Table of Contents

• The Goal of a Howcast Wiki Guide

• How to Write a Wiki Guide

  • Title
  • Introduction
  • You Will Need
  • Steps
  • Tips
  • Warnings
  • Facts

• Some Final Guidelines

  • Length
  • Plagiarism
  • Sources
  • Images

The Goal of a Howcast Wiki Guide

The primary goal of a Howcast wiki guide is to present a useful, factual set of instructions that can be understood by anyone and everyone. The information should be unique, fun, and as comprehensive as possible, making Howcast the most trusted online instructional authority.

The second goal of a Howcast wiki guide is as a script—meaning someone will probably use it to shoot a video! Your goal as a writer is to provide a video-maker with a clear, factually accurate, narrative script that describes the execution of a task in straightforward sequential detail. It should be as concise and entertaining as possible. Ideally, a director will read the guide and instantly be able to visualize how he or she will shoot it.

Back to Top

How to Write a Wiki Guide

In general, wiki guides should be written in sentences that are complete and conversational, since the words might ultimately end up being spoken aloud as a voiceover in a video. A casual style is fine—as long as it’s clear. That said, the text will appear on the site (and be available for download)—so spelling and grammar still matter!

The best way to get a feel for the style is to read a bunch of official Howcast-written wiki guides, and then consult the following guide.

There are several basic parts of a wiki guide. They are:

• Title

  The title describes what the viewer is about to learn. If you’re suggesting a title for a new wiki guide, note what similar guides or videos already exist so you can be sure your title explains how yours is different.

• Introduction

  It’s up to the introduction to put the task in some kind of entertaining or informative context while still conveying what the wiki guide will cover. Try to be upbeat and humorous when appropriate and—above all—keep it short! One quick sentence is highly preferable—two sentences max.

  Examples:

  • When it comes to snaring the best and most candy on Halloween, victory is sweet.
    from How To Get the Most Halloween Candy
  • He calls 50 times a day, obsesses over every date, and gets jealous when you talk to other guys—is he crazy about you, or just plain crazy?
    from How To Tell If Your Boyfriend’s a Psycho

• You Will Need

  List the items needed to complete the task, one item per line. Everything included in the steps should be on this list in the order that it appears. If an item is included in a tip, it’s considered optional and should be tagged as such.

• Steps

  A step should begin with a short title that succinctly summarizes the main action in a single phrase. The step itself should always be an action (even if that action is not terribly active, like “think” or “choose” or “decide”) and, generally, one action per step is best. When plotting out your wiki guide, come up with steps that complete the task as efficiently as possible, dividing up the material in a way that will be helpful to a director if your guide is made into a video. Be careful about including too much or too little information in a step—you want there to be enough voiceover to accompany the action, and vice versa.

  An example from How to Fix Dents in Your Car:

  Bad:

  • Step 5. Remove the paint and fill with putty. Use 36-grit sandpaper to remove the paint from the dent—and one inch of the surrounding area—and then fill the entire area with body putty.

  Good:

  • Step 5. Remove the paint. Use 36-grit sandpaper to remove the paint from the dent and one inch of the surrounding area.
  • Step 6. Fill with putty. Fill the entire area with body putty.

• Tips

  Tips are helpful ideas, alternative options, embellishments, and extra tidbits related to the task at hand. Keep tips short! If there is a lot of information, perhaps it should be a step.

• Warnings

  Warnings are just that—if there’s anything that shouldn’t be done to complete the steps or just something to watch out for, draw attention to it by making it a warning instead of just a tip. Note that some warnings might be general and pertain to the overall topic, so they should come before the very first step. Others should be inserted following the step that they specifically relate to.

  An example of a general warning from How to Treat Minor Burns:

  • Warning: Call 911 if an adult burn victim has trouble breathing; becomes lethargic, confused, or agitated; or has suffered a very bad or large burn.

  An example of a specific warning from How to Make a Milk Carton Birdhouse:

  • Step 6. Make a few holes in the bottom of the carton for drainage and two holes in the top so that the birds can breathe.
  • Warning: Ask a grown-up to poke the holes, too. That screwdriver could be sharp.

• Fact

  This is the last element of the wiki guide. It is any interesting or amusing bit of information or trivia pertaining to the subject. Think of it as your last chance to show what you know!

Back to Top

Some Final Guidelines

• Length

  Try to keep steps and tips short and to the point. Clear, snappy sentences work best. The fields all have character limits—if you can’t fit your intro or step into the space allotted, you’re probably trying to say more than you need to! If a step is too long, think about whether some of the information can be broken out into a tip, or whether one long step can become two shorter steps.

• Plagiarism

  We hope it goes without saying, but plagiarism is rampant on the internet so we’ll say it anyway: you must write your wiki guides in your own words—don’t just copy from someone else! Not only should the writing be your own, but the information should be gathered from multiple sources (unless it all comes from you because you’re an expert with deep experience). Don’t just look up your topic on another site and reword the same information; read everything you can on a topic, talk to experts in the field, and include any personal knowledge and experience you can to make your wiki guide unlike any other on the web.

• Sources (optional)

  List any sources you used to write the wiki guide, including experts you consulted, articles you read, and any other materials you used.

• Images (optional)

  Upload any images that you’d like associated with your wiki guide.

Back to Top