How To Write A Tutorial

“How To Make A Tutorial”

Welcome to yet ANOTHER tutorial done by me. If you haven't realised already... you can post these yourself. BUT BEFORE YOU DO!!

Step 1 : Practice What You Preach

If you write a tutorial, you should both know HOW to do what it's about, and have the ability to provide some information at a personal level. Writing a tutorial about driving and having never ridden in a car isn't going to be effective , or possibly not even useful.

Step 1a : The DOs and the DON'Ts

This is mostly legal, or forum regulation, but still. If you link to a site with pornographic, offensive, or otherwise Not Safe For Work material. If you take parts or a part from another tutorial, give them both credit AND a link to the particular tutorial (as it may have certain other legal things, and otherwise be useful to your reader). Be sure to avoid using copyright © or trademark ® images. Most of all, be sure to use proper grammar, as without it your reader may get sick of deciphering your crap, and your work will come across as unprofessional. (Contact me, Zedralan, if you see anything here happening.)

Step 2 : So You Have A Subject...

Refer to the first step before ANYTHING. Once you've done that, we're good. First, split up your information into sections. It should progress as your reader would (obviously LONG steps can be taken with a pinch of salt) do the actions. Starting half way through and ending with the beginning will confuse and disorient your poor reader. If a step directly relates to, but isn't able to be fit in, you make a subsection (like step 1a).

Step 3 : The Layout

My layout is a good one, and a simple one at that. Simply have one spare line between the Step Title on either side to split it up. Be sure to make your Step Titles all bold so anyone scrolling through can notice them instantly. For particularly long tutorials, you could use a CTRL-F system.

Step 3a : CTRL-F System

Skip this if you have a short tutorial. A CTRL-F system relies on an index showing various codes to get to certain points in your tutorial. Don't use single letters or words, as this can cause the CTRL-F feature to become useless. “A100” is going to come up very rarely, and if used correctly only twice. Once in the index, and once on the step it relates to. Simply change the code slightly and people can easily navigate through your tutorial.

Step 4 : Research Your Stuff

Lay out a rough draft, supply information you know and information you are uncertain of. Information you know to be false should NOT be placed in your draft. Once you have it all down, look over it and use a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo) to make sure it's all true and correct. Once you have this done, YOU are practically done.

Step 5 : Spellcheck, Proof Read, And Publish

Copy and paste your tutorial into Microsoft Office (or if you do not have a copy, you can download Openoffice, a free alternative to Word that I swear by) and use the spell check feature. (Obviously if you write it in Word or Openoffice it's easier). No errors? Excellent, you don't have to do anything. If there are some fix them up. Now when you turn it back into a forum post it may come out weird, perhaps your font is wrong or certain characters don't work... Almost certainly your bold text is missing, so fix that up. Remove any “broken” characters or messed up format and post it. Eventually I'll come by and give it a look over.

Step 6 : Leave It And Watch

People will come by and look at your tutorial, I certainly will. If I see any problems with spelling or grammar (hopefully not) I'll either fix it up or tell YOU to. After that you can just wait for the kudos to roll in. Unless of course you did a tutorial about ways to watch paint dry and grass grow.

(Any sites or products are not recommended because of any agreement with the writer and product creator, or webmaster. Zedralan takes no responsibility for tutorials that turn out badly, that's your fault.)

-Zedralan