STYLE AND WHATNOT Crikey, you’re back! I didn’t think anyone read this so it’s good to see you show up for more. Actually I have to say that I’ve noticed a marked upsurge in CM fiction around the scene lately. Could this be in some small way thanks to this series? Hey, I doubt it, but you’re welcome nonetheless.

So we’ve looked at picking a team and how to set out your story. This leaves the small matter of style left to cover, and it is a small matter. The good thing about writing styles is that you can get away with practically anything you want. Forget all those tedious lessons on grammar in your English class, and the attempts by your teacher to force Day of the Triffids, or worse, Dickens down your throat. If the 1970s taught us anything – and they can’t have taught us much, because we still voted for Thatcher – it is that we have the freedom to express ourselves any way we like, and you should take full advantage. What I’m saying is that there’s really no right or wrong way to write a story. The rules set out in the last part are just a general guideline – where you go from there is up to you.

What you should be looking to create is a modicum of tension, of suspense. Stephen King is a multi-million selling author because the pages of his books practically bleed it out, even if the denouement is often disappointing. Suspense is the pulse of your story. It is what keeps the reader interested, and making a success of it is wholly dependent on your ability to keep that heartbeat healthy.

So what do I mean by suspense? It’s easy to imagine that this word is all about cliffhangers, about edge of your seat nail-biting emotion, but it isn’t just that. Years ago, the studios used to release serial shorts that people could see at the pictures when they went to catch the newsreel. This way in the days before TV. Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Crash Corrigan and Rocketman were all staple characters, getting involved in adventures that lasted 15 minutes per instalment. The end of each part left our hero in a classic situation. Quite often you would see a car fall off the edge of a cliff, the assumption being that the main character was in it.

The next show would reveal that he managed to clamber out to safety before the car went over, but these cheat endings were what kept the audiences coming back. The really important thing that the serial makers did, however, was to make us care what happened to the characters. They defined quite clearly who the goodies and baddies were early on, told us things about the protagonists that would make them almost identifiable to us, so that when it looked like they would die we actually gave a toss.

And this, essentially, is what you must do. You have to force us to carry some emotional investment in your team by telling us all about the players, by letting us in on their hopes and fears and by keeping it up. You can see the yarns where this is done. The David Bergin tale about Clydebank that I linked to last week is all about the manager’s concerns that his team is too crap to survive. He gets us interested because he gives us a chance to see what’s going on in his noggin, and we’re with him when the results start to come out.

And that is probably the most important thing about fiction writing of any sort that I can pass on. If you crack this you will be halfway to penning a CM story that is pretty damn decent, elevated over and above the flotsam and jetsam in fact. Here are some other dos and don’ts before I get too carried away:

DO check your spelling and grammar. I type everything in MS Word before pasting it into a web page, and though this is a crude way of doing it, it does allow me to put the spellchecker to good use first. There is nothing worse than reading a story riddled with bad English. Indeed this goes beyond fiction and into all CM writing. There are some lovely-looking sites out there. If they were women they would be Halle Berry and Kelly Brook, whilst ver Stuff would no doubt be someone like Cindy Crawford (looked great a few years ago, a bit rough now – though I’d still handle those odds).

However, much like Ms Brook in real life I suspect, there’s not much going on topside. Shallow, sloppy writing compromises the beautiful design, and this is a shame, as it makes all that artistic virtue previously outlined look vacuous. You know the sites where I think this happens. It is equally true of stories. You might be a great manager and your achievements could make Wimbledon’s rise from obscurity look like an everyday occurrence, but if your punctuation is all to pot, your tale will be rendered much less readable.

DON’T dick about with the pace of your story too much. Soon, because this site is coming to a close I will wrap up the Moss Side Barrow Boy story in a lengthy final chapter, just to let you know what happened to Manchester City in their bid for promotion. In doing so I’ll be breaking this rule, suddenly upping the pace from a gentle and detailed three games per chapter to the bulk of a season in one go. I wouldn’t advise you do this under normal circumstances. Once you have settled on a pace, stick with it so that you don’t have your readers sitting up and crying “Eh? What’s going on here?”

DO try to make it as realistic as possible. Impossible I know, but the great thing about ChampMan is that it does reflect so much of what happens in football in a believable way. So should you when writing your story. Though there’s nothing wrong in introducing fantastic elements, something like editing your game so that Henrik Larsson joins Elgin City is just not the sort of thing that happens, and it will stick out like a Mohammed Al Fayed wallet.

So that’s it. I’m still envious of the fact that Chris from The Gaffer managed to cover this topic in a fraction of the verbiage that I’ve given, but by now you know I can waffle better than McCain’s.

FURTHER READING

Back to Sigh Games Community Forums, and a rather amazing epic from Saviola for Caley, called Cryuff Says No. This Dumbarton story (why do all the best ones involve Scottish teams?) is lavishly detailed and clearly written as a labour of love. You will enjoy it. Apparently, the writer says that the title of his story comes from a time when the Sons very nearly signed the great Dutchman (Johann, not Jordi). Weird. Next thing you’ll be telling me the Boro have a love affair going with a great Brazilian midfielder.