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You finish up a glass of iced tea and polish off some pretzels, while
reading the Whyville Times. There are so many great articles, you
think, how can I get into the Times?
You quickly find the submit link at the top of the page and read the
whole article twice. Then you re-read the article, "New Submission
Rules".
You are confused.
But never fear, armada is here! *heroic
music plays in the background* Today I'll break down the rules
and give you some tricks of the trade, guiding you step-by-step of how
to write and send an article -- from getting inspired to formatting
correctly. Ready? Here we go!
First, you need to find some inspiration. Like chocolate. No, really,
you need something that makes you say, "Hey! I should right an article
about that!" Is there perhaps something going on in Whyville? Fashion
craze? Senator election? Award?
Once you have your inspiration, or chocolate, you need to find out
more. Is there someone you could interview? Screenshots you could take?
Get as much 411 as you can. This info will help a lot when you get to
the writing part.
Speaking of the writing part, next up is the writing part! If I'm doing
an interview, I like to copy and paste it into Microsoft Word before
anything else. Then I write the introduction, which contains a few
sentences or paragraphs you need to stall for before you can cut to the
chase (okay, okay, you need to use your intro to give them a good
reason to read your article -- is that better?). It needs to be
interesting -- you can't lose your readers in the first few sentences.
Then comes the body, which is the main part, then the conclusion; the
conclusion wraps everything up. Then you get to say something cool
like, "Armada here, signing off."
Then, you must spell-check
everything. This is very important. Be especially on the lookout for
sneaky errors. I myself have issues with "their" and "they're". "Your"
and "you're" are also popular. At least one person (the Editor) will
read your article. I'm sure he doesn't like headaches, and no one
fancies going through a bottle of Tylenol per day. The more
professional your article is, the better the impact it's going to have
on your first reader. Correct anything that sounds wrong. If it sounds
wrong to you, chances are it will sound wrong to other people. Editor's
Note: The sound can be very important -- you might even want to
read your article out loud to yourself or a friend, to make sure! You'd
be amazed how this can help you write better!
Next, you need to y-mail everyone whose name/article was mentioned in
your article. I usually send them the entire article, so they can see
where they're mentioned. Most of the time people say it's all right
with them, but you never know, so you have to ask anyhow. Editor's
Note: You don't want to misquote someone -- that's a big no-no
in journalism. You also want to give them a chance to respond to your
comments if you're saying something about them -- that's just very good
journalism, and will impress the Editor. Once you get the OK,
we're on to the next step!
Open up Microsoft Outlook or go to your e-mail provider. A picture is
worth a thousand words, so here is a screenshot of how you should set
it up:
If you can't see images, I'll describe how to set it up as best as I
can. In the To: box, write times@whyville.net. That's the
Editor's e-mail address. ;) In the subject
box, you need to lay it out like this:
Type of submission: username, Title
For example:
Interview: armada, Who Will be the Next Senator?
Do not send anything with a blank subject line or one that reads, "Hi,"
"Hello," "Help," "Important," or "Document". Those will be deleted
without even being read. Way too many viruses come nowadays like that
and we don't want the whole Times Editor's mailbox gone. It has
happened before. :(
Then, on the big window where you type your message, first type the
title of your fabulous piece -- on the very first line. Then, type a
catchy description -- make it short, sweet, and to-the-point. (Note: If
you're writing a poem, the description is just "by username", changing
username to your username and leaving out the quotation marks. Oh, and
it's a lowercase "b" in "by".) Skip two lines and then copy and paste
your article. ^_^ Of course, none of this has to be in big bold letters
or italics like I did in the picture. I don't usually submit it that
way; I was just making things stand out.
To clear up a question, this means that you submit your whole article
in an e-mail, not attach the Word or Notepad file.
What about pictures, you ask? Only send them as .gif or .jpg. PLEASE don't send them as .png
or .bmp. If you do, the nice Editor needs to load up some extra spiffy
software to change them, since only .gif and .jpg are very
web-friendly. Also, keep your image sizes down. Use crop tools in your
image editor (like Photoshop, or even Paint) to get rid of anything
that's not important. For example, in the Greek Theater, you don't need
your drop-down window and bus in the picture, or the little blue line
that says the title of the page. Take a look at old pictures to get an
idea.
Most folks have figured this out, but I figured I should mention it
anyway. This is how formatting for interviews is supposed to be:
Armada: Why
did the chicken cross the road?
hightech5:
To get to the other side!
Formatting is how the names are in bold and italics. ;)
One final question you might have: How many e-mails does the Editor get
per week? He has said that, as of summer 2004, he gets about 1,000
e-mails every single week. That includes a lot of spam and articles in
the wrong format. Now I'd like to ask the Editor, how many are articles
formatted correctly out of the 1,000 e-mails? Editor's
Note: Not enough! ;-) You may think that your chances of
getting into the Times are slim to none, but every single article --
including yours ??? is given full consideration so long as you follow the
rules.
Well, that should about wrap it up on how to be a Times Writer. I hope
you all learned something today, and I hope to see some of you in next
week's Times!
Sayonara,
armada
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