User:Darth tom/How to Write an Article of a Good Standard

Creating an article
Writing articles is the main point of Star Wars Fanon Wiki, and this is what the wiki was created for. Yet not all articles can be Featured overnight. They require great work and care, and it can often be hard to write a long, or well written, article for a new user. Yet all articles can be worked upon and raised to a good standard. How to do it though? Well, there are a number of key things to think of, when writing an article.

Naming
Names are a very important part of articles. A name is often what entices other Users to read your articles, so good, well thought up names should be chosen. Many users use the names of canonical characters in their work, or of names that are anagrams of other words. Other users use foreign languages for their names, for example I write many articles with Latin based names. Names are vitally important though, and should be though of carefully.

Structure
The structure of the article is perhaps the most key thing in writing an article. The appearance and planning of an article are the body of it, the key thing, and a bunched up, ugly presented article will not entice users to read it. In addition, a well structured storyline will keep users reading, and will entice them into reading more of you work. So, how do you do this? Well, there’s multiple sections in structure, and they are as follows.

Well structured storyline
To write an enjoyable article, it should have a well structured storyline. In a detailed article, there should be sections for each part of the characters life, such as Early Life, or things like Training. Each section should contain information relevant only to that section, and should contain, for example in Early Life, only information about the Early Life of that character. The storyline should be built up chronologically, working its way through all different aspects of a characters life, and each section should be of reasonable length. Each large part of the characters life should have a section, thereby covering all aspects of their life.

So how do you know that a new section needs to be made? Well think of a literary novel. They’re normally split up into chapters, and think about it like that. The article should be split into chapters, so the article is like a Biography of the character.

Appearance
The appearance of an article is very important. Articles should have headers and sub headers arranged in a way that adds to the appearance of the article, rather than breaking it up. For example, each large ‘chapter’ in an article should have == Header name==, and then that large section should be split into numerous sub sections, using three equals signs. For example, a relationships section should have relationships as a header and each individual character name in the relationships section as a sub header. The words ‘History’ or ‘Biography’ in a person article should be a Header, but each section of that, such as Early Life, or Jedi training, should be a sub header. I would recommend putting around five to ten sub headings to each heading.

The main paragraph text of an article must also have a carefully structured appearance. Each piece of text in a section should be split into paragraphs, so as not to be one huge chunk of text which, in the best of situations, is an eyesore. It should be paragraphed and neatly spaced out.

Imaging
The images of an article are also very important to the article’s quality and appearance. Articles with bad imaging, such as a poor image choice, bad re-sizing or bad editing of an image, look very poor as opposed to a well chosen, well re-sized and well edited image. For example, if you look at Image:SVic.jpg, then you will see that the lightsaber has been edited into the image brilliantly, however, if you look at Image:Tyler-Shriek Duel.jpg, you will see a very poor image, with appalling editing. To avoid this, there are many users around the wiki who have good image editing ability, or you can avoid edited images all together.

Images should be used as a way of helping the appearance of an article, not as breaking it up, so images should be placed at the beginning, or end, of a paragraph, to make sure that it doesn’t break up the text. The image should also be put to the left or right, definitely not the center, and should have a caption. To do this, you must use the following code in your text: This will allow you to add an image into your article that helps it.

Image editing can be done on any picture editing program, such as Microsoft Paint, Paint Shop Pro, or Photoshop, although Photoshop is regarded as the best. There are a number of in-built image editing tools built into these packages, especially for editing images.

Extra sections
To really make your article good, and to allow it a chance at becoming a Featured article, there are a number of extra sections you should include. These sections include a Relationships section, a Personality and Traits section, a Talents and abilities section, a Legacy section, and a Behind the Scenes section. In a Personality and Traits section, you should write a few paragraphs (I would recommend around three) about the Personality and Traits of your character, how they act and what traits they had.

In the Relationships section, you should list around three characters and, in detail, explain about the characters relationship with them. To do this, go over what sort of relationship they had, whether it was a business relationship, a romance relationship or a friend relationship and how this relationship developed and, if applicable, ended, how it affected them and how deep this relationship went.

A Talents and abilities section should include as many of the Talents and abilities as the character has, in detail. I would recommend writing around three paragraphs about the characters weaknesses and strengths, from how good they were with a blaster, to how good they were at cooking. Be careful to have a few weaknesses that would hinder them in a fight, to stop them becoming a Mary Sue.

A Legacy section should contain the legacy of the character; how the other characters in the article lived on without them. Were monuments put up in their honor? Did their family weep and grieve, or celebrate their life and, if they were in a war, how did the war end, and how did they affect the ending? These are all things that should be included in the Legacy section.

The Behind the Scenes section should contain details about the character that were ‘cut’ from the final edition, or are extra. For example, you should say where the inspiration for their name came from, if applicable what they were originally going to be called, who they are portrayed by, where your inspiration came from, and anything extra that you feel needs to be included.

The order these extra sections goes in is as follows: All of these extra sections should be headers.
 * 1) Legacy
 * 2) Personality and Traits
 * 3) Talents and abilities
 * 4) Relationships
 * 5) Behind the Scenes

As well as doing this in your articles, a good article will contain an infobox. It goes without saying that all policies should be followed. By following these steps, it will greatly improve your articles.