retired_spark4

Hi

I have never created a FM story yet, i plan to as soon as i start playing FM 2008.

The only idea i have so far is that i start the story off by saying that i have been on a 2 year break from football, last club i managed was Osasuna in 2005, i briefly mention how i performed at this club, how my squad looked like, what my league position was etc.

Then i start telling story of my present club, which will be in FM 2008.

Please give me advice on writing a FM story. I will basicly write my thoughts and decisions that i have made etc. But i have noticed that most of you add extra sort of attractive imaginative stuff, like "a meeting with a club for an available job, at a 5 star hotel, where you observe sheets of paper containing squad and other info, while drinking a fancy drink" etc.

I was thinking of doing this type of creative stuff too, what you think???

Any advice/tips are welcome.

shannon2007

Good wee tip, it's I not i.

Also this should for now actually be in the off-topic thread although I would like to see the return of the story ideas discussion thread but Terk keeps ignoring me.

retired_taja

What would be nice in this story ideas thread would be something simillar to the old FM story challenges, but in this case, someone would challenge a specific individual person to doing the challenge and writing the story about it.

or maybe thats too much

shannon2007

The challenges are a seperate thing tbh, and are still going, although interest seems to have faded.

retired_w0lfpack1

Uzee, there's plenty of different styles to work with.

Some people do just their match results and a one-paragraph write-up of them .. while at the other end you have people who try to evoke every ounce of emotion a real match endures.

Some people do very detailed stories, and oh there happens to be some football in it, while other people do nothing but the football.

I'd say, pick what's going to interest you to keep writing it .. don't bite off more than you can chew, by which I mean, don't set yourself an extremely high standard if you're not likely to follow it with equal.

For a story to have any life, its got to entertain the author first.

Beyond that, if its well written, it'll find an audience, and don't worry so much if the audience is different from another writer's; Faramir and flipsix3, for example, both have 15,000+ views on their top active story, and their styles are very different.

Two things I would advise from a mechanics perspective:

1. Write in Word, Wordpad, or Notebook, not in the little pop-up "post" window on the website. Then cut-and-paste in when you're ready to post. (That lets you spellcheck, edit, save, etc, and prevents accidental "oops posted before I was ready" mistakes)

2. Don't "postflood" - if you drop 20 pages worth of posts one after the other, its going to be intimidating and offputting to new readers. Post a bit, leave a cliffhanger or two, and engage your readers that way.

3. Get ahead - goes hand in hand with that. If you play-and-write a bit ahead of your posting, it gives you a couple advantages. One, you'll have days where you don't feel like writing or playing, and you'll have some material saved to post then. Two, you can "foreshadow" events yet to come. Three, you may observe that something which happened a week or two earlier was more important than you thought it would be at the time.

Oh, one other thing.. when the "annual awards" nominations are posted - should be in a couple days - take the time to read several of the award nominees: if you're serious about writing your story, you can learn something from each of those authors whether their style matches yours or not - even if its a "what not to do" lesson.

retired_shaneltolbert

Damn, you beat me to it.

Thants excactly what I was going to say.

No, really.

BarryLFC

1. Read the forum header
2. Do what it says
3. Take advice from fellow FMSers in the Off Topic Thread

retired_bbcarr

Closed. I'll start up an Ideas & Discussion thread to put this sort of thing in.