How to Come Up With Ideas For New Daily SPUF Articles
The Daily SPUF loves publishing articles written by members of the community! TF2 is such a multi-faceted game that no one individual can master or even care about all of it, so having a fresh new perspective on our beloved game is important for the blog’s coverage.
But a lot of people write to me saying that while they’d love to and want to write an article, they can’t think of what to write about! Writer’s block can hit all of us, and I’m no exception. But here are some common themes that routinely produce great articles to get those creative juices flowing:
1) Your favorite uncommon loadout. Do you like playing a class with a nonstandard loadout? Despite everyone telling you otherwise, have you found joy in comboing two weapons generally not considered to have been made for each other? Tell everyone how and why you like the loadout! You might convince others to give it a shot.
Examples: Going Mobile: A New Trolldier For a New TF2, Why the Quick-Fix is Now Viable in MVM, Shooting the Scorched Earth
2) Your favorite uncommon playstyle. Sometimes, its not what you’ve equipped, it’s how you use it! If you’ve found a way to credit the team in a way different from what is commonly played, you should draw from your experience and educate others who might find they like teaching an old dog some new tricks.
Examples: A guide to shotgun heavy, Bush Sentries: When Man & Machine Team Up to Ruin Your Day, Two New Helltower Playstyles!
3) Protips for your favorite map. The more you play a map, the more you learn about its nuances and tricks to enhance your performance when certain common scenarios crop up. Perhaps you know the best way to remove troublesome sentry locations, or some alternate pathways everyone seems to forget about. Teach some others how to get the edge and maybe it’ll become one of their favorite maps too.
This works for game modes too.
Examples: In Defense of Nucleus, The Best Bad Maps, Fixing a Hole
4) Take SPUF threads you wrote and adapt them. SPUF is full of guides, analyses, commentaries, and other noteworthy literature that gets its moment in the spotlight and then falls into the annals of old, forgotten threads. Turning these into blog posts gives them a longer and more attractive life span. Most of my early blog posts were exactly this.
Examples: Why The Heavy Failed, The Conniver’s Kunai; Sleeper Overpowered, Quick-Fix May Have the Strongest Healbeam
5) Ask yourself a TF2 question and then just answer it. If it’s a good question, you can get a few paragraphs out of it. I see almost everyone on SPUF write lengthy replies on something. Voice an opinion on an issue, especially a topical issue. Someone might even write a counter-article rebutting yours, I love it when the blog can cover both sides of an issue.
Examples: RIP Permanent Color-Shifting Spell Paint, You shouldn’t rely on glitches, Sniper Taunts vs. Spy Taunts?
The other tried and true way is just to play TF2 or read other blog posts, just start thinking. Ideas present themselves, and when they do you gotta jump on them. They’re kinda like spies in that way.