[GBM] How to Write An Article in 97 Easy Steps!

Day 5,158, 10:10 • Published in USA USA • by Paul Proteus
A pithy quote or angsty song lyric goes here
-Paul Proteus


Mood musik goes here

Hello subscriber, in a world that has given me so much, it is finally time to give back. As the multi-award winner of the Proteus Prize in Journalism, we here at Goodbye Blue Monday have decided it is time to impart our wisdom over the journalistic arts to the masses. To that end, this SPECIAL EDITION of Goodbye Blue Monday will be dedicated to teaching you too to write insanely good articles. It will also cost double (4¢).

So first you may ask, how do you start an article? Many will say, open a google doc, as the eRepublik article editor is terrible and will in all likelihood delete everything you write. I say Bah Humbug, I write everything in eRepublik because I'm not a coward.

Second, you will need a banner. That is, a cool image that has your paper's name. The best way to obtain one is to time travel back 10 years and ask one of the many members of the vibrant eUS community who use photoshop to make you one. If time travel is outside of your budget (8¢), just send increasingly stalkerish messages to Derphoof until he does it for you.

Next, you must start writing. Fear not dear reader, this is the least important part of the publishing process. This is where you include a devastatingly clever joke. Then when people don't get it, you get to feel smarter than them. It's a win/win.

For example, in this article, I may wish to use this space to explain why I would write a guide to writing when the media module barely exists? Well, to that I say


As the shuttering of the DoE has led to collapsing eLiteracy, images are really the most important part of your article, spend hours coming up with funny image and subscript combinations



Segment 1, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Media Module

The first thing you must do when writing an article is have an idea.

I'm kidding, the secret big newspaper doesn't want you to know is that you can write about anything, or nothing. For example, this article. Still, it helps to pretend to be writing about something. This will be your first "segment." A good article has several of these.

One thing you can do is write about politics. You don't know anything about politics? Doesn't matter! Here's what you do:

Step 1. Start with a title, such as:

Political Analysis in the Age of Thee Dude

What does that mean? Who cares, but now you have substance. Make sure to bold your title at the very least. At this point in your paper you may want to include a relevant image. If you can't think of a relevant image, use an irrelevant one. Once you have something to say, your number one enemy is a wall of text. Your number two enemy is Morbotron, the galaxy-eater, but that will be addressed in our next edition.


The Simpsons is much funnier than you, which is why you should steal their jokes whenever your article is becoming boring, which is frequently

Step 2. Have some point, no matter how marginal. Here is a thesis: our democracy has collapsed into a series of pre-ordained stewardship presidencies that last forever. Taking potshots at the establishment is always in style! Pretend like you care a lot about this.

Step 3. Outline the structure of your segment.

Are you writing an essay? If so, think all the way back to middle school. Use paragraphs early and often. Start with a hook, provide examples, end with a conclusion where you plead with the people. It could go something like this:

Our polity depends on a few basic premises. One of those is engagement. Without participation, democracy cannot function. If our political class cannot even provide the illusion of competition, why should we the citizens bother to log in to vote, why should we bother to have a community at all?

If this is not for you, accuse the critics of the President of talking about what they don't understand, and question why those traitors aren't doing anything to help. This also writes itself.

Step 4. Try out different approaches. Are essays hard? You can also write comedy! For example, here's a good segment idea:



Interview with Thee Dude in the Year 2099

Interviewer: Thee Dude, here is an inane question about the budget, what say you?

Thee Dude: Well, you see, Kongress dissolved itself in 2088 and is now a professional wrestling club, which is honestly a much better fit.


Those fools in Congress! They've doomed us all!

This kind of thing is easy to write, as the central premise, that in 2099 we have the same CP, is baked in, so you can use the questions sniping at low hanging fruit and mixing metaphors while making your general point about complacency and a lack of turnover. Never forget Cromstar's famous dictum: "you can just make up quotes! Nobody can do anything about it!"

Still, be careful not to overdo it! Nobody wants to read thousands of pages of fanfic about eRepublik personalities. Most of us just aren't that likeable. And also real books exist, and they are better.



Segment 2: Are we there yet?

Now, you may ask, Paul, your newspaper is so sexy, how do you do it?

The answer is plagiarism. My articles used to be 5% less incredibly attractive, and reader, it was terrible. I was forced to rely on content and wit alone, and I have very little of that to spare.

Then I saw that other newspapers, like the Fieldist and the WHPR, looked better than mine! I was outraged, shocked, and offended. Then I copied them, and now look who's laughing!
(NB: if you are not laughing, please politely laugh here)


This is the subtext of every article I have ever written

Please for the love of god, format your articles. Find someone whose articles look reasonably formatted and copy them.

That's all. It's really that easy.

Now that you have no excuse for putting out anything short of excellence, I expect the T5 to become a beacon of journalistic quality and for there to be no more articles that just say "comment for a mission."

Right? Right?




Close out with something that sounds deeper than it is, which the audience can tell because you've put it in italics~


Yours,
annoying in both life and death,
Paul Proteus