Transcripts, Articles, and Writing Style

[Maj]

Since most of us end up writing transcripts and articles in one form or another, i'm curious about everyone's preferences when it comes to writing and reading them. Is there a particular format you consider ideal? What are the writing habits that annoy you most?

For example if you had Magnetro's editing skills and enough free time, would your ideal transcript consist of explanatory video clips or would you stick with text? Do you prefer exhaustive symbolic transcriptions of the entire move sequence, or would you rather read direct explanations of the groundbreaking/unorthodox concepts contained in the combo? As far as writing style, is it better to be precise and concise or is it better to limit vocabulary to simple, common words?

[Magnetro]

I hate making transcripts cause I have to keep them easy to read while explaining the crazy stuff in my videos. I don't like doing explanation videos that much but I prefer them when everything is done over transcripts.

[Maj]

Also, why does everything i'm vaguely interested in writing come out sounding like weird intellectual babble? Check this out:

It's easy to dismiss Street Fighter as a simple button-mashing brawler before learning the game. However, the human element of trying to get good at the game, especially with regard to adapting human opponents, interjects a myriad of genre elements into the gameplay.

Sounds cool, right? Think about its purpose though. It's an intro to the merits of learning fighting game strategy, written for casual mainstream gamers. Who the fuck would read that and think they're in store for a fun learning experience? Sounds like a damn textbook.

[Xenozip.]

Since most of us end up writing transcripts and articles in one form or another, i'm curious about everyone's preferences when it comes to writing and reading them. Is there a particular format you consider ideal? What are the writing habits that annoy you most?

For example if you had Magnetro's editing skills and enough free time, would your ideal transcript consist of explanatory video clips or would you stick with text? Do you prefer exhaustive symbolic transcriptions of the entire move sequence, or would you rather read direct explanations of the groundbreaking/unorthodox concepts contained in the combo? As far as writing style, is it better to be precise and concise or is it better to limit vocabulary to simple, common words?

This might grind people harshly, but it's how I feel so I'll just continue being my usual asshole self:
I hate Sirlin's method of writing.

I have huge amounts of respect for the guy in general, but I can't respect his writing method at all. Ironically it's probably pretty damn effective too, and yet I still hate it. His content is all hidden away somewhere in his text and he speaks the truth. Not just simple truth but profound truth. But his method of delivering his knowledge..... If his method of writing mirrored the transcript for his tutorials in the CCC videos then I would certainly be saying the exact opposite, but for some reason he choses to target a specific audience and then to do so in such a way.... ...

Okay, enough ranting. (grrrrr)

Anyway, ideally I would personally want to mix both pictures and video in with text. I do not feel text alone is effective for most people. Even if it is effective to some one like myself, a visual aid makes things a lot more interesting anyway. I think it makes the whole process more fun to read, and sometimes if you look at a picture first then you can already understand what the text is going to say before reading. They say "a picture is worth a thousand words", after all. Combine that with video and you really have something, IMO. I've taken a personal liking to slow-motion demonstrations actually. Somewhere around 25-50% speed, combined with a full-speed demonstration followup. The more visual aid you have the more words you can leave out, so the more concise you can be, which is apparently important -- though I clearly tend to totally disregard that myself *cough*.

I would think that it's impossible to overlook a concept if you have it written, diagrammed, and presented in video both fullspeed and halfspeed.

"Would" being a key word there. But since I don't feel like being an asshole twice in the same post, I'll leave it at that.

.... but I will say my method of writing changes entirely depending on who I'm writing for, and I think that's important.

[Magnetro]

Incidentally I've been doing small videos that explain unblockables. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 6510E0A955 Im trying to make them easy to understand by using a lot of (ALMOST LIKE 300) slow-motion. Fake sonic booms are so last year.

[Xenozip.]

I'm so glad I just watched those.

"There's no logical reason for why that works. My best guess is: .."

^ I applaud.

As for me, I think this is the only slow-mo demonstration I have on youtube at the moment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC83KGp8ti0&fmt=18 - Demonstration of 2d fuzzyguard.

In hindsight, since it's such a universal tech, I would have also included several other clips of while-rising overheads and 2d fuzzyguard to demonstrate both how they are different and also how they apply in many different games. And I can't say I'm not thankful for those stupid u2be annotations, but if this were to be an article then it would be split 3 way: the video without annotations, the explanations in text, and still-frame images highlighting the important parts with diagrams and arrows and shit.

[Magnetro]

*edit*

Uh, to keep the topic alive:

I enjoy reading Maj's articles on technical concepts because he seems to have no trouble piecing everything together so that it flows. I hate trying to write for something specific, the technicalities of writing seem like humps in an idea i'm trying to present. I don't think I can convey the technical stuff without sounding too much like a robot or a professional run-on sentence champion. .

However, Art's writing style when it comes to explaining concepts and whatnot does tend to sound like a text book. Sometimes there can be a few adjectives that can be omitted and the idea would still get across. Although, when you try to read his article really fast and try to look for the general idea, it flows really well and it's pretty fun to read. Speed reading is the key, I guess.

--

I wish James Chen would chime in. I love reading his articles and write-ups. Maybe it's just me but he sounds less robotic than other people.