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Terk

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I just wanted to share with everyone that it appears that I have got my troublesome CM01/02 save to progress beyond the point where it crashed several times earlier, so it looks like Olympiakos Volou will get their season in the Greek First Division after all. :)

It looks like there'll be some new players needed shortly.

Happy days Spav, can't wait for more of the same

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Out of interest, do authors ever make their stories availsble in word for download? There are a number of stories i'm enjoying, but don't like reading online.

I don't, unfortunately.

Another web-based writing website I post on has the option of making the stories in PDF form, which is a nice touch I guess.

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That's a shame, perhaps i'll do some copying and pasting instead. :p

I decided to try a story of a previous season and just add background rather than detail, not sure how it's going so far, but i'm enjoying it. Unfortunately I had to start mid season as FM seems to have a cut off time for displaying details of matches, after a certain period i.e. small database etc and in mid November, I can only view matches going back to mid February of the previous season.

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In that case, all I can say is "Crap" as I'm in December and haven't gone back in detail from early February. I think I archived a save file from the end of the season though, plus I have large database and a three game rolling save going on... I might be alright, but I need to write it up and not fall too far behind!

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This is part of the reason why I write as I play, keeps it just as exciting for myself as anyone who may be reading, and avoids any issues of needing to look back for information that might not be accessible. e.g. results.

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AFAIK database size does change the info available. As I said, I can only go as far back as Feb with a small database, but someone else told me they can view all their details sicne they began their save, they're using a large database.

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This is part of the reason why I write as I play, keeps it just as exciting for myself as anyone who may be reading, and avoids any issues of needing to look back for information that might not be accessible. e.g. results.

Simple way around that...save the .pkm file the moment after the game has been played. :D

Then you can rewatch the game and pick out more detail that you normally would. :)

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AFAIK database size does change the info available. As I said, I can only go as far back as Feb with a small database, but someone else told me they can view all their details sicne they began their save, they're using a large database.

I have always used a large database as a bigger = better. unless you comp is slow of course. But, to the point, I can see everything all the way back from the start of my save, years and years on I'm sure.I don't really look back though, I note stuff down as I go then plump the detail in as I go on.

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Simple way around that...save the .pkm file the moment after the game has been played. :D

Then you can rewatch the game and pick out more detail that you normally would. :)

Not a bad idea. Personally, my own notes sections are pretty comprehensive, done right after the match so I can detail my own emotions and observations as I played. Putting those emotions into the context of my characters can add to the story under certain circumstances. Also, I try to view matches through the eyes of Rob Ridgway and Phil Sharp, and have even made certain carefully selected managerial decisions based on how I think they might react. Heck, I created both of them, I'm entitled :D

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I have always used a large database as a bigger = better. unless you comp is slow of course. But, to the point, I can see everything all the way back from the start of my save, years and years on I'm sure.I don't really look back though, I note stuff down as I go then plump the detail in as I go on.

Curious... I've not played an FM09 game far enough to really test it out, but I have always used the large database and I know that in FM08 while you can see your results, you can no longer access the 'match details' (i.e. you cannot click on the match, only the result is displayed) of games several seasons old (usually 3-4 seasons old), meaning that information such match statistics and highlights are lost.

Hence, why I either don't play too far in advance (my AZ game is in November, I haven't written past the first game of the season yet, so I stopped playing!) or take detailed notes as I go along.

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Well I'm in December 2008 and haven't written up any detailed match reports from January 08 so I've stopped playing and started fleshing out the notes and odd jots of detail I've had down in case I can no longer look in detail at matches. I was able to view the full match of my last match in January so I should be alright.

Fortunately I also save as a note all news items I want to bring into my story or that would add to it, like major transfers, awards, speculation, and injuries. Plus sackings of other managers :D

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I take notes in notepad as I play. Basically note down as much as I need, depending on the depth of the story I'm going to tell, but always take detailed notes of the matches. My problems with keeping stories going came when I used to play way ahead, relying on going back through the game and retrospectively writing it, as I'd easily get bored doing that. Now I have my pretty comprehensive notes so that when I come to write (I generally play about a season ahead of where I'm writing, and write about a season ahead of where I'm posting) I don't have to delve back into the game, I've got pretty much everything I need in front of me.

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My problem was I hit a crucial part of the season, played ahead, kept going as it got interesting then desperately wanted to get into the summer transfers and the early matches and then got into it again. I am now determined not to move into 2009, until i've written up in detail to the point I am at, so basically... the whole of 2008 :D

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I started a new save last night, with a view to a new story. I plan to play about a month at a time, and deliberately picked a team/league that i'm (hopefully) not too interested in and won't get too into the game. I usually screenshot all details I need or want to use and then transfer them to a memory stick, then write when I get a chance at work.

Doing it one month at a time means that I will be able to continue my other saves and only spend a couple of hours per week on the story save. Hopefulyl ti will give me 3-4 matches per week to report on.

