This is a page where, I, Toprawa and Ralltiir, Inquisitor, will detail what I believe is the best approach and practice to writing a Featured article, thereby satisfying by responsibility to write an FA tutorial.

As it stands, this page is likely just going to be a combination of notes and ideas as they strike me as pertinent before I actually begin to formulate something readable.

GuidelinesEdit

Paragraph lengthEdit

Keep the paragraphs short. This is the Internet, and people have short attention spans. Lazy people look at a paragraph that is ten sentences long and become intimidated. They don't want to read it, and they're not going to, so they move on. Besides, it looks ugly and unprofessional. Find some places to break up the paragraph to ease readability.

I try to limit my paragraphs to no more than five sentences. Sometimes they might be a little longer, but use reason here. A number of short, concise paragraphs is infinitely better than a huge block of text that takes up the entire page. However, that doesn't mean populating a section with ten one- or two-sentence paragraphs. Apply some common sense here. A paragraph of about three to five sentences is ideal.

Number of imagesEdit

There are few things that look worse than an article that is jam-packed with images like sardines in a can. Beside being visually jarring, they detract from one's ability to actually read the article, which is the primary concern here. When your text is being indented left and right dramatically to make room for images, you've got too many.

Try to employ a little aesthetic taste here. A few, meaningful images that illustrate a select number of key points in the article is much better than trying to turn the article into a film reel.

Behind the scenesEdit

Section it. There seems to be some weird misconception that the BTS is somehow different from the rest of the article, when it's really not. The only difference is that we write it from an out-of-universe perspective, instead of an in-universe perspective, but the aim should remain the same. The Wookieepedia community has previously voted to abolish the use of bulleted list sections in this same vein, in that the BTS is still a section and should be treated as such.

Don't be afraid to sub-section the BTS. Quite often, an article will have detailed and in-depth material concerning the background of a certain topic, and chances are the BTS is going to become a bit lengthy. That's ok, and even preferable. But, sub-sectioning draws upon the same idea of writing in short paragraphs that aren't daunting to read: when your reader looks at a humongous BTS of five giant paragraphs, they're not going to want to read it, because it looks unnavigable, not even taking into consideration that this is already boring, non-biographical material.

So, try and make it easy for them so they want to read it. Divide the BTS into two or more sections of one or two paragraphs, if appropriate. As a recurring trend, I find myself habitually using "Notable appearances" and "Inconsistencies" as two sub-sections that I can populate quite easily. Branch off from there if need be.