It is an inescapable fact that the vast majority of football fiction is awful. In an old When Saturday Comes annual, they reckoned that this was because football is a working class game, so inspires writers who have not been as well trained as the AS Byatts of this world in the beauty of language. I think if this theory has any truth, it exists now as a lingering stigma against writing about the game. Why, after all, put together a page-turner on football when there are many more acceptable genres to choose from out there?

Crime, science fiction, horror - whatever your bag is, there'll always be an audience, and in the better cases some dripping praise from the broadsheets, but this isn't true about our favourite sport.

The books that do exist are invariably ancient and only ever to be found in £1 for 6 type outlets, if at all. Notably, the article writer Brian Glanville turned his hand to fiction, with less than successful results (read 'Footballers Don't Cry' if you don't believe me), whilst the less said about volumes by Jimmy Greaves, Terry Venables and Hunter Davies the better.

And yet why should this be the case? If it does nothing else, football provides suspense in spades. Even if your team is a second division clogger that has meandered forever, there will always be something to look forward to, otherwise why would people change their cash for overpriced tickets? You might argue that real-life football possesses enough drama to make spin-off literature irrelevant, but if this were the case why is there such a market for crime fiction?

I once wrote three chapters of a football novel, a scenario in which Hartlepool and Darlington merged to form a genuine rival to the big three in the north-east of England. The yarn charted the team's unstoppable rise to the Premiership, along with the parallel blossoming of a youth talent who just happened to be Asian (you see, I can be topical). This typical fare was juxtaposed with the tale of the side's manager, an old school, seen-it-all type who was slowly being eased out of the frame despite taking his charges nearly to the top. So you see, it was a tragedy really, and it was. The whole debacle was a poor show, and simply didn't have the legs to survive the required pace. Besides which, I was only writing it as part of a desperate hair-brained scheme to make some money for my then cash-starved family. You'll be pleased to know that I worked on the census instead and solved our debts. I still have those chapters on disk somewhere. If you really would like to take a look at a plucky attempt to inject some realism into a flagging field, get in touch and I'll send you the stuff.

SETTING YOUR STORY'S RULES

I've gone on long enough. The point was that clearly there is a market for football fiction, and Championship Manager provides its unlikely source. I could even use an editor to create the situation above (hardly outlandish compared to some of the scenarios out there - is that a British Empire League I saw earlier?), but I won't. Last week, I wrote about getting started. By now, you should have chosen your team and be ready to start your first day. Here are some useful tips on how to set up the rules by which your story will follow. By this I mean we will look at the amount of detail you should want to reflect, the situations you might write about and some stuff about style. The latter part I will try to go on about some more next week.

Your first issue to consider is this - how deep will your story be? Do you want to cover seasons at breakneck speed, summarising the highs and lows, the bought and sold, the trophies won and opportunities missed? Or would you rather get right under the skin of your game, noting everything that happens in painstaking detail, the amount of information in fact that CM would give you?

I'll tell you right now that I'm not interested in the former. Not one bit. How can you generate the slightest sense of suspense - surely the hallmark of any good story - when giving over 500 words to sketching a season? What can you possibly say of any significance in this sort of space? How could you hope to capture the length of time it takes to plough through a single campaign on CM, let alone one in reality? The truth is that you can't. My first foray into CM fiction was an earnest three-parter about a year at Middlesbrough (like most of my stuff, available at CM Star). Even with 5,000 words to play with I had little chance of recreating for my readers the trials and errors I went through that season, and what remained was a disjointed mess of snapshots. I could focus on single events, but never for too long, while whole swathes of matches and details went out of the window.

It follows then that the right answer is to go further into your game. Imagine that you are a real football manager with constantly changing issues and challenges, and that we - the readers - are your team's supporters. We wouldn't want you to leave anything out. Rather, our requirement would fall little short of a full-blown, warts 'n' all chronicle of everything you faced and saw. Granted this is difficult to do, and the pace of your game will slow to a grind. But the more detail you pack into your journal, the better.

When I am ready to write a chapter of Moss Side Barrow Boy, I keep a notepad next to me, and record as much data from the news as I consider relevant. I don't bother with scouts' reports particularly because you know that they'll wax lyrical about that little Belgian defender one week and consider him not good enough for your boys the next. Then again, I might if there is some comic mileage in it. That aside, all the messages I receive - transfer news, speculation, injuries, disciplinary offences, sackings, appointments, press releases, significant results - are fair game, and get noted down for possible inclusion in the narrative. The same is true of matches. Generally, I play the game and then work through the report, paying special attention to how goals are scored, along with injuries. The last thing to do is print off copies of the current state of the team (available in the top-right hand corner of the screen showing your squad) and the table (guess where that is). This may sound laborious, but it adds the sort of flesh to your account that can make it seem almost real, certainly epic, and draws readers into the various characters that make up the tale.

Most importantly, always give the impression that you care about what you are doing. You want readers to stay with your story? Make them, by adding as much as detail as possible. This never goes amiss.

Remember also that your game is about much more than just a succession of fixtures. Though the Manchester City story here on Stuff is dominated by match reports, I try to cram as much in there as I can so you know all about the major players and circumstances. For example, Eyal Berkovic might have a bad game, and you are clued in to the likelihood of him doing this because he wants to move to a bigger club and is therefore demotivated. Besides which, giving the bare bones of in-match happenings is just boring. When you play CM, do you just oversee games or is there all sorts of other stuff going on in between? Write about it then.

Next, you should think about the perspective you want to chronicle your events from. The classic CM story is written in the first person, from the point of view of the manager himself. In short, you write as you play. And there is nothing wrong with this. But think about who you are within the context of the game. Are you a little-known coach from abroad who just happens to have taken over at Arsenal? Tell us about yourself and what qualifies you to assume the Highbury mantle. Or will you take on the guise of an existing manager (my personal favourite) who is trying his hand at a new club? Write whilst adopting the characteristics of your alias i.e. if you're Kenny Dalglish, you're sulky and remote, if Sir Alex a red-faced, teacup throwing ranter. You could go for something more lurid, like the psychopathic Benny who used to entertain SI Games forums as he took Carlisle to glory with his 'uncompromising' style. If all else fails, you could even be a simple 15-year old CM expert who is approached to be the Atletico Madrid gaffer. And let's face it, Jesus Gil has only so many existing incumbents to go through, hasn't he?

You don't have to choose this. Some of the best stories are told from outside the dressing room, from the frustrated outlook of the supporter. Chris Edwards' story doing the rounds on The Gaffer is an example of this. Again at Sigh Games, flipsix3 spun a yarn all about Brooklyn Beckham, who even at two years of age knew his heart had been captured by Blackburn Rovers. Cue Brook's worshipping of the Ewood lot from afar whilst spewing out a stream of Beckham gags.

And I think that's it for another episode. The rest, I leave to you as far as rule setting is concerned. I'm not one for posting updated tables all the time, but if you are that's fine.

FURTHER READING

Here, in my opinion is a look at how to do it, and how not to do it. Make of these what you will, but with any luck you will enjoy the first account far more than the second.

A good one is available from the anals of CM Star. Written by David Bergin, it chronicles a season in the life of Clydebank FC, a heartbreakingly poor side from the depths of Scottish football. Note the effort to maintain a bleak Scottish prose, the amount of dialogue and slow build-up.

Take a peak at this 'blink and you'll miss it' episode from The Dugout that brushes over anything you might like to know about when discussing West Brom. Forgettable.

NEXT WEEK

All the things I said I was going to talk about at the end of Part 1 and didn't. Maybe.