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A save in which you have little enthusiasm won't last long, if I'm honest.If you mean that you have some, but not enough to pull you right in, then you've got a fairly good chance.

Never Cross An Austro-Hungarian (I considered The Man With the Golden Boots or From Austria-Hungary With Love) is written looking back, as is TNTLTP (that sounds quite catchy in my head, by the way- tee en tee ell tee pee).

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A save in which you have little enthusiasm won't last long, if I'm honest.If you mean that you have some, but not enough to pull you right in, then you've got a fairly good chance.

It has enough to keep me interested, it's my first save in South America, but it's not the kind of save I feel i'll get addicted to and play whenever I get a chance. However, I may well get very interested in it because i'm playing it with the story in mind and managing it as my character and not the way I would usually manage, whereas Life & Death is a retrospective story of a previous season in my career save.

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Without typing all the codes into word manually, and then bolding or changing size as well, is there anyway I can make word recognise if i put around a word it'll turn bold, whilst retaining the code?

The only thing I can think of would be for you to record a macro. I'm not sure if Word recognizes HTML tags in body copy, though. I've tried it on my copy of Word 2007 and it didn't work.

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The only thing I can think of would be for you to record a macro. I'm not sure if Word recognizes HTML tags in body copy, though. I've tried it on my copy of Word 2007 and it didn't work.

Shame. I will just type them out and have to remember to manually input them in when copying to the forum then! Trying to come back to FM Stories, once upon a time, I read every story on this board. Haven't been in here for years. Never even attempted to write a story. Started one tonight though after reading this little advice thread. Reading will gain promotion. :thup:

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Without typing all the codes into word manually, and then bolding or changing size as well, is there anyway I can make word recognise if i put around a word it'll turn bold, whilst retaining the code?

I'm pretty sure that if you have advanced editor, and you copy and paste from word, it recognises all your formatting like bold words and italics.

This is a test

Yes it does.

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In pretty much every other way I prefer Chrome to Firefox. Faster, less intrusive on screen space, if one tab crashes it only crashes that tab rather than the whole browser, but yeah, the fact that it doens't keep formatting when you copy from word is a pain.

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:D

In other news, after two days of my Bank Holiday weekend spent mostly writing, I am now up to the end of the previous season all done and dusted. So that leaves six months to write up, midway through second season in game.

48 pages, 36,000 words. I'm fairly happy :D

Now to back up a copy ;)

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So you should be Wegason, nice achievement you got yourself this weekend. look forward to reading it all.

I came up earlier, well, a while back for a story, which I have just not long ago started to re-write and post. To my surprise, including murder in the story has made it a very interesting story to be writing. Enjoying it very much so. Kind of sadistic in a way

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One question, guys. Whilst reading about the most overused ploys in FMS (purely for plaga...research), I didn't see 'manager with a drink problem'. That, to me, is the one that seems to come up again and again. True?

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I've seen it in a few stories but not that many. Career ended by injury is far more common, the problem I have is that very few writers make that injury/event as a basis for personal and emotional torment for their protagonist. evequiel lavazzi has done it well.

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The career-ending injury doesn't bother me as much as the shocking appointment of an unknown to the Man Utd's of the world. Honestly, I pretty much stop reading if I see that. It's lazy, and it leaves me with a feeling that there is going to be zero realism to your story. FM stories are fiction, but I like my fiction to have a hint of plausibility to it.

The career-ending injury doesn't show a whole lot of imagination, but if you can make it a part of your characters' backstory I'll be interested. Besides, Hollywood has used the "derivative with a twist" formula since its existence. Who are we to argue?

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One question, guys. Whilst reading about the most overused ploys in FMS (purely for plaga...research), I didn't see 'manager with a drink problem'. That, to me, is the one that seems to come up again and again. True?

Oops :confused: I suppose it's easy, i've tried convoluted stories with supposedly great storylines, but it's so hard to keep it going and to keep it interesting. Eventually the story surrounds the story and I rarely write about the football, hoping to change that with a new story i'm writing.

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Oops :confused: I suppose it's easy, i've tried convoluted stories with supposedly great storylines, but it's so hard to keep it going and to keep it interesting. Eventually the story surrounds the story and I rarely write about the football, hoping to change that with a new story i'm writing.

It really wasn't a criticism! It was just something that occured to me whilst reading various stories in prep for mine, that's all!

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The career-ending injury doesn't bother me as much as the shocking appointment of an unknown to the Man Utd's of the world. Honestly, I pretty much stop reading if I see that. It's lazy, and it leaves me with a feeling that there is going to be zero realism to your story. FM stories are fiction, but I like my fiction to have a hint of plausibility to it.

The career-ending injury doesn't show a whole lot of imagination, but if you can make it a part of your characters' backstory I'll be interested. Besides, Hollywood has used the "derivative with a twist" formula since its existence. Who are we to argue?

