of anecdotal evidence, but you haven't proven your point. You can throw in some information on human psychology, but that isn't Magic related. Figuring out which percentages your article needs to contain is hard, but figuring out the balance and placing is even harder.
I can't stress how important this presentation part is. It really is the difference between a master and a novice. Give me a bag of flower, a little bit of baking power/soda, a pound of sugar, a few cups of water, and two eggs, and I will produce a mass of inedible glop. I suck at baking. I can cook most things, I just never figured out the pastry end of it all. Give it to a Paula Dean, however, and she's going to give you a high-calorie treat you will be happy to clog your arteries with.
If you want the best example of this that I can think of - read Stuck in the Middle with Bruce by Rizzo. A lot of the article isn't Magic at all. But the story sucks you in, and so when you learn the lesson, it sticks with you. You have something to connect it to. When I peak at the top card of my deck after a mulligan, I don't think to myself "I shouldn't do that because it skews my view of statistics in the future." I think "FFFFFFFF-stop being Bruce."
None of this stuff can be learned overnight. It comes from lots of practice writing, and even more editing. Re-reading things, changing a bit around here or there, deleting whole sections that are interesting but end up distracting your larger point, and eventually finding what pleases you. First and foremost, you need to write something you would read. If you can do that, other people should enjoy it.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Three Simple Things to Improve the Pro Tour
Technically these are three simple (and awesome) ways to improve qualifying for the Pro Tour, but its the same idea. The PTQ scene has exploded in the last two years, making the dream of qualifying and playing in a Pro Tour harder than ever before. With many PTQs now going to nine rounds of swiss, it would be very nice if there were some simple and better ways to get to the big game. Here are some that I've been mulling over for a while:
1) Turn all Specific Grand Prix trials into Generic Grand Prix Trials. This is done at PTs and GPs, why not do it locally also? It's frustrating to see Grand Prix trials in your area, only to have them for a GP that you can't attend, when there might be one you could attend later in the year. It would create a market for GPTs to be held FAR more often, and encourage people to play in them far more. And more opportunities to play Magic is a good thing.
2) Have Grand Prix award generic invites - Again, one of the worst part about Grand Prix is that you can end up qualifying for a Pro Tour that you can't afford to attend. Getting $500 for 16th is nice, but if that ticket to Japan is 1,100, you could easily be priced out. It would also let Wizards hold Grand Prix with different (and more varied) formats than just Qualifier Season with a few Legacy events thrown in. I, for one, would LOVE to see another 2HG or some other team format Grand Prix without requiring WotC to figure out how to make a Pro Tour mixed format teams. (Though, I would love to see a Teams PT as well) I'd even argue that it would be better to vary the Grand Prix season formats from the PTQ season formats just to give people a break. Limited in the middle of the standard season? Yes, please.
3) Qualify the top 25 unqualified "PTQ Road Warriors" a season. WotC could work this out through some kind of point system similar to that of PT points. You get 6 points for a PTQ top8, 8 points for a top 4 and 10 for a finals (for instance). If you didn't make GPs generic, you could include points for top 32/64. You could also add some number for playing PTQ or GPs (though this might require a lot more record keeping). Maybe more, maybe less on the exact number of points (you don't want to make one finals better than two top8s), but you get the idea. The people who are going blood, sweat and tears to qualify, hitting eight, nine, or ten qualifiers per season and doing consistently well can be rewarded. No ticket, no hotel, just the opportunity to play in the Pro Tour. You can even track this weekly on The Week That Was and get people excited about grinding out PTQs. And let me tell you what, making to early top8s is going to convince a lot of people to get fired up about the season.
A lot of people might think that rating invites do the same thing that the Road Warrior awards would, but that just isn't the case. It's basically impossible to get up to a qualifying rating playing in PTQs alone. You need a strong run at a GP or PT to get over the 2020 hump (which is where you really stop gaining any kind of meaningful points per win at PTQs) and up to the 2050s-2070s to qualify.
There would be a lot of details to work on out this. Ideally there would also need to be some kind of balance to make up for region (otherwise it could easily become an extra 25 slots in the Midwest/northeast that have a disproportionately large number of PTQs compared to other regions of the US/world). But it would be awesome to REALLY reward the PTQ grinders who might be good enough to play on the PT, but can’t handle the variance of needing to go something around 10-1-1 in a tournament to qualify.
