Vocal Tips And Guides (And Prompts And Ideas And ...)
If You Want It On A Plate Vocal Does Give It To You
Introduction
This has come about by people getting aggravated by Challenge Results being late, or the fact there are no new Challenges, despite there being a lot of unofficial challenges around. I run one each month.
Also, people want improvements to do what they want, but often there are workarounds already available, and this is a little of where you can find them.
I am not sure if people will read this or take my advice, but I will put this out anyway and if one person gains something from it, then it will be worth it.
The song is Queen's "I Want It All", appropriately.
Vocal Tips And Guides
I see the Challenges on Vocal, Official and Unofficial as prompst to create stories. I know I am highly unlikely to be considered in a challenge, but I have an audience who love my work, so I regard each challenge as a prompt with a free entry to a lottery, but I always win because people read and comment on my work.
The Tips and Guides page is is here:
The first item on this page is my Tips on Formatting which we all need, but has only 32 hearts despite its republication five months ago.
I see people in the Creator Chat asking for things that are often featured on the resource page above but they haven't looked, and believe me, it is full of useful treasures.
There are some problems with the Vocal editor but it has improved dramatically since I signed up. I would like to see justification and maybe font choices and colour, but to get around that I create the post in Google Docs and then take a screenshot like this one for the recent "In Eclipse" Challenge.
This is available to everyone, well Windows users and I am sure other operating systems provide equivalent options.
These resources, as well as helping you put together your Vocal Creations, have lots of lists for writing particular types of stories.
Conclusion
If you are looking for an idea, or how to do things, drop into the cornucopia of help and ideas that Vocal provides for you totally free (it is for everyone), you will find things that may be just right for you or even things that you hadn't even thought of.
Please take a look and if you find something let me know in the comments on this piece.
Thank you so much for reading.
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More stories from Mike Singleton - Mikeydred and writers in Writers and other communities.
Mayvillanelle: A Mikeydred May Dollar Prompt For All Vocal Creators
Introduction Every so often I set prompts in the Vocal Social Society and offer a dollar tip to three random creators who take part in it and ask them to share their stories in the comments and on the thread in the group.
By Mike Singleton - Mikeydred20 days ago in Writers
Writing Entertaining Stories is Not Enough; They Need Purpose
Recently, I started writing stories about my dog. Seems natural since retiring. I spend more and more time with her, Dagney. Because of the bond we share, I notice her attention to detail, her enthusiasm for simple activities, her protective nature, and her humorous behaviors. So much pleasure comes from our interactions. Stories sharing the experiences formed in my mind and then took shape on the page. While rereading the tales, I laughed and at the end of many of the stories discovered lessons Dagney taught me about life.
By Brenda Mahler7 days ago in Writers
Comments (6)
Hi Mike So you now have 34 hearts now! on ‘Tips On Formatting Your Vocal Stories etc’ piece. Yep I listened to that 7 minute video with delight as you discussed your creative process. Thank you - It is very similar to my own. With your prolific publishing rate I must revisit you're inspiring work and I apologise for not doing so sooner. I hope you have the time to read my reply to the piece listed above. It is long but surely meaningfully engaging is part of the magic? So, rather than just leaving the link to my ‘Just one Minute’ Challenge short story in the previous article I will also leave here hoping you may decide to read. https://vocal.media/fiction/paused I wish I could spend my day writing and publishing and especially reading the workothers. I learn so much. It”s getting late here and I do need sleep, especially because of my mental illness. So for tomorrow ‘Vocal Vocal is a platform for supporting, discovering and rewarding creators. Pauline 🌸
Worth noting that the even with the screenshot workaround you described, it's important to still have the actual text on the page for accessibility. Especially since Vocal doesn't let us set alt text on images, so a screen reader would not be able to give a vision-impaired user any sense of what is said within the image. (Which you did on the example you shared, but I thought it was worth calling out for those non-web engineers on Vocal who might not consider this aspect.)
"I know I am highly unlikely to be considered in a challenge," Lol Mike, you've already placed in a challenge so obviously you were considered
Great reminder
Good information, Mike. Those resources have come in handy for me on occasion.
Good content and great reminder that there is a lot of content to help people.