How to Choose a Topic and Write Your Article

This page will give you the guidance you need to select a good topic and write a solid article.

Don’t start writing your article until you’ve carefully read this page and painted a mental picture of how your article will look. You may want to jot down a few notes as you think of ideas.

Step 1: Choose a Topic

Choosing an interesting topic to write about may be the most important, yet overlooked aspect to article writing.

If you write about an interesting topic, chances are greatly improved that you will 1. become approved as a Front Page Contributor and 2. your articles will be well-received once published to the front page.

Here is a list of general topics that the SixPrizes community enjoys reading about along some sample articles to model after:

You can write about topics outside of these main categories, but in general, nearly every article on the site falls within one of these niches.

If I were you, I’d look around the site and see what topics seem to be most popular and well received. The top rated articles from the past month is a good place to start. There is no need to reinvent the wheel; emulate whatever is working.

If you are still stumped for inspiration, visit the article topic request thread for more ideas.

Please do not write articles focused on cards that have not been released in English yet. We don’t know what the metagame will look like when they’re released, so wait on discussing them.

Step 2: Search, Search, Search!

Once you have a topic in mind, please search to make so no one has already written about it!

I have received a number of articles in the past on subject matter that had already been thoroughly covered by other writers, so I had no choice but to deny the articles.

Use the search box on the top right side of the page to perform a search. There is nothing more disheartening than having to reject articles that are repeats of content already discussed.

Step 3: Article Structure

My best advice for you is to simply read other other articles that have been published to the front page and take note of how they are structured and written.

Top rated articles are especially good to look at if you want to see examples of articles to mimic.

Again, there is no need to reinvent the wheel! Emulate whatever seems to be working.

Step 4: Write Your Article

Once you’ve gone through Steps 1 through 3 and have a good sense of what you’re going to write about and how you will structure your article, you can begin typing your article in a word processing program that has a spelling and/or grammar check (such as Microsoft Word).

But before you get started, please review the Technical Requirements of Article Writing.

There are some guidelines you need to abide by when writing your article (such as capitalization and formatted), so go to that page and brush up on the instructions. If you don’t meet the technical requirements, your article may not be rejected.