Initial commit

fireside-writers-guide/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,129 @@
+# The Little Fireside Writer's Guide
+
+> "Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on Fire." -Arnold H. Glasow
+
+Welcome! Grab a seat around the fire. Let's talk about how to make a great-looking Fireside post. 
+
+Creating a Fireside post is done using Markdown. Markdown lets you do a lot of the things you can do in HTML without having to actually write in HTML. The nuts and bolts of how to write in Markdown can be found in [this primer](http://help.gamejolt.com/markdown-fireside).
+
+The guidelines below are not hard and fast rules, but they are designed to help you make best use of the tools at your disposal as a Fireside author. They will also help give all Fireside posts a certain level of consistency and polish. Anything not covered here is pretty much a matter of personal style.
+
+## Content
+
+First thing's first. What can you write about? Fireside posts can be game reviews, previews, quick picks, long essays, personal stories, news, event coverage, interviews, developer musings, post-mortems, advice, opinions, anecdotes, or just about anything else you can think of. The format is up to you. Don't be afraid to try things. The most important thing is to write about what sparks your  
+
+The primary focus of Fireside is indie gaming and everything related to it: games, developers, genres, technology, jams, events, experiences, etc. You can also write about the indie community itself and topics that are of social or cultural relevance to it. Feel free to question and grapple with the term "indie gaming" itself.
+
+We do want to avoid coverage of so-called AAA games. Mentioning a recent title is fine within the context of an article about something else. But let's stay away from straight-up reviews or anything resembling standard coverage of new or recent AAA games.
+
+Retro gaming is of great interest to many of our prospective readers, so you are welcome to write about older games, whether or not they could be considered AAA. Classic games (and overlooked gems) are excellent fodder for personal essays, and the further back you go, the less distinct the line between "indie" and "AAA" becomes, anyway.
+
+You can promote anything you want on your Fireside profile page and in the author bio that's appended to your posts. Promote your Patreon, your personal website, other work you've done, a game you're making, whatever you like. Cultivate a following. 
+
+A primary benefit of posting on Fireside is the opportunity it gives you to connect with and build a loyal audience of interested readers. A huge pool of potential readers already exists on Game Jolt. New Fireside posts appear on the Game Jolt homepage and are promoted through Twitter. You can cover any games from anywhere, but posts that do cover a game on Game Jolt will show up on that game's page. Game Jolt gets about a million unique visitors a month, so that's decent exposure.
+
+FInally, this part should go without saying, but let it be said. No form of hate speech is allowed on Fireside, nor are any personal attacks on individuals.
+
+Now, on to the more technical stuff.
+
+## One or Two Words?
+
+This is up to you, as it comes down to a matter of personal style these days. On Game Jolt, we often try to use what are known to grammar geeks as closed compound words whenever we can. These are words like "videogame", "homepage", and "highschool" which started out as two separate words that were frequently used together (open compounds) and, over time, merged into one. Etymologically, closed compounds are the most modern word forms. But it's really just a matter of personal preference.    
+
+## Paragraphs
+
+Reading on a screen can be tiring, so a general rule of thumb for writing online is to try use short paragraphs to divide your post into easily digestible chunks. Consider using more paragraphs than you might use if you were writing for print.
+
+## Headings
+
+Headings are great. Headings are your friend. They break up walls of text and they clue readers in to the content that's coming up. They can ease the transition from one set of ideas to another (for both the reader and you). Good headings will catch the eye when an article is being skimmed and will remind a reader of where they left off should they have to come back later.
+
+Coming up with a heading can actually be a good exercise; it forces you to step back and focus on the message and theme you're trying to communicate. Every few paragraphs, ask yourself if a heading might come in handy for any of these reasons.
+
+## Capitalization
+
+There are two types of words that should almost always be capitalized: the first word of every sentence and all proper nouns. Proper nouns are things like the names of people, games, companies, days of the week, and so on. Furthermore, the names of games, movies, books, plays, TV series, etc. should be written in italics (see Text Styling, below).
+
+In general, post titles and headings look better when you use standard, American-style title capitalization. This basically means that you capitalize all the nouns (including possessive nouns like "yours") and the verbs, as well as other important words (like "No"). Many people make the mistake of capitalizing only the long words, but even short but important nouns (like "it") and verbs (like "is") should be capitalized in a title or heading. And you should capitalize the first word of each title or heading regardless of what part of speech it is.
+
+Of course, if you are using the developer's deliberately improper capitalization, or using capitals or lowercase letters for your own artistic reasons, feel free to disregard all of this.
+
+One final note on capitalization. Please don't write in all capitals for emphasis; use text styling instead.
+
+## Text Styling
+
+When we say "text styling", we're basically talking about using bold and italics. You can also use Markdown on Fireside to create strikethroughs, but we'll leave their usage up to you, except to suggest that you apply them sparingly. Also, you may notice that you are not able to underline words. That's because underlines are reserved for links.
+
+The primary purpose of both bold and italic lettering is to emphasize a word or phrase. When used for that reason, they are interchangeable. It's up to you whether to use bold or italics to denote emphasis, but when you choose a method, stick with it for the rest of the post. Avoid overusing emphasis or its effectiveness will be diminished.
+
+Some writers prefer to just use bold for emphasis because italics have some secondary applications:
+
+- The names of games, movies, books, magazines, etc. should generally be italicized. 
