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Fanboys 2011 is calling you to arms, story tellers of the community. The last year has seen a stagnant patch for the world of careers and stories, with very few threads genuinely worth the read. My Fanboy initiative is to get the tales of your manager onto the forums and to raise the quality of how the stories are told.
So to help me achieve this, I will be running a Story of the Month competition. The best three stories (and/or career threads) on the boards will be picked by myself and will go to the votes of the readers. If you win one of the monthly competitions, your story updates for the rest of the month will be published onto the featured page, displaying your work at the forefront of the Fanboy community. We'll also give you a mention in the Monthly Fanboy Round-Up, so your efforts will be duly rewarded.
So how do you write a good story? Well it’s all down to a number of factors, but the three key things to think about are:
Is it readable? - It sounds obvious, but it’s not as easy to achieve. You are in greater danger of making your career boring if you go for a story format, when you aren’t a natural writer. At the same time I’ve seen career threads that are so bare it’s not even worth paying attention to. To make a thread readable you need to be able to engage the reader and keep them interested. SDKs career thread was particularly good at doing this. It should go without saying, but spelling and grammar need to be at a good level as well.
Is it original? - No, I don’t want to hear about how you won the quadruple with Arsenal in your first season. Originality promotes interest, take for example .Meth’s career thread with St. Pauli last season (his career didn‘t get posted at Fanboys). I’d much rather pay attention to the team from the Romanian 2nd Division that won the Champions League, than your ridiculously over powered Arsenal team. Originality marks also go to the way you present your story, it could be in a diary format or it could be from the perspective of fans/journalists.
Is it well displayed? - Display relates to the format in which you post your career. Some people prefer to illustrate it with random news items, and others prefer season reviews. It’s all down to personal taste. One bit of advice though, don’t just copy out the text from the game. Nobody wants to read that, so it’s a waste of time. Extra points go to those with a good use of graphics as well, but don’t fret about it. Just keeping the thread colourful with different font colours is usually more than enough.
This is the criteria I’ll be following when looking to pick a story to go into the public vote, as well as watching how frequently it is attended too. So if you fancy being named as the Fanboys Writer of the Month, then you’d do well to take note of the criteria. The public vote round is very simple;
No Self Voting - This will result in disqualification. You can vote for other stories, but you don’t have to either.
If we get enough entries, I’ll hold a Demo Career Thread competition at the beginning of November, before the release of the full game.
So, with that clear, get writing Fanboys!
Feel free to ask any questions if you have them.
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HALL OF FAME!
October 2010 - Dan's Eastern European Adventure (Pompey_Dan)
November 2010 - Doing It My Way (Ippo)
December 2010 - My First Fan Boys Story (Neavsey)
I personally look forward to SDK and Kevaggel's career threads this year.
Was a good idea.