What do you think? Would these suggestions or something like it inspire you to work harder at the game? What small changes to the qualifying system would get you to go to a few more PTQs/Grand Prix a year?
1) Turn all Specific Grand Prix trials into Generic Grand Prix Trials. This is done at PTs and GPs, why not do it locally also? It's frustrating to see Grand Prix trials in your area, only to have them for a GP that you can't attend, when there might be one you could attend later in the year. It would create a market for GPTs to be held FAR more often, and encourage people to play in them far more. And more opportunities to play Magic is a good thing.
2) Have Grand Prix award generic invites - Again, one of the worst part about Grand Prix is that you can end up qualifying for a Pro Tour that you can't afford to attend. Getting $500 for 16th is nice, but if that ticket to Japan is 1,100, you could easily be priced out. It would also let Wizards hold Grand Prix with different (and more varied) formats than just Qualifier Season with a few Legacy events thrown in. I, for one, would LOVE to see another 2HG or some other team format Grand Prix without requiring WotC to figure out how to make a Pro Tour mixed format teams. (Though, I would love to see a Teams PT as well) I'd even argue that it would be better to vary the Grand Prix season formats from the PTQ season formats just to give people a break. Limited in the middle of the standard season? Yes, please.
3) Qualify the top 25 unqualified "PTQ Road Warriors" a season. WotC could work this out through some kind of point system similar to that of PT points. You get 6 points for a PTQ top8, 8 points for a top 4 and 10 for a finals (for instance). If you didn't make GPs generic, you could include points for top 32/64. You could also add some number for playing PTQ or GPs (though this might require a lot more record keeping). Maybe more, maybe less on the exact number of points (you don't want to make one finals better than two top8s), but you get the idea. The people who are going blood, sweat and tears to qualify, hitting eight, nine, or ten qualifiers per season and doing consistently well can be rewarded. No ticket, no hotel, just the opportunity to play in the Pro Tour. You can even track this weekly on The Week That Was and get people excited about grinding out PTQs. And let me tell you what, making to early top8s is going to convince a lot of people to get fired up about the season.
A lot of people might think that rating invites do the same thing that the Road Warrior awards would, but that just isn't the case. It's basically impossible to get up to a qualifying rating playing in PTQs alone. You need a strong run at a GP or PT to get over the 2020 hump (which is where you really stop gaining any kind of meaningful points per win at PTQs) and up to the 2050s-2070s to qualify.
There would be a lot of details to work on out this. Ideally there would also need to be some kind of balance to make up for region (otherwise it could easily become an extra 25 slots in the Midwest/northeast that have a disproportionately large number of PTQs compared to other regions of the US/world). But it would be awesome to REALLY reward the PTQ grinders who might be good enough to play on the PT, but can’t handle the variance of needing to go something around 10-1-1 in a tournament to qualify.
What do you think? Would these suggestions or something like it inspire you to work harder at the game? What small changes to the qualifying system would get you to go to a few more PTQs/Grand Prix a year?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
In Contention #4
In Contention Podcast #4 - PTQ Discussion w/ Adam Yurchick and DJ Kastner. http://mtgcast.com/?p=2778
Friday, October 2, 2009
In Contention #3
In Contention Podcast Episode #3 is up - http://mtgcast.com/?p=2698 Zen Limited and a BDM interview.
Friday, September 25, 2009
New Podcast
Out goes the joke name, in comes the real name - "In Contention". Zen Spoilers and Online PTQs.
http://mtgcast.com/?p=2642
Please leave comments here or on MTGcast.
http://mtgcast.com/?p=2642
Please leave comments here or on MTGcast.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Podcasting
Reuben Bressler's Little Urban Achievers, the Magic podcast I am on with Nick Dies, Colin Casto, and featuring Andy Cooperfauss and Dan McCartney is live on iTunes and MTGcast. http://mtgcast.com/?p=2458
The first episode is pretty rough. I knew that just sitting down and attempting to podcast without too much preparation would be hard, but it was harder than I thought. I did plenty of "Uhs" and "Ums" too, which is something i'm trying to work on. Take a listen though, and give us any feedback you might have.
The first episode is pretty rough. I knew that just sitting down and attempting to podcast without too much preparation would be hard, but it was harder than I thought. I did plenty of "Uhs" and "Ums" too, which is something i'm trying to work on. Take a listen though, and give us any feedback you might have.
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