+- Italics are commonly used in fiction to indicate a character's thoughts, but they may also be used in first-person reporting to indicate the author's. 
+- Words and phrases from another language that appear in an otherwise English sentence are typically put in italics. 
+- Words that approximate sounds (onomatopoeia, animal noises) are often italicized. 
+- This is less common these days, but italics may be used when a word appears in a sentence as the word itself (for example, "the word onomatopoeia is hard to spell"). 
+
+## Links
+
+Don't hesitate to add any relevant links to your posts. There are two things you need to decide about every link: the URL and the anchor text. Anchor text is the text that you click to activate a link. It's best to make your anchor text descriptive and relevant to the destination page's content.
+
+For example, in the sentence "Check it out on the Game Jolt homepage," the phrase "Game Jolt homepage" would make better anchor text than "Check it out" or just "homepage".
+
+## Block Quotes
+
+On Fireside, a block quote is a brief quotation from an article that is repeated elsewhere on the page and displayed in a special font. The quote may or may not be placed close to the location of the original text on the page. Well-chosen pull quotes will grab a potential reader's attention and convince them to peruse the entire article. They can also set the tone for the article and even act as a tiny summary of its themes and contents.
+
+Block quotes work particularly well in interviews, but can be used to great effect in any type of longer post. They are excellent for breaking up long chunks of text; you can use one instead of an image.
+
+## Lists
+
+There are two kinds of lists available to you: ordered (the kind with numbers) and unordered (the kind with bullets). Which kind you choose really depends on the nature of the list. A list can be a useful way to summarize information from your post or to convey new information. Also, use a list whenever it would be a chore to read the same information in paragraph form (such as the steps in a tutorial).
+
+A list operates almost like an image in the way it spices up your post by showing the reader something that's not just a block of text. Lists draw the eye and may be read before the rest of the article; a good list may also be used as a reference after the article is finished. Some posts might even consist entirely of a list.
+
+## Tables
+
+As you probably know, a table is a grid of rows and columns full of data. Tables are similar to images and lists in both use and effect. They probably shouldn't be shoehorned into every post, but they're great for organizing and displaying certain types of information. Examples include release dates, ludographies, survey results, sports statistics, etc. 
+
+## Code Blocks
+
+Code is much easier to read if it's set apart from the rest of the text and set in a fixed-width font. If you're putting examples of code in your post, you should use Markdown to create code blocks.
+
+Inline code blocks are for short bits of code that appear within a sentence. Fenced code blocks are for long sections of code. If you're showing a chunk of source code in your post, we highly recommend putting it in a fenced block.
+
+## Images (Moving and Still)
+
+We don't have much to say about images and video clips other than this: Use them! Embellish your posts with screen captures, concept art, photographs, trailers, let's plays, and any other media you have the right to use. Pictures make any post more attractive and are perfect for elucidating something that might take the proverbial thousand words to describe. And who doesn't love screenshots?
+
+Headers are perhaps the most important image in any post. Read about [headers here](http://help.gamejolt.com/fireside-headers).
+
+Remember that you can use audio clips just as easily as video clips in your posts. Adding video or audio to your post is a simple matter of inserting the appropriate [widget code](http://help.gamejolt.com/widgets-fireside).
+
+## Pull Quotes (Captions)
+
+There's only one thing that can improve upon a good image and that is a good caption. The pull quote widget is how we do captions on Fireside. It creates a piece of text that floats in the left margin of the page. You can place a pull quote widget directly above the image code or video widget, and the text will appear directly to the left of the media.
+
+Depending on the tone of your post and your personal style, captions can be simple labels, detailed descriptions, wry observations, silly jokes, or anything else. You can even just make them the same as the image's alt text or the video's title.
+
+## Hashtags
+
+You can make a word into a hashtag by putting a # directly in front of it, with no space in between them (if you add a space, you'll end up with a heading, not a hashtag). 
+
+We encourage you to use a handful of hashtags in each post. A good amount would be at least two but not more than five or six. When you create a hashtag on Fireside, it becomes a clickable link. Click one and you'll be taken to a page that lists all of the Fireside posts that have used that hashtag.
+
+Browse past articles for hashtags to use and come up with new ones. The main idea here is to choose tags that would be useful for someone who is searching Fireside for more posts on a particular topic.  
+
+Fireside hashtags cannot contain spaces, so if you want to make one that consists of two or more words, you'll need to squash them together (like #hashtagsforever).
+
+It's customary to put hashtags at the end of a post, but you can also go ahead and use them right in the post's body. If you do the latter, however, you probably just want to tag the first occurrence of each term.
+
+## Spellchecking (& Saving)
+
+We recognize that even great writers can be terrible spellers. A built-in spellchecker is an upcoming feature of the Fireside editor. For the time being, it's a good idea to copy and paste your work into an app that has a spellchecking function and give it a look before you post it.
+
+For that matter, until the upcoming autosave feature is in place, it might be wise to draft your post in another text editor, and then copy and paste it into Fireside's.
+
+## Editing?
+
+Fireside has no official Editor. Fireside's authors are its only editors. If you would like someone to give you editorial feedback on your post (never a bad idea), please don't hesitate to reach out to another Fireside author. Also, Paul Hack ([[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])) has volunteered his editing services for anyone on Fireside who requests them.