A few weeks ago, we put out a Bitmob Writing Challenge to help our community writers eliminate passive voice and other editor-eyeball-melting no-no's.

April Halog stepped up to the challenge by posting a review of Call of Duty: Black Ops for us to dissect. Below is the text from her article (highlighted in yellow), along with my detailed notes.

I'm not claiming to be the best editor in the world...or even here at Bitmob. But I do have 15 years experience in this field, having edited countless stories in Electronic Gaming Monthly, 1UP, Gamers.com, Bitmob, and more. I hope this is useful for some of you writers out there! We're pretty tough when it comes to edits, so special thanks to April for putting herself out there like this....

Note: The Accent Advocate, a student newspaper for Contra Costa College, originally published this story, and April revised it for our challenge. Also, special thanks to our own Chris Hoadley for organizing this challenge and helping me get this post prepared.

The year's most anticipated game is finally here. "Call of Duty: Black Ops" is the exciting new addition to the Call of Duty franchise. The game explores the Cold War era, being the series to a new territory that the previous games didn't touch.  You play as Alex Mason, a special operative that wakes up in an interrogation room recalling previous missions to unknown captors.

Notes:

1. The first sentence of the article is the most important one, and you really want to catch readers' attention here. Now, for a mainstream paper geared toward non-gamers, perhaps "The year's most anticipated game is finally here" may be sufficient, but I would argue it's very generic and cliched. Will this line excite and draw in any readers? Does it tell them anything about what the story is about or how it's different from the billion other reviews/articles on this game?

2. For Bitmob specifically, we bold game titles...no quotes needed.

3. It's a little redundant to say Call of Duty: Black Ops is part of the Call of Duty franchise, but again, this isn't as bad if it's meant for a more mainstream audience.

4. Used the word "game" three times in this paragraph alone, including twice in the third sentence. This is a very common problem with a lot of writers, by the way: repetitiveness. Some people don't realize how many times they use the word "game" in one article, and it can cause a reader's eyes to glaze over.

5. I think "being" is supposed to be "bringing."

6. Some sentences have one space after the period, while others have two. It should always be one space.

7. No passive voice here...good job!

8. Overall: This isn't a very strong intro, to be honest. The headline advertises this article as a review, but so far, all we've read is a history lesson on what Black Ops is. The reader may know all this stuff already, since countless websites and magazines have covered the game already, and they're here to get your opinion...not to get a recap.

Now, it's not a bad thing to give a snapshot of what this product is -- not everyone has read everything on the Internet, and not everyone knows what this game is. But you can save that summary for later in the article. Use the intro to suck your reader in and make him want to read the entire piece.

Bonus edit: Should be "You play as Alex Mason, a special operative who wakes up..." -- not "that" because Alex Mason is a person, not a thing. (Thanks for catching that, Rob Savillo!)

The game's storyline spans throughout the 1960s in black operations missions. As players progress through Alex's story they will find themselves in missions right out the pages of history. The cut scenes involving Mason talking to his captors are confusing at first, but at the game's end the story wraps up itself nicely.

Notes:

9. Earlier, you referred to the players in second person ("you play as"), but here, you switch to third person ("players progress...they will find themselves"). You need to be consistent here with which style and voice you're using.

10. This is optional, but you could hyphenate "black-operations mission" to make "black operations" a compound modifier that modifies "mission."

Here's the example I use to help writers remember this:

"Man-eating shark" is very different from "man eating shark" -- the hyphen means everything here, though it's optional in terms where no one is likely to be confused (like "black operations missions").

11. You will want to be careful with the "right out of the pages of history" line, which implies that these missions are based on real-life activities. Black Ops scenarios are inspired by historical events, not necessarily modeled directly after.

12. "Cut-scenes" should be hyphenated.

13. This paragraph continues the "game summary" thing I complained about above. If you notice, this review doesn't have anything "review-y" until the last sentence above, where you say the "story wraps up itself nicely." You should really get to the opinion stuff much earlier in the article -- get to the point, and don't waste the readers' time with a boring synopsis.

