Newsies Team: Monthly Plot Summary

Newsies Team Getting Started Working with WordPress Style Guide ↳ Easy interviews ↳ Plot summaries Submission Checklist News Cycle Cycle Templates Posting ideas Team Co-Facilitators Alora DeVeau Gogigobo Fairhug Team Deputy Facilitators Alix Harford Edit this nav Each month, every ship is required to report to the Captains Council with a plot summary. We use those plot summaries as the backbone of our news cycle, helping ensure that we get at least one post a day on the Community News. This guide will help you write a compelling plot summary in the proper format. Purpose Why do we create monthly plot summaries? They're important because they... Inform and entertain our members about what's happening in the fleet: Keeping our members informed about what's happening in the fleet makes things feel more fun and real, of course! Keep the councils informed about what each ship is doing: The Captains Council and Executive Council can stay informed about a ship's progress by reading plot summaries, and help coach captains on making plots more fun and enjoyable for members. Help us show prospective members that we are active: Think back to when you joined – did you find that the fact our site seemed very active help sway your decision to apply? Prospects are often looking for alternatives to other simming groups that don't seem active enough. Keep our Community News blog updated regularly for search engine ranking benefits: Search engines rank higher sites that are kept updated on a regular basis. Creating new content for our Community News helps, in a small way, to keep our site ranked higher. Create a record of plot summaries for posterity: Having plot summaries available for every ship each month gives us the ability to look back and know where each ship has been, this is useful for building our wiki and other historical records. Format We post our plot summaries on the Community News as if they're Federation News Service articles. So the goal is to make the plot summaries sound like a compelling "dispatches from the edge" news articles, like the kind you'd see from a mainstream news outlet. As such, all plot summaries should be written from the third-person, omniscient point of view. For example: "The crew then set out on the long journey, none aware of what they were about to encounter." This is in contrast to the first-person point of view, which sounds like this: "We set out on a long journey..." We expect that 90%+ of all ship reports can be written as standard news articles – meaning that it sounds like something that would be published in a newspaper and could be read by Federation citizens. But we do recognize that there are times when a ship's status and mission are classified, and a newsy style is probably not acceptable. In that case, you can write your report in the format of a "memo" or briefing from Starfleet Command. Style considerations Some elements of style are different across ships, which can be jarring for readers to see different styling. We try and normalize these styles as much as possible on the Community News, so we ask that you adhere to these specifications: PAST TENSE: Always use past tense when writing. PROPER NAMES: Mention the full name of a person or vessel the first time in the post. Each time after, us the "short name." For example, the first time you mention your vessel's name, write: "USS Enterprise, NCC 1701-D." All instances after should be: "the Enterprise," or "Enterprise." The first time you mention a Starfleet officer's name, say: "FltAdml. Tristan Wolf." Instances after should just be "Wolf." CAPITALIZATION AND ABBREVIATIONS: Change all "U.S.S. ENTERPRISE" to "USS Enterprise." LCMD or LTJG or anything else all in caps should use the normal abbreviations for ranks: Ens., Lt. JG, Lt., LtCmdr., Cmdr., Capt., FltCapt., RAdml., VAdml., FltAdml. Examples Notorious criminal dead after attempted takeover of Starbase 118 Getting started Before you even begin your plot summary, it's really useful to look back at the previous month's plot summary for your ship, which you can find in the FNS Newsroom forum or by scrolling back on the Community News. Read through that plot summary, making note of the headline, introduction, and body content. Consider how far the plot has moved since then. Next, ask yourself: Are there characters who weren't highlighted in the last summary that you want to highlight this month? Has that previous plot completed and you've moved onto a new one? If you hadn't been simming on your ship in the last month, what would you find most interesting about recent developments? What are the markers between "phases" of the plot that have occurred since the last summary? Now make a quick outline of the top three or four things that happened since then. This should only take a few minutes. The first thing on your list should be the primary driver of the plot – what's the biggest thing that happened? Who was the biggest villain or hero? Try and follow that with the next most important thing. Length Ship reports should be AT LEAST 300 words, but NOT BE any longer than 600 words. Ship reports that are too short don't provide an accurate picture of what's going on and don't play well on the Community News. But reports that are too long are also too tedious to read and often contain details that aren't interesting or important. Even if your ship has been on shore leave, you should still have plenty to write about regarding what various plots are going on! Components Introduction Instead of starting with the headline, let's start with the introduction. In the news business, we call this the "lede" or "lead," and it's considered the most important part of the story that aims to accomplish three goals: Give a short introduction to the most important points of the story Grab the reader's interest Be as short as possible (within reason) You'll start the lede with a location marker. Here are a few examples: PERTANIA PRIME — After a sudden coup d'etat on Pertainia Prime, Starfleet has dispatched the USS Apollo-A to evacuate the Federation Embassy. TRILL — In a stunning and lavish ceremony, Ambassador Della Vetri and Lt. Commander T’Lea of the USS Avandar were wed on the ambassador's homeworld. RATHOS PRIME — Lt. JG Vanessa Driscoll is missing and presumed KIA after becoming infected with the deadly pathogen her ship USS Gemini was attempting to cure. Further reading: What Is a News Lede -- and How to Write a Great One How to Write a Lead Body content Now it's time to get the meat of your article! The most important thing to remember is this: You're not writing a recap of events, but instead an article about the plot. A recap is a story without the interesting characters or dialogue. A news story is a way of boiling the story down to the essentials and presenting them in a way that's compelling. Above all, avoid the compulsion to include everything that happened in the past month – you don't want to talk about every b-plot, or even include by name every character involved in the overall plot. You are not recounting a list of what happened! Think instead about packaging the look-back in a way that would make it something someone else would want to read. Avoid rote details that aren't particularly compelling – for example, you don't need to tell the reader that there was a mission briefing unless that briefing was a critical part of the story where something interesting happened. Was the mission briefing where one of the crew members began experiencing symptoms of a plague the crew is desperately seeking a cure for? Then tell us that! Otherwise, if the captain just introduced what the plan was, is that something that would be "newsworthy" enough to put in a news article? Would the reader even care? You may find it helpful to follow the "inverted pyramid" style of journalistic writing, which means putting the most important and pertinent information at the top. If your lede is about the murder of a colonist, then the first two or three paragraphs should develop that! Who, what, when, where, etc. Unless the focus of this report is solely about crew promotions and mission briefings, those types of things should take up less space, and be towards the end of your report. Quote Every summary should include a quote from a character. But here's the important thing: You'll almost definitely want to make up this quote, instead of pulling it from a sim. The goal is not to highlight something from a sim, but instead make the plot summary more "believable" as a piece of news by including something someone would say if they were being interviewed about what happened. Consider how on the evening news, the journalist on the street always asks a passing pedestrian or even the subject of the story what they think about what happened. This quote can come from someone on your crew directly, an MSPNPC, or even someone who doesn't actually appear in your sims but would make sense as someone making a statement to the press. Here are some Examples: "We will not tolerate such an assault on the legitimate Pertainian government, but our first priority is the safety of our own people," said Secretary Douglas of the Federation Security Council. "With everything happening around the quadrants these days, it's nice to be able to come together for friends and family and just celebrate, and I couldn't be happier for the Ambassador," said Anora Manar, a guest from the USS Atlantis. "Every Starfleet officer knows the risks that come with the uniform. Lieutenant Driscoll died trying to help others in the best traditions of Starfleet and the Federation, and we join her crew in their mourning," said Doctor Rajani of Starfleet Medical. Headline Now that you've written your article, it's time to write a punchy headline for your piece. You want to find a way to sum up what happened without reusing the same text as your introduction. The most important consideration here is that it's brief: 140 characters is the absolute maximum to shoot for, going shorter if you can. Check out this article which explains the process of writing a great headline: Here's the Secret to Writing Great Headlines for Your News Stories Here are a few examples: USS Apollo-A investigates coup on Pertania Marriage of Federation Ambassador Starfleet officer presumed KIA as USS Gemini responded to Rathos Prime pathogen Wrapping up Before you submit your article, it's time to do some polishing to make sure it's really ready to go. Please be sure to follow these instructions: CHECK SPELLING AND GRAMMAR: Because these entries are posted on the website, it's important that they're clean and well written. Please use BOTH a spelling and grammar checker BEFORE posting the summary. If you have Microsoft Word, you can paste the post into that and run the spelling and grammar check. If not, you can use Google Docs, which is free. CHECKING STYLE: Make sure you're using the style guide above (section 2.1) and no incorrect styling crept into what you wrote. READ IT THROUGH ONCE ALOUD: Reading your article out loud is the best way to catch any sentences that don't make sense, and ensure that the flow of the article works. Listen, as you're reading, to the plot points you've written. Would others reading this article understand what you're trying to say?