Jordan Boyd-Graber's Quiz Bowl Page

How to improve as a player:

• Write tons of questions. If you've never written questions at the college level, start out by asking the people in charge if your club needs any packets written in the future. Usually, this is the case, and more experienced questions writers can tell you what is askable, what isn't, and other conventions.
• Once you get to be a better writer, there are usually opportunities to write freelance packets for tournaments around the country that need questions. NAQT is always looking for good writers. Or you might just want to keep a stash of questions in reserve.
• Practice as much as you can. It keeps you exposed and, above all, buzzing.
• Keep a notebook of answers you haven't heard of or clues that were interesting. These things have a habit of appearing again and again, so it's a good way to make practice more useful. It also gives you ideas for writing questions.

When writing a packet ...

Do not ...

• Blindly include superlatives like "most important author of Senegal" or "most polymorphic of all human genes." You should say something like "Along with Gontran-Damas and and Cesaire, he founded the Negritude movement and brought a literary foundation to his native Senegal" or "Cereb et al, who sequenced human ones in 1998, showed that their prodigious polymorphisms are maintained by balancing selection." You should replace empty qualitative assertions with real facts.
• say that someone "wrote many works" or "painted many paintings." Most professional writers and painters did that. It's usually filler that just takes up space. Actually name the works.
• have overly long or short questions; every questions should be between three and six lines. There should be a clue in every sentence and at least three distinct clues ordered pyramidally (obscure to easy).
• list university appointments or education; nobody cares, and it usually doesn't give any details. The only exceptions are if it's contrary to what the person is known for (e.g. Piaget, but that's starting to become something of a chestnut).
• underline too much of an answer. First names (where there is no confusion), articles, and most adjectives should never be underlined.
• leave questions vague. Give character names or other very concrete facts such as dates and places whenever possible. For instance, a question about Lenin might have the phrase "his brother got in trouble with the police." It would be more informative to say "His brother, Alexander, was arrested for conspiring with Narodnaia Volia to kill Alexander III."
• give part of a complete name or title. Include at least the first name and any associated "jr., the great, etc."
• list influences on an author/artist is a bad idea (usually). Hell, Picasso has influenced my artwork (in that I don't feel bad about not being able to present humans in true proportion). You can bet that just about everybody influences everybody else. Unless the connection is very unique ("His musical style was inspired by Pythagorus's dictum on flatulence" would work, for example), just leave it out.
• Repeat the same topic in the same packet. If it's something that couldn't appear in two consecutive rounds of a tournament, it shouldn't be in your packet twice.
• It would be okay to put in two Greek myth questions (but preferably just one tossup and one bonus, at most).
• It would not be okay to put in two questions that mention the Midgard serpent.

Do:

• Always make sure that your question includes the phrase "For ten points" at the end of the question, preferably just before the final clue.
• Make sure you have the foreign equivalent to answers if any of the following is true for your answer:
• It was originally written in another language; include "Nahs," the transliteration of the Russian title of the Gogol short story, The Nose. But for the film "Goodbye Lenin!" you would not put "Aufwiedersehen Lenin!" since it was released as "Goodbye Lenin!" in German.
• If it's a historical event that took place in another nation where they don't speak English, make sure you have the local name too. For instance, The Battle of Pea ridge is called Elkhorn Tavern in Arkansas, and the Munich Beer Hall Putsch is known as "Marsch auf die Feldherrnhalle."
• If it's a geographical feature, include the native name as well as the common name we say. So one would say "Nanking" as well as "Nanjing."

Be sure you do this! It makes your packet look classy, it comes in handy more than you might realize, and it always sucks for someone who knows more about the topic than you to get your question wrong. Say you were born in Suomi, and some bastard rules you wrong because he wants to call your homeland "Finland."

• Make sure your bonuses add to thirty points
• Mix up the format of your bonuses; you shouldn't have more than a handful of each of the following types of questions (although one or two are fine - and encouraged)
• Two part questions
• 30-20-10
• Five or six part questions; when you do have them, you should make sure the question parts are short

When hosting a tournament

• Keep track of who has signed up and what equipment and teams they're brining. E-mail them regularly to make sure that they're actually bringing what they say they are
• Serve breakfast. It's cheap, it keeps teams happy if they have to wait for the tournament to start. Remember, teams are not obligated to come to your tournament. You can't control where your school is. If you can add a plus to start they day off well, it'll make teams remember and return to your tournament. It really isn't that expensive when you consider what you get back.
• Nag everybody early on to attend your tournament. Just posting in the online fora isn't enough. Send e-mails to all the inactive schools too. Snail mail is good for HS teams.
• Run your practices before the tournament like you'll run your tournament. Make sure that the moderators follow all of the rules you'll be following.
• Have schedules that ensure that teams don't stay in the same room all day. Even if you have separate brackets, mix up the rooms. Don't be lazy and use the same schedule.
• Post stats regularly. If players need to wait between rounds, they like to have something to look at.
• Don't make all your prizes Dover Bargain Books. It makes you look cheap. If you think far enough in advance, trophies are nice. Be creative.
• Recognize the top newbie players
• Thank your teams for coming