By and large, those stories don't tend to last as long, though that could just be my imagination. There are authors who use a key characteristic as a thread for their work (for example, Dick Francis always wrote about horses somewhere in each of his mystery novels). In my own case, it's American managers, though in my current short story that is changing. I wouldn't rely on a career-ending injury sort of scenario, due to realism as well. How many real managers do you know who got into the business after breaking both legs on the pitch?

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It really depends on how you set out your story. The opening post is very important, and you have to alert the reader that yes this is going to be something they want to come back to. Personally, I rarely read stories which start at 'big' clubs because they tend to be boring and predictable - after all its hard to fail with millions on the bank right? But it is possible to write one well AND to get a good opening it all depends how you build your character. After all, if he was an international class player, who played witht he club, went into coaching when he retired then its not beyond the bounds of possibility that he could get the managers job.

Same with injuries, but the injury itself is not the point of the story, it still has to be that the character's appointment is a reasonable one, even if this is fiction - of course the opposite side to that coin is that the appointment is so unreasonable that it actually becomes funny, it all depends where you are going with the story.

The worst possible story openings, that make me never ever want to read anything by that writer again, are when people are magically called by the chairman of Manchester United, despite the fact they have never played football, are a complete nobody but for some reason that big club chairman called this nobody to offer the job. The again, IF you do it from a comical angle, it still can work!

Edit: But very very few people can write comedy and pull it off.and most of that kind of opening tends to be so lame as to be not worth reading on. But if the person writing takes on board any advice offered, they can still go on to do something decent. Sometimes.

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It really wasn't a criticism! It was just something that occured to me whilst reading various stories in prep for mine, that's all!

No, no, I didn't take it as a criticism, I was agreeing with you. Like I said, it's an easy way to keep the character interesting, I find that your manager has to have something "interesting" about him, other than being a manager. Otherwise it's very hard to keep both yourself and the reader interested.

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I have nobodies appointed in two stories I'm writing ATM. One of them is mistaken identity (if you're gonna steal, steal from the best), and the other is a poor but passable attempt at comedy, I suppose it's a bit like chesterfan2's "Employee of the Month" without the bank.

(although chesterfan2's story was funnier)

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My goal in introducing the character of Rob Ridgway was to write a chronicle-type story. Some of my favorite sports books have been diaries (The Best Team Money Could Buy, The Bronx Zoo and Pennant Race among them), and I always wanted to write one myself. The character of Phil Sharp is more conventional but with a harder edge than Ridgway.

For me, though, plausibility is the key to everything. I do a modest amount of research to set scenes for readers and I have always worked under the assumption that my reader knows nothing about the surroundings of my characters and in some cases nothing about football. In that regard, the reader is a lot like The Corporation's George Green.

I've tended to place my signature characters in situations where they have life experience which leads to management styles that are a little more mature even as they cause problems due to inexperience at the manager's art. Ridgway especially is a polished professional, acquiring an edge as he gets torn to shreds by club politics and the media. However, his football background keeps him sane.

I have tried to put my characters into the mindset of people feeling their way as they gain experience, much as any of us would be in a new job that they love.

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The career-ending injury doesn't bother me as much as the shocking appointment of an unknown to the Man Utd's of the world. Honestly, I pretty much stop reading if I see that. It's lazy, and it leaves me with a feeling that there is going to be zero realism to your story. FM stories are fiction, but I like my fiction to have a hint of plausibility to it.

The career-ending injury doesn't show a whole lot of imagination, but if you can make it a part of your characters' backstory I'll be interested. Besides, Hollywood has used the "derivative with a twist" formula since its existence. Who are we to argue?

I used that way for my Manchester United story because unlike some of the better writers in here I'm not that good at doing an underlying story plot..I'd rather concentrate on getting to the results.. But my story can't be that bad as its still running and has had quite a few views and replies

It all depends on the writers own personal style

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How about this plot...

A Premier League side are abolished from the league after their Chairman secretly applies £3bn worth of debt on the club, takes a rival chairma hostage in an executive box during a match and commits suicide.

On top of that, the Assistant Manager was sleeping with the FA Chairmans wife.

So they're basically obliterated from the English game. The stadium is demolished, the clubs copyright is gone etc. The players are all offered the chance to leave (because there is nothing left to stay for!)

BUT...

They decide to play for next to nothing on five year contracts and fund a low income side entering the English leagues at the very lowest tier - even deciding to purchase a plot of land for a 1'000 seater stadium.

So a Premier League side would start in the Conference North.

Would that be a good read d'ya reckon? ^^

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question question question. After the death of my last save game, I would like to do an attempt two of it, but with a further twist I saw somewhere else. But, there is a problem. The idea is that I do the same thing, so a story based on myfootballclub.co.uk. But this time, because some other genius decided to use this idea elsewhere, I thought it would be a good idea to use that basis if I can.

So, what I do is when there is like a voting process for the members, I will include a poll in the story where actual members of the board can choose who I buy, what friendlies, the starting left back etc etc. So the question is can you put a poll in your story, then edit the poll to have a new one when need be?

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