So yeah, the other day Manya was just telling me that I don’t do enough to support the SWC, and that all I do is just sit on my butt all day reading books. Well, I got news for you, Manya. I go out and interview every last name you thrust in my face for your so-called “Manya’s Mayhem”. I don’t cook because I’m doing the world a favor, I don’t clean stuff because you never let me, I don’t do heavy lifting work because Gia tells me I should be working out physically instead of using my dark magic … that doesn’t leave me a whole lot to do, does it?

That’s when Alex 43 told me I should try writing articles for the SWC myself seeing as I always have so much spare time. After all, we are payed good money for this from RSBANDB, and it’s one of our main sources of income. And hey, I can write, so why not?

OK, what to write about? Well, I want people to read it, and since this is a newspaper, I want them to believe what I’m writing is true. That’s not so easy nowadays, what with all the murder stories and whatnot out there. Dangit, Sinclair is a thing of the PAST, people!

OK, enough rambling. I got it. I’ll write an article for the Informer describing how one writes a good article. My article will also be a good article describing how to write a good article in which I followed to writing a good article that describes how to write a good article … that I just wrote. Vicious circle, people.

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HOW TO WRITE A GOOD ARTICLE
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OK, let’s start things off with the title. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you humans, it’s that you’re ever curious to the unknown. So here’s my tip on writing a good title:

Make it as sappy and annoyingly catchy as possible. Do weird stuff to it to make it do all but obviously summarize the actual article. For example: Make all the words start with the same letter (Dave didn’t dash but Donna did), give it a relative theme (Strike three, demon’s out), or try to summarize it in as few words as possible (Brando sucks!).

Usually that catches people’s attention. That’s what the title does, after all. It’s the first thing that people read before looking at your article, so it’s a good idea to focus all your thinking and writing time on it. Immediately, when they read your title, they’ll have the impression that your article is creative as well and desire reading it through pure curiosity.

Next up is the introductory paragraph, which is mainly a summary of all our hard work into the article and makes it almost irrelevant. You need to write it as though you were writing for a 4-year old audience. For example: Things aren’t looking too good for the King Black Dragon today. Make it match the title, but don’t let both the title and the introductory paragraph have the same words, otherwise it will feel too repetitive for the reader and he’ll decide to spend the next 10 years of his life drinking Mountain Dew and watching TV. If it helps, write the introductory paragraph before the title. This lets you maintain creativity towards the title. Again, if you have a good title, they’ll read ANYTHING.

Next up is your main body. The trick here is to write it as though you were half asleep and actually be repetitive. Write the same sentences over and over again with different wording. The reader will absorb the information, embed it into his mind, and ultimately remember that, for example, strawberry jam is an essential part of life. Provide one or two examples as well in between the sea of annoyingly repetitive sentences.

Also, add an intentional ‘speling’ and grammatical error in your article. This will keep your reader on the lookout for them so he can laugh at your face, but in turn it will be you who is laughing when they realize they just read your entire piece of crummy work just to find spelling mistakes and will forever remember it and have it become a way of life for them.

The second to last paragraph is usually the aftermath of the article. What happens after the event or whatever you are writing about. Make it short and sweet, and give it a bit of a mystery touch to it (Diggers have continued digging, but the find of the big barrel of toxic waste will forever be a haunting memory. Who knows what else they will come up with.).

Finally, the conclusion. Make it a sentence long. They don’t want to read anymore, and the less they have to continue reading, the faster they can get back to killing their brain cells with war games. Make the sentence a very bad joke relating to all you just said (I guess the guard will think twice before messing with the Kalphite queen [omgloltotalownagehahaha]). The reader will groan and think, why did I read this in the first place, and not read any more. This way, only your article will have been read, and they will automatically consider you a favorite among the other writers you’re competing against because they haven’t even touched those articles. That’s the importance of being a front-page writer.

Another trick is to super-boost a story. In other words, lie through your teeth about something that really did happen, but not as extremely as you’re writing. For example, instead of writing “the policeman caught the thief”, you can write down “the @#%^ing cool copper bashed the #$%@ing dumb mugger’s face in and broke his $%@#ing neck with a 200 pound #$^!ing mace and put him into $%^#ing cardiac arrest, then hauled his #$^#ing butt to jail where he will spend the next 500 $%&@ing years in a dark enclosed space with no food or #$%#ing toilet!” Not only will it interest a reader who doesn’t even live in that region, but even a witness who knows that didn’t happen will say “That can’t be right” and skim through your article, reading it over and over again for clarification and unwillingly embedding the story into memory.

Either compose the entire article of single-sentence paragraphs or very very big paragraphs that seemingly don’t end. Don’t write it essay-format. Nobody likes reading essays every day.

So yeah, there you go. Now you can’t say I did nothing to help the SWC!