14. This paragraph above is a little choppy and hard to read, mainly because everything's so vague. What are these missions from the '60s? What captors? Your thoughts skip around a bit, especially with the last sentence above.

I always tell my writers to "paint a picture." Telling the readers about missions like the massive prison break or Castro assassination attempt is way more effective than giving them a broad, ambiguous "missions right out of the pages of history." Be specific and let your readers see what you see through your words.

This installment still continues the same fast-paced "run and gun," gameplay that the previous Call of Duty games are known for but with a few additions. Melee skills and the ability to pilot motorcycles, helicopters and other vehicles are thrown in to enhance the fast-paced gameplay.

Notes:

15. "Run and gun" shouldn't have a comma there.

16. Going back to the "paint a picture" advice from above, you should mention what these "melee skills" are. Just throwing out something that vague and general doesn't really tell the readers anything, and some of them may even suspect you're just copying bullet points from a press release.

17. "...are thrown in" = passive voice. Who's throwing this in? You don't have a subject (who's performing the action) in this sentence.

Now, to be clear, passive voice isn't technically wrong. It's just poor style (unless you're doing dry news reporting). Almost always, switching to active voice will give your sentences more color and energy.

18. You used "fast-paced gameplay" two sentences in a row. Watch out for that repetition! Coming up with new words or terms will keep your writing fresh and fun to read.

Though campaign mode is short in "Black Ops," the multiplayer modes more than make up for it. The multiplayer modes are similar to Modern Warfare 2. It includes the standard modes: Team Deathmatch, Domination, Headquarters and more.

Notes:

19. Used "mode" four times in three sentences. You might think it's unavoidable, but it's not. You should only repeat words if you're purposely doing so for effect or emphasis, which is not the case here.

20. How short is the campaign mode? You don't necessarily have to give a specific number of hours, but just saying something is "short" isn't enough. That can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people, so you should provide some context (either list an amount of time or compare it to another activity the readers can relate to, whether that's another game's campaign or something else entirely).

21. You really didn't explain why the multiplayer modes "more than make up for" the short campaign. All you did was list which ones were available with no real opinion or critique. Again, it can look like you didn't actually play them and simply listed product specs from a press sheet.

The game adds a new mode called Combat Training, which lets gamers practice against dummy opponents on any multiplayer map.

Combat Training caters more to the less-experienced online players and teaches the basics of multiplayer mode before competing online. Experienced players can use it to refine skills and strategies.

Notes:

22. These two paragraphs should be combined into one.

23. In the second paragraph above, you have a misplaced modifier. You basically stated that "Combat Training...competes online." You also use "online" twice (then use "players" twice in a row with the next sentence). I would rewrite this paragraph:

Combat Training caters more to less-experienced players and teaches them the basics of multiplayer before they have to compete online. Experienced gamers can use this mode to refine skills and strategies.

With its gripping story, tried and true multiplayer modes and improvements, "Call of Duty: Black Ops" managed to top its predecessor, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2."

Notes:

24. This is why we keep the serial comma at Bitmob: The above sentence can be slightly confusing without it. Are they overall improvements or are they multiplayer improvements? Assuming the former, I'd write it this way:

With its gripping story, tried-and-true multiplayer modes, and improvements....

See how that last comma helps clarify that? Otherwise, if you meant these as multiplayer improvements, then this is how you should write it:

With its gripping story and tried-and-true (yet improved) multiplayer modes...

At the same time, I would avoid cliches like "tried and true." A good writer will come up with more interesting ways to express that thought without relying on tired conventions -- or you can put your own twist on them!

Conclusion:

You did a fairly good job overall of avoiding passive writing (including the dreaded "there is/are/was/were" clause constructions that we hate here at Bitmob). Just watch out for:

1. Boring history-lesson intros.

2. Vague statements that don't tell the readers a whole lot.

3. Repetitive words.

Thanks for taking part in our Bitmob Writing Challenge, April!

Everyone: Make sure to participate in this month’s prompt about video-game settings as well. The due date is August 31st.