is this writing?
a few odds and sods to make everyone's life easier
First things first: this document
isn't designed to teach granny how to suck eggs, or patronise
any of our wonderful contributors. It's a collection of bits and
bobs that have come up in the first few issues that I thought
were worth letting everyone know about. If there's anything you
disagree with or think I've missed out, please let me know. Ta.
language
We want itm? to be informal, irreverent
and entertaining, and the language we use should reflect that.
Jargon, technical nonsense and exclamation marks are evil, and
we'd prefer it if you avoided archaic language such as "whilst",
"amongst" and so on - unless you're taking the piss
and writing an entire article in Shakespearian English. Try to
avoid using "one" if you mean "I" or "you",
too, unless you want to sound 150 years old; similarly, use of
txt msg language or words such as "kidz" makes the writer
look a bit crap.
hype
We're on the side of the readers, not bands, venues or record companies. That means we need to be completely honest: is a band on its first gig in some hell-hole really the best band in the whole world? Is a demo by a bunch of 14-year-olds from East Kilbride really better than Zen Arcade, Nevermind and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots? By all means go easy on young bands and aim to be constructive rather than destructive, but don't get carried away either: after all, you're telling Joe and Jane Punter how to spend their hard-earned cash.
There's a flipside to the hype
thing, too. It's easy to go to town on a band, record or book,
but do they really deserve it? Is a three-band-bill at Tut's really
a threat to the entire civilised world? Writing a really nasty
review is great fun but please make sure that you're not just
kicking cripples.
pals
Most of us have friends and/or enemies in the weird and wonderful world of Scottish music. It's tempting to pour scorn over the bands you hate and call your friends geniuses, but that's bad news for the magazine: it's the one thing everybody hates about the NME, and if we do it then we'll get the same sort of abuse. If you've got a vested interest in a band, book or record, whether it's personal, financial or romantic, please let me know before you write anything. Thanks.
Another point to consider: the
audience at gigs is our readership, so slagging them off is a
bad idea - unless they're rioting or doing stuff that the itm?
readership would strongly disapprove of. If a crowd is unimpressed
by a particular band, it doesn't necessarily mean they're cloth-eared
gets who wouldn't appreciate genius if it came up and bit them
on the arse ;-)
assumptions
You'd be amazed how many people can write 500 words about a gig without giving the slightest idea of what a band actually sounds like. Please watch out for this: it's reasonable to assume people know what Coldplay sound like, but they might not have any idea about local indie types.
swearing
Contrary to popular belief, swearing is big and it is clever. However, it's also something best avoided, with the honourable exception of Spinal Tap-style "shit sandwich" two-word reviews. By all means keep the swearing in if it's a direct quote, a song title or whatever, but try to avoid it in reviews.
dull style points
When you're sending in copy, a few simple things would make the subs' lives much easier. Don't use double spaces after full stops, and please put song titles in single inverted commas, eg: 'New Day Rising'. A single line break for each new paragraph would be handy, too.
Other bits and bobs: When you're
quoting someone, please use double inverted commas - not the fancy
curly ones you get in some word processors, 'cause they're a pain
in the arse to edit. Try to break up long quotes, too: "Blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah," says a bloke. "Blah
blah blah blah blah." Bands are plural, so it's "U2
have lost it".
Please go back over your writing and re-read it before
you send it in. That way, you'll avoid submitting reviews where
the first paragraph is more than 100 words long and doesn't use
any punctuation and goes on and on and on and if you were to read
it out loud you'd die of oxygen starvation before you'd got halfway
through and it's not just hard to read but it's also a complete
pain in the arse to layout on the page and it would work fine
as a bunch of separate sentences and bloody hell is this sentence
finished yet? Similarly, it's possible to write in short sentences.
Sometimes it's good. But it can appear stilted. It's hard to read.
It can be boring. It can give you a headache. Especially over
300 words.
itm? specifics:
first, have a look at a copy of
the mag, I'm sure you've got one somewhere. You can see there
the obvious stuff like the format for live and record reviews
and roughly what length these should be and the fact that live
reviews are in the present tense (don't ask me why, they just
are).
As Gary says, writing really scathing reviews is fun, but sometimes
a bit easy. Pricking the pompous balloons of Oasis or Guns 'n'
Roses is perhaps what less mainstream magazines are about, but
slaughtering 14-year old kids on their first gig isn't, really.
Most of these small gigs will cover local bands. Since the magazine
was set up to give bands from Scotland an outlet for reviews that
they'd not get nationally, and generally tell the world about
the great music that's coming out of Scotland, I see it as a bit
pointless to lay into bands who are rubbish, without good reason.
Some of our writers are of the 'short sharp shock' school, believing
that a bad review may encourage a band to change their ways, and
their shellsuits. Personally I'm with the 'constructive criticism
school (see our demo page where Miles is under a tight remit!).
Either way, I don't want a magazine that screams "music in
Scotland is shit!" thanks to a load of reviews of duff bands.
If they're that bad I'm sure there is a good band who we can better
spend the paper and ink on.
Reviews: if you don't have a mag
handy, you can see from the current issue the setup for a live
review. If you can, come up with a title for the piece; if not
our army of subs will think up the clever headline for you. Following
that it's band name, then town and venue. For album reviews it's
artist, title and label in brackets. Useful to stick your initials
at the end too, as we'll inevitably forget to add them in. It's
very much appreciated if you can stick to this form as it makes
for a lot less work for me and those editing.
In the body text itself, text has to be plain I'm afraid, no italics
as these get filtered when we lay out. Song titles should be in
single quotes, lyrics in doubles.
Oh, and if you got hold of the album yourself, we might be unable
to get hold of a scan of the cover, so expect an panicked email
about that just before we go to press.
Submitting stuff: while we're
always happy and indeed pathetically grateful that people want
to write for us, it's best you check in rather than just go ahead
and do a review. For starters, we might be able to sort you out
with a freebie gig ticket. Also, someone else might have already
bagsied the review, we might have no room for it, or you might
do too many words and end up being asked to write it again (or
more likely, refusing to).
When you are 'commissioned' (heh, just like a real mag, only without
the money) to do a review, some guidelines on word-count. Album
reviews are pretty straightforward - 100 words, 150 maximn, is
about right.
Live reviews are trickier. We once ended up adding 4 pages in
the December 2002 issue because we'd commissioned too many and
they were all so good we didn't want to drop them. But for a one-act
live gig it'd be around 200 or so, maybe a max of 400 for 3 acts.
Nothing more than that unless it's a festival or something.
If in doubt, ask. I'm usually on email - stuart@vacant.org.uk - or phone on 01506 840063 .
If you want to take the journalism thing any further *(like itm? wasn't far enough!) then here's a couple of links...