E2 Prose Writers Group (idea)

As an active E2 voter, I would like to contribute for both official and unofficial members of the E2 Prose Writers Group my own suggestions on how to make your creative writing less vulnerable to the "automatic downvoting regardless of the content" of which me and mine have been accused.

• Don't display in "New Writeups". This checkbox is there for a reason. Since you now have the power to bring your noded fiction to the attention of a targetted readership, you may as well hide it from the general population if XP loss is a concern of yours. If, on the other hand, you've developed a healthy shield of XP stoicism, then by all means let your nodes be announced to the voting public.

• What's your point? Why are you sharing this particular narrative, poem, or experience with the rest of us? If there's no message, no moral to your tale, then you'd better knock us out with your mastery of the art of language. Otherwise it's easily mistaken for meaningless ramblings, and voted on appropriately.

• Pick titles carefully. Almost every published novel, novella or short story I've ever read has a title that is either short and to the point, describing its contents accurately, or just long enough to be intriguing or funny, thus grabbing my interest and pulling me into the first few paragraphs. They don't use nonsense sentence fragments that have no meaning, or worse, have no apparent relevance to the story itself. Using unnecessarily long titles is just a sneaky tactic to make your node more noticable in the New Writeups nodelet, and we all know it. Please don't do this.

• You have exactly three sentences in which to engage my interest. If you're using the aforementioned overly-long node titles, then you've already used up your first sentence. Either way, if a noder finds your story unexpectedly, then they're not necessarily going to be receptive to what you have to say. You've got three sentences on the average in which to draw your reader in, so make them count. Be imaginative. Be funny. Be intriguing. Be, above all else, relevant. There are thousands of other writeups out there to read, each one just a mouse click away. Give your readers a good reason to stick around and finish yours.

• You are not the literary genius you think you are. So please, follow a few conventions here. Like capitalization. Like punctuation. Like good grammar. You'd be surprised how many noders who fancy themselves as writers don't bother to check those carefully. But most importantly, be legible. Don't litter your writeup with changing fonts, bold and italicized text, centered and right-aligned blocks, single-spaced or indented paragraphs, or justified margins unless your have a good and specific reason. Trust the usability experts: conventions are there for a reason. It makes reading your work far easier and more enjoyable.

• XP Stoicism. Cultivate it. Professional writers go through months or years of rejection slips even after they've got their foot in the door with their first published work, and even the richest novelist is going to get some bad reviews for any given work. There's no reason you shouldn't expect a slew of "rejections" from the voting public when you put your stuff up here, too. Being a writer in any capacity requires a thick skin if you want to be serious about it.

Remember: you're putting your writings up here because you want feedback from us. Please don't complain just because we're being honest with it.

postscript: I'm not just criticizing blindly here. I, too, have a handful of creative writings on E2. And when noding them, because it's what I expect of others, I've always tried to follow the above guidelines. Just because it's creative doesn't mean it shouldn't also be content.