Crispin Boyer: “Write economically. Kill the clichés.”
Crispin Boyer (former EGM editor) doesn’t seem to like crap writing. In his most recent post, he offers up a few of his pet peeves of modern videogame journalism. It seems that now he is on the outside looking in, the poor quality of a lot of writing is becoming ever more apparent.
My worry is that you folks breaking into the media today grew up reading so much bad stuff that you think, ‘œWell, I guess this is how you’re supposed to write in the games biz.’ [...] Now that I’m out of the games media and get my features/previews/reviews from the web and magazines just like everyone else, I fear a nightmare future of the same ol’, same ol’ utterances. It’s up to you newbies to break the vicious cycle.
As somebody trying to improve their writing skills, his post doesn’t tell me what to do, more what not to do. Essentially; be better.
If I can get philosophical for a second, writing is the closest thing to ESP you’ll find outside of Art Bell. It’s your brain transmitting words to someone else’s brain. Don’t clutter the conversation with a bunch of useless crap.
His point about the length of the article I completely agree with is a point I have seen echoed around a lot in recent times.
As far as I can tell, the majority of verbose articles exist because either a) more money is made form multiple page long reviews, or b) the author isn’t quite skilled enough as a writer to condense what they are trying to say. The latter is something we should expect and live with, but the former is just reinforcing bad habits.
Ok
It also doesn’t help when most people who are trying to break into the writing scene are coming straight out of college. There have been times in random blogs where I read something so thick and dry that I feel like I’m reading a term paper. (I myself have done this.) Others write like they’re writing in a journal where they spill every thought onto the paper (in this case the word processor via keyboard) and is just a jumbled mess.
Young_Scot’s comment is almost poetic.
Clover. I think this is because blogs and other online forms of reporting are the new local newspaper or magazine. It is cheaper, faster and more efficient to get a message across. No matter how poorly written. I think it’s a change that’s here to stay.