Well it’s been a while since my last article so Jon (RepRev) prodded me with a big pointy stick to remind me that I should get my head down and write another one. The hard part is of cause thinking up a subject for the article but then it hit me. I should write an article about ... and here’s the clever part ... an article about writing articles. Well it seemed clever when I thought of it ... but then most things do when you’ve drunk that much vodka don’t they. :P

So here goes.

As I said above, *points up the page* thinking up a subject for the article is the hardest part. I mean sure you could write about anything but you’ve got to be able to tie it in with either the R-tR game or games in general. So even though I’d love to tell you all about what I did over the weekend or how I scored 200 not out in a game of backyard cricket when I was 12, it’d just be to damn hard to make you all believe (I’m figuring that you readers have at least an average level of intelligence) that it had anything to do with the computer game we are all waiting for.

“While I sweetly hit the ball to the fence to bring up my double century I wondered if any computer game could get better then this ....”

See what I mean? Bit of a stretch isn’t it.

So anyway, back to the thinking up a subject bit. Let’s just say we’ve come up with a great subject. Something like ... ummmm ... “The differences between computer games and reality”. Now sure it’s fairly obvious what the differences are between computer games and reality right?

I mean in real life I’m just your average everyday bloke, trying to make ends meet and hoping to one day rule the world. But in computer games I’m a guy who runs around shooting people/aliens/wooden creates, a Jedi Knight, the ruler of a civilization, a fighter pilot in planes and spaceships, a pirate, a very successful football manager, a super hero, a commando, a dark elf wizard and the ruler of the world.

Now the trick is to spread out everything that I said in the last two sentences over a few thousand words.

There are some easy ways of doing this. Firstly you could just repeat it over and over again. I call this the “Simpson's Opening Credits System” or SOCS for short. The only problem with it is that after reading the same two sentences three or four times, things get a little boring for your readers. You could change things about a bit if you want by rearranging the words around or even making that list in the second sentence go on for 1000 words but again the boring factor pops up.

Another system that you could use is to throw in random information that has very little to do with the subject. I call this the “Tangent System”.

I mean in real life I’m just your average everyday bloke, trying to make ends meet and hoping to one day rule the world. Doesn’t everyone want to rule the world? I know guys like Saddam do because that guy is always trying to get away with something. I can sure tell you that I’d make a better ruler of the world then that guy. Another guy was Hitler. What a boring guy he would have been if you invited him to your party eh? Always going on about Poland this and Jewish that .......

See you could go on for pages using that system. All you’ve got to do is find a point to bring the second sentence in and your home and hosed.

The last system I’m going to show you is my favourite. I call it the “BS System”. It’s similar to the “Tangent System” but in this one the stuff you say has APPEAR to make some sense. You basically only have to pretend that what your writing has something to do with the theme of the place where you’re writing it. In our case we’re writing an article for Jon’s RepRev page, which is a haven for those people who are patiently (sometimes the not so patient as well) for Elixir’s R-tR game. The best example of this system would be the article that I’m in the middle of writing right now ... the same one you’re in the middle of reading. It has very little ... no actually nothing to do with the R-tR game and despite that it’s just reached the 780 word and hopefully kept you, the reader entertained for a few minutes. If not then you probably haven’t reached this point.

In conclusion I’d like to think that writing a humble article like this one not only brings a little happiness to the world, but also make the writer far more appealing to the opposite sex.

Joe