: Re: Rewriting User Guides as Stories I'm increasingly having to write User Guides as part of my job and I need routes to make this into a more interesting exercise. Hence, I was actually looking

@Jamie945

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You are referencing rule books for RPGs, so I am going to base my answer on those as examples, because I know the fascination of reading those books without playing the corresponding games.

There are a few reasons that make rulebooks interesting for me:

Artwork
A lot of rulebooks for RPGs have very cool artwork that is distracting from the rules. After reading a handful of dry pages about what I can and can't do it's nice to look at what others imagine when they are playing such a game.
Examples
Many rulebooks come with example scenarios that are supposed to highlight how the game is supposed to be played. A simple guide to character creation, how to resolve a certain action or how different mechanics play together. These examples provide a better way of understanding the rules and how they are supposed to be used. Rules are on thing - their application is another one.
Structure
Rulebooks have a common structure, such as: What is an RPG? What roles are there for players/GMs? What is the main mechanic? How does character creation work? How do specific mechanics work? What abilities, such as spells, are there? The common structure makes it very easy to find your way around a rulebook. If you've read a couple you could find your way around a good book without a table of contents. This way I can skip right to the interesting part.

You could apply this in certain variations to user-guides. Simply replace "Artwork" with "Diagram". Make sure that it fits the current topic and is not just senselessly distracting. The examples shouldn't be in the narrative form you see in rulebooks, but you can use screenshots to show how someone should navigate software. The structure should be the same as other documents where you are working to make it easier to find the relevant parts once you get used to it.

The main problem is that too much creativity distracts from the core component: people want information. And they want that information now, because every minute lost could cost a little fortune.

People who are reading rulebooks are rarely under that kind of pressure when reading the books. During a session you should rarely, or better yet never, look up something because it distracts from the main thing, the game. That's why you normally have all the time you need to read such a book.

You can apply certain things from creative writing to technical writing. But it has to make sense and fit the general style that people are expecting. Even if it's boring, you are not being paid to have fun creating user-guides - you are being paid to create user-guides that will help users get used to software or find important settings when they are under pressure. Clarity is more important in such circumstances than creativity.

You could introduce characters to use those characters in examples. Look at Alice, Bob, Eve and Mallory to see how to do this. Or if you are going in a X for Dummies direction you might want to look at things like The Manga Guide to Statistics. But these are more for a different target audience than your average user guide.

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