h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well I wrote it a week ago, I read it today and it doesn't sound crap yet, so I thought, what the heck. If you don't like it please send your standard rejection letters to...

I like it. Of course, who ever the sub-editor is who's assigned to this would undubitably do some editing, but as a wannabe writer, you should be used to that. *grin*

The only thing I would suggest would be to go through the entry and look for words that might not be familiar to everyone (baloclava and synopsis were two I noticed). You don't necessarily need to replace them, or even define them in the text, but you could use footnotes.

good luck!
Mikey

Great - and it's inspired me to do one on 'life as a wannabe rockstar', which I'll be doing tonight...
Rings very true, and very well-written. The only things I noticed were the misspellings of balaclava and plagiarism...

As a fellow WW, I sympathise.

Quite seriously, if you're having manuscripts rejected then it might be a good idea to invest in a spell-checker (or a dictionary) - I could add aforementioned, leprosy, despair and a few others to the errors. Someone who reads for a living will get *seriously* pi**ed off by this. And if you spell-check your manuscripts - why not afford your h2g2 submissions the same luxury?

Now, I know that you're going for the humorous angle on this one, but you do make some serious suggestions, so here are serious comments on them:

"How to Write" books: Yes, avoid at all costs the ones that tell you to "write what's popular", or have "100 great plot ideas" for when you can't come up with something for yourself. They're worthless pap. But it might be worth getting books which make you think about the creative process:
The first of these I'd recommend is "Becoming a Writer" by Dorothea Brande. It never tries to tell you what to write, just shows you ways to discipline yourself into writing regularly, and how to find out when you write best - at what time of day, after what activities, that sort of thing. It makes a lot of sense.
The second is "Starting From Scratch" by Rita Mae Brown. This doesn't give you any technique tips, but it'll ask you a lot of questions which you should think about the answers to, especially about WHY you want to write; and it teaches you to say "f*** you" to anyone who tries to stop you being yourself.

Secondly, although you mention PbEM simming (would you like to share with us the meaning of that acronym?) and getting other wroters to read your work, you don't talk at all about writer's groups. These can be very helpful, but they can also "go negative". The other writers can pick holes in your work for no other reason than that it's not the way they would have written it. If that happens, RUN!
You could also mention h2g2's very own writers' group, h2g2 Fiction (http://www.h2g2.com/A294833).

Good luck, with the article and the career!

PF

Thanks Positive Feedback, I'll try and intergrate that into the article, and figure out how to put Referenced Researchers onto the article.

I've been a wannabe writer for ooh about fifteen years now, so naturally I enjoyed this article. It struck a chord with me and at the same time I found it entertaining.

Another person to avoid at all costs when you're looking for constructive criticism is anyone with a degree in Literary Studies. They'll dissect your work with (unfavourable) reference to the latest lit crit orthodoxy, look for Freudian echoes, tell you that you're probably looking for a strong mother / father figure and trying to come to terms with the contemporary crisis in masculinity / femininity / whatever, and then proceed to steal all your best ideas for a non-fiction novel they've had in the pipeline for the last couple of years...

It might not be relevant to your article, but I would like to see some advice on the actual mechanics of structuring and putting a piece of writing together, so that it's ready for publication. Not for myself, you understand - just for the general novice, I mean (of course)...

Another typo, by the way :- you put 'attactive' rather than 'attractive' in the first headed section.

All the best,

Lear (random nonsense generator)

Okay, I've made editted the entry to include the stuf that's been suggested.

http://www.h2g2.com/A424982

You could always mention that practice of writing is essential - you might do things like, say, write h2g2 entries! Ok, so that only works if you're doing factual stuff...

I'm amazed you managed to get through a whole entry without saying "everyone has one good book in them". Or maybe you did and my cliche filter stopped me reading it...

I DID say that practice was important, and gave several places to practice including H2G2. As for everyone having one good book in them, I knew that was a lie when I first tried Jeffrey Archer.

This is a really entertaining article! I hope you have not been too disappointed that it has been in PR for so long and that it gets recommended soon.

Unfortunately, Fat Mammoth seems to have resigned - no new conversations on his/her personal space...

No! I'm BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brilliant article

The only thing I can really see that may help it is if you could do something to make the individual sections of it stand out a bit more. It's not anything really important though

I love the article; it's really entertaining

And I've managed to use a smiley face at the end of every paragraph. Ah well

Glad you liked it

Unfortunately I'm not sure how to do underlined/bold titles and stuff.

But maybe you could help?

*enters attempted redeem self mode*

Currently, I'm guessing you've got the whole thing in text - to do cool stuff like headers and bold, you need GuideML... check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/GuideML-Clinic for everything you might possibly want to know about it (and lots of stuff you probably don't).

To spy on other people's guideML, replace 'A' by 'test' in the URL. For example, http://www.h2g2.com/test123456. This is often the best way of figuring out what to add in to reproduce the same effect as someone else has on their page...

In other words, plagiarise!

All the stuff you need is at the GuideML Clinic @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/GuideML-Clinic

In particular try this page :- http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/SubEditors-GuideML

{Note to moderators - these are internal links, please leave them where they are, thank you}

People normally use the {text here} instruction for sub-headings, by the way - that would separate things out well enough for the Edited Guide, I think.

Wow. That's never happened to me before. Great minds and all that, eh, RedDice?

another handy URL with guideML links and suchlike...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/Writing-Beginners

OKAY! The article now has lots of fancy titles and stuff.

much nicer!

Now try out the and tags for your lists, and the tag for, uh, well, your subheaders...

And for stuff your quoting is nice: like the standard rejection letter, for example.

MyRedDice is trying to think up a standard rejection letter to give to people in Peer Review