Be Original
As I said above, you get a lot of people who come in and the latest big club of the league to a league title, not that much of an achievement when you think about it. Be original, do something no one has ever done, use a club that no one will of heard of, sign players no one will of heard of.
It doesn't even have to be about what team or aspects you include, it could be your own crazy little twist to the story, maybe some Football Manager related sexual fantasy you decided to demonstrate in a story on an online forum.
Essentially make it different from the rest, whatever your way of doing that, the rarer, the better, it'll be new, it'll be fresh, it'll be read.
Layout
Maybe I should of put this sub-menu first because in my eyes, presentation and layout is essential and possibly the important part of the story. People's eyes see layout faster than they read content, and without thinking in their brains the first impression will have a huge impact on what they think.
So to make sure your first impression is good, have excellent presentation skills, make it easy on the eye and easy to read so that people don't feel at some discomfort when taking five minutes out to read your latest update, also keep it consistent throughout so that they can recognise and associate with it.
Colours, fonts, everything to do with how it looks is important, use new fonts, use nice sleek fonts, use nice colours that don't contrast, it all ties in with being original.
Don't cram all your content into one paragraph, make things lengthy, obviously not too long so that reading them is a trek but so that they don't look like sentences.
When you pop onto a news website you don't see a sentence explaining the weekends results do you? You see a few paragraphs in one report, a nice amount.
People quite often frown upon writing that much and claim that they can't, but really you can, find a topic to write about and do what all media do, rabble on about relevent things that don't really matter, but make good reading, facts, future information.
Content
Don't for the love of bourbon biscuits make your story a fact sheet, people don't want one massive post with a list of results and scorers, if they wanted that they could just look at Optas latest readings, add something to it, your own thoughts, media thoughts, player thoughts, the latest news in your FM game. Add things to read as well as who scored the third goal as you won the league.
Storyline
When members start writing their stories, they usually have the same old story line..
"Ferguson sacked as Man Utd look for new boss",
Then two weeks later, what's this? Man Utd have signed a random fourteen year old manager from Shrewsbury! Well there's a surprise. Add something new, have a strange, yet interesting reason why the manager before you got sacked and then for extras have a strange yet interesting reason to why you was appointed over the worldclass sheepskin coats of the world.
Saying that, a few people now do have their own little unique storylines, but only at the start, to keep people intriguied, the storyline could be kept going throughout, not too often, just enough to catch them off guard as they see who won the game on 15th December. Maybe something to add some contraversey to your story, involve other people in the game, involve anyone, just to make it interesting. Imagine you're writing the new episode of Dreamteam.
Colour & Pictures
This ties in with Layout really, the usage of colouring and pictures is again important for the presentation but also to give readers eyes a rest from the old black and white text. It brightens things up, it can make it look attractive. However, there is a few no goes, don't use bright colours randomly, or every bright colour of the palette in a sentence. Use relevent colours and colours to instruct emphasis.
Pictures on the other hand are good for backing things up, putting in news articles should you be doing that, or to show your star striker in a picture just as you signed him. In saying that, a lot of people tend to take pictures directly cropped from FM, a picture of their result or league table if you like, as easy as this is try and avoid it, it can make things look unrealistic. You are supposed to be re-enacting your own dreams of taking Morecambe to the Champions League final then plop, a coded computer game league table lands smack bang in the middle of the screen.
Also it is a good technique for looking good if you have all your pictures with a black one pixel border? Easily done if you're a bit of a photoshop user, another way is to make them all the same size? Not too big, just small ones that are easy to recognise and again that re-inforces my point about consistency. It's good.
Humour vs Information
A very big point in the story writing world, should your story be informative? Telling readers when your star player scored to the exact second, delivering Opta like facts, or do you like to be comical? Make your readers laugh and add a funny twist to things, with sarcasm, jokes or whatever.
Well most say using all of one and none of the other can shoot yourself in the foot, if you constantly use information you'll bore your readers to death whilst if you constantly use humour you'll either again, bore them to death if you're rubbish at it, or make them laugh to death (or simply run out of lines to use). So what you need ideally, is, ah genius, a mix of the two! But how should you go about doing this?
Well there are ways, you could perhaps delegate informative to match reports whilst having your own personal journal on things where the comic comes in. Or you could just write it freeflow and say what come's into your head at the time (Not advisable if you play whilst watching Porn).
That way you don't tell your jokes faster than a helium balloon on steroids and you don't end up looking like a Statbook.
Cheat Players
Now I know it is a bit strange to single out such a random category on a wide scale of advise, but cheat players are a bit of a doo doo in story writing. In Football Manager, as I'm sure you're aware, people end up signing the same old players for magic beans every game, these begun to be known as cheat players because they're so cheap and you get so much talent, notable ones are To Madeira and Dwight Pezzarozzi.
If you want to enthrall your reader in the magic of Stoke City, try to avoid signing these kind of players and make it realistic, sign domestic based ones, spend more than £2,000 on the latest youthkid. It just does become a bit boring when you see the same old kids being bought in every single story.
Physically Writing the Story
A lot of people see Story writing as a geeky thing to do, when in actual fact it is a good way of practising your creativity without being under the pressure of an exam. But most importantly, it's a good way to get everyone to praise you. Make sure when you write it you are very comfortable, you have music on low and you are fully concentrated, once you start writing you won't know you're doing it as it just flows through your fingers.
Try to avoid interuptions by getting a packet of crisps and glass of drink near you and also don't write them one after the other, not only does this not give people a chance to read and comment, but it increases your chances of getting bored. Once a day is a good benchmark but play about and see how your own mind fairs.
Length, doesn't deserve it's own subsection (poor it) but it's something that should be said, length is always something people aren't sure about for their updates, do they do one update a game?, one a month?, one every few? Obviously the answer will come from your own experience but do what you feel comfortable with till you get bored writing for another day, i tend to do months or sometimes a little bit more if I'm getting 'into it'.
So now you've read my thoughts, go ahead and try writing a story, just remember what I've said and be original!
- Prentice
MultiQuote
