How do you do it?

[frank]

I'm not asking anyone to give away any secrets, but how does everyone work up their F7 pieces?

Do you spend the whole week putting it together bit by bit, or do you bash it out in one sitting on Wednesday afternoon?

Just curious.

 

[Anonymous]

I get my grandmother to write them for me.

 

[frank]

She's very talented :lol:

 

[Anonymous]

Especiallly considering she can't read.

For me it just depends. Sometimes it the words come out easily and an hour or two later, it's done... warts and all.
Other times it takes all day or longer. I had one which I kept 'improving' upon for a whole week and it scored a miserly 8.0. :lol:

I'm sure there's a balance somewhere in between.

 

[Mr Angry]

Agonize and agonize over the subject matter, once chosen, write and write, then edit back to 750 or so.

 

[El Coconuto]

Not that anything I say will really help, but I try to avoid writing about things that are constantly in the papers. It's my belief that people get bored with them after hearing and reading about them all day and night, and hence if I'm going to write about the salary cap or sixteenth team or whatever is hot at the time, I want to tackle it from a different perspective to make for interesting reading.

 

[eloquentEEL]

I have a team of 1,000 monkeys chained to typewriters.

They normally don't do too well, but they had a blinder the round before last.

Editting's a bastard though.

 

[El Coconuto]

Yeah, I think about it all week but generally don't get to writing until a couple of days before the deadline. And on my earlier point, I think you'll find if you look through the posters of the rounds, they've each written about things that you don't hear too much about and such. For example, El Garbo's and eels2win's most recent posts etc etc

 

[gorilla]

Well, I follow the guidance (with variation) of the man who invented 'Pet Rocks' - his approach was to go to a bar, drink lots of good scotch and then write down everything you think of.

Well, that can get messy, libellous and quite possibly get yourself a punch in the head from some paranoid-schitzo, so, I have a two step process.

First, the substance abuse and I go somewhere for thought and action, e.g: the backyard and hang out the laundry (the Pet rock approach). I don't write it down and have lost about 28 stories that way. After I've sorted the dribble from the kernels of an idea, I think about them on the way to work. :twisted:

I then enter stage two. I go to the same little hole in the wall eatery, Malaysian in a small side lane and whilst eating a kwae do with capitan chicken, smothered in sambal, =P~ I write the piece (30 mins - fast eater...)
I then go and type it up and post.

Hey presto ! \\/

Been too busy for much posts this year, but has worked atreat the last two years and the two posts this year have been the same formula.

Maggie

 

[miccle]

It really depends for me. I keep my eyes and ears open at all times and sometimes just pump out a couple of stories to be used in games in the near future - sometimes up to three or four in the one week. Of course, due to timing, some of them never get used because the issue has been and gone.

Luckily, my decent contacts around the broncos (which has come from writing occassionally for their website) fuels a lot of my stories, but then again... the NRL is great at throwing around shocking headlines which are always great fuel for forum 7s articles :roll:

 

[Everlovin' Antichrist]

I basically have no idea and nearing the end of my first season in F7's, I'm no wiser as to what scores better than I was the day I wrote my first essay. That's a good thing though, if it was that easy to fathom it'd be crap.

I have a few experiences that I'd like to write about but I worry about them not being up to par or not enough to do with Rugby League and hurting the team, so I've started trying to write about things that are a bit more relevant to League as it is now.

The subject itself is much harder that the actual writing. Once I get a subject I pretty much do what Mr. Angry said, write away then snip it to 750 whilst trying not to damage the essence of the story. I don't find the first part difficult and ideas tend to flow pretty readily, then I give myself a few days to nip and tuck it if I feel the need. I usually read it plenty of times and change it plenty of times too.

I have gone the other way once though and posted something straight off the top of my head, written in an hour and a half.

I don't think there's anything that works hard and fast.

 

[frank]

Thanks for the replies.

I agree with EA and Mr Angry. Coming up with subject matter is much harder than the actual writing.

I asked the question because, try as I might, I can't seem to work up an article over the course of a week. I've found that if I agonise over it for too long, I'll keep editing and changing until I've lost the initial idea.

My debut F7 post was written in 1 hour on a Wednesday afternoon, and it's been my best mark so far.
I think I work better under pressure.

 

[Mr Rock!!!]

:twisted: I find that if I look after the ROCK!!! Then the ROLL !!!! tends to take care of itself :evil:

 

[Anonymous]

It changes each round... but the usual process is this:

I give it some thought the week beforehand, tossing up ideas while I work. I almost never get an idea.

Come Tuesday or Wednesday, I sit down still without a topic, then churn through a few ideas. When I eventually stumble across a topic, I try to work out a different spin to put on it, then just bash away at the keyboard. Unlike most, I almost never crack 750 words, I usually just struggle to about 650 then pull up stumps.

 

[rabs]

plagiarism of course

but seriously when I find I am selected for a game I first take a walk with my girl Taliyshaa and my designer spaniel Ferdinand, passing my Mums house where I give her a kiss before heading back home for some Zen meditation. Only then am I in the zone for writing an F7's article.

I have to say frank that I am always looking for your articles as they are definitley the funniest reads

 

[The Engineers Room]

I type it in 10 minutes and if it is no good I save it and type something different.

 

[skeepe]

I just sit down and type it all in one go. The style of writing I choose (ie, serious, humourous, halfway in between) really depends on the mood I'm in at the time and the subject I choose.

Like EA, after a year or so of writing F7's articles, I still have no idea what seperates the good from the bad. For example, one article I thought was really good got the lowest score of the match, and one I put no thought into and typed out in 5 minutes won man of the match. :lol:

 

[ozzie]

decide the moring of the close what am the hell am I going to write about..spend to lunchtime thinking - if need be go to the library and search for related information on internet etc...

type like hell - use word to check language and spelling - post it and hope for the best!! but this is my third year and I think I have come to the end...sufferring severely from "post out"

 

[Clevo]

My RotW article was promted by a forum argument on one of the Souths forums.... I posted a similar question on LU forums and read the replies.

I then went away and thought about it.... even discussing the issues with footy friends. I then smash it out in usually an hour or two. Leave it till the next day cause they are usually done when I am really tired and it's 3am in the morn.

I read it about 3-4 times just to check on flow and grammar and try and think of other ways of making the point especially if I have to cull 50-100 words which inveriably I tend to always need to do.

But this is not the common practice.... normally I chat up the chicks in the office about footy and listen to their whacky comments... there's always a strange new way of looking at footy from someon who doesn;t understand or appreciate footy the way we do.

 

[Big Mick]

My next article is about a real life experience and I hope it gets the recogonition it deserves