9 Things For Aspiring High Level Games Guest Bloggers And Columnists To Know

I thought I would write up some thoughts about what we are looking for in regards to being a part of our creative community.
Things to know in no particular order:

1. I personally do all of the editing work. This is a volunteer effort and a passion project. What that means is that I have an uneven amount of time to focus on your work and prep, edit, set it for the site, find artwork, publish it, and then try and get it out to as many people as I can. Some weeks I am very busy at my real job, and things slip past me, and other times less so. Basically you can do yourself and me a tonne of favours by simply handing in an article that is as finished and polished as is possible. That way, there are fewer things for me to catch, so if I don’t, it isn’t as bad.

2. Send it in as a Word doc. Further, try not to overly format it. What I mean is that a lot of it I have to trip out and redo as I post it on the site anyways, so I use it more as reference to what you are trying to express than a situation where it is copied exactly. Chief amongst these are automatic numbering, I always remove them. It’s not a deal breaker, but still.

3. Feel free to contact us here on the site, on Facebook, on Twitter, or whatever in order to let me know that you are interested in creating for us. We may or may not be interested. We want this to be a community of creative fans that can pool their stuff and get it out to other passionate fans, who can use this as an accessible single stop for information, tips, and inspiration for table-top RPGs and random other geek culture. Everything is volunteer by passionate fans for passionate fans. We just love our hobby and saw a niche we thought we could fill.

4. We do listicle, at least for now. It is easier on our authors it is a format that support being an easy read, and accessible to busy folks, and is nice in that it gives an easy to grasp format for authors. And frankly we have seen that in the right hands our authors can get surprising depth out of the format. Listen, I know there are amazing things that you want to give us in essay format, and soon we may be looking at hosting pieces of work like that as well. But if and when we do, at least at first, we will be looking to our columnists and guest bloggers who have a previous relationship with us when we do. I hope that doesn’t sound too harsh. This is all designed to grow the hobby and positively engage the community. And so any change or expansion we do must be well thought out and needs to be something that we have time to support and do well.

5. Speaking of format – Introduction of topic, numbered list, conclusion, bio.

6. Include a bio at the end of every submission. This should be relatively short, but can be pretty much anything you like, which could and should include anything you want to promote, from your social media accounts to any projects or products you want to get out there.

7. Help out by getting the word out. If you belong to a forum, a Facebook group, Twitter, or whatever share our stuff. Join our Facebook group, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, post this wherever you can, re-tweet us on Twitter, whatever. It helps get your stuff out there and a rising tide and all that…

8. The word, for us, is spelled “role-play.” And “table-top.” And titles should be done with every word capitalized. This is more for consistency than anything else.

9. We could use help with editing and scheduling on the blog section. If you are desirous of being an Editor, know that I have committed mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and morphology on this post. Find them.
 
-VP Quinn 

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