Writing a Tutorial?

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Writing Effective Tutorials
By Dren T. Martin

How many times have you gone to read a tutorial and have found that all it says is, \"do this, this, this, and you\'re done.\"? Honestly, I can remember those tutorials quite fondly and I thought I was the best Photoshop user in the whole entire world. Now, if someone came up to me and asked me how I did it and what each function does that I used making that image, I would have had no idea what in the world I did.

Tutorials need to teach the user who is reading them which is why I\'ve written this article. There\'s so many successful tutorial writers out there. Why are they successful? It\'s because they walk you through each step and give you an explanation for what every thing does. They don\'t skip steps, they don\'t assume you know where everything is, and they make every tutorial understandable by new users.

I\'ve compiled some rules to follow when making tutorials. I hope you take these into consideration when writing your next tutorial!

Be Original!
There are plenty of tutorials for scan-lines, buttons, orbs, and the list can go on forever. Be original with your tutorial topic. As of this writing the newest tutorial in our tutorial database is Creating Custom Colour Swatches In PhotoShop CS. This tutorial explains what a color swatch is, how to make them, how to edit them, and what they\'re useful for. How many tutorials can you find indexed on search engines with this kind of explanation or even on the same subject? I\'m finding very few to be honest. So remember, pick a tutorial with content that is original and hasn\'t been done very many times. Enough with the orbs, please!

Prepare those screenshots!
Screenshots should be in every tutorial you write. Why? The tutorial reader wants to know that they\'re doing the right thing in their document. They like to compare their result with your result. Have you ever read a tutorial with no screenshots? I usually find myself hoping to the heavens that I\'m doing everything right. I have nothing to compare with to ensure that I\'ve got the right stuff down in a tutorial. Now when I say make sure you prepare those screenshots, don\'t make the screenshot as big as your screen resolution. They don\'t need to see your whole Photoshop setup to see some blur settings. The easiest way to take a screenshot of one window at a time is to make that window active and hit ALT + PRINT SCRN button. It will copy the active window to your clipboard and you will have a clean result to use in your tutorial.

Grammar, Grammar, Grammar!
Please, for the love of smoking toilets, use correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation! if i wrote lyke dis thruout dis hole artickle u wuld have stoped reding by now wuldent u? Very few people actually go through those tutorials fully. Most of the time when I find myself stumbling across one of those types of tutorials, I just follow the images. If there are no images then I just close the whole tutorial all together. Make sure you know how to write before you actually write!

Acronyms and Slang
LOL, GL, Dat, and Sup. These are all acronyms and slang words. You can tell the maturity level of the person writing the tutorial by how they write. If you find that you\'re reading a tutorial with lots of \"lol\'s\" and \"hehe\'s\", then it\'s probably going to give the reader the impression of a immature teenager writing the tutorial. Be professional!

A Dash of Personality, Anyone?
Don\'t be afraid of splashing a bit of personality into the tutorial. There\'s not much to elaborate on with this tip, but remember that a little personality makes it your tutorial.

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