Stephen King’s practical advice for tech writers – Rikki Endsley
- Example What and Whys
- Blog post, press release, talk to managers, tell devs the process
- 3 types of readers: Lay, Managerial, Experts
- Resources:
- Press: The care and Feeding of the Press – Esther Schindler
- Documentation: RTFM? How to write a manual worth reading
- “On Writing: A memoir of the craft” by Stephen King
- Good writing requires reading
- You need to read what others in your area or topic or competition are writing
- Be clear on Expectations
- See examples
- Howto Articles by others
- Writing an Excellent Post-Event Wrap Up report by Leslie Hawthorn
- Writing for the Expert Audience
- New Process for acceptance of new modules in Extras – Greg DeKoenigserg (Ansible)
- vs Ansible Extras Modules + You – Robyn Bergeon
- Defines audience in the intro
- Invite the reader in
- Opening Line should Invite the reader to begin the story
- Put in an explitit outline at the start
- Tell a story
- That is the object of the exercise
- Don’t do other stuff
- Leave out the boring parts
- Just provides links to the details
- But sometimes if people not experts you need to provide more detail
- Sample outline
- Intro (invite reader in)
- Brief background
- Share the news (explain solution)
- Conclude (include important dates)
- Sample Outline: Technical articles
- Include a “get technical” section after the news.
- Too much stuff to copy all down, see slides
- To edit is divine
- Come back and look at it afterwards
- Get somebody who will be honest to do this
- Write for OpenSource.com
- opensource.com/story
- Q: How do you deal with skimmers? A: Structure, headers
- Q: Pet Peeves? A: Strong intro, People using “very” or “some” , Leaving out import stuff
