Introduction

Many of you reading this article have always wanted to be a professional writer or have had your imaginations sparked by our contest. Imagine being able to get paid just by typing up a few words on a word processor, having those words posted on a popular web site and getting a check for your efforts. That sounds like a pretty good deal and that’s exactly what we at FiringSquad are doing with our Editor’s Challenge (sponsored by the Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme Processor). We are giving an opportunity for anyone to become a writer for one of the biggest gaming and hardware web sites around, regardless of their background or experience.

Enter here for the writing portion of the contest, or check out the rules and prizes page. Our first preliminary for the video challenge is still going!
Last week we ended the first preliminary round for the Editor’s Challenge and the response was huge as over 40 entries were submitted for the competition. Not only did all of FiringSquad’s editors weight in with their thoughts and opinions on the various entries but we also gave an opportunity for everyone to rate their favorites. As you might imagine the quality of the entries varied widely but there were a number of articles and features submitted that we and our readers felt should move onto the next round. In the end 15 authors got that opportunity and very soon 15 more authors will join them.

Today we launch the second preliminary round for the Editors Challenge. It works exactly like the first round in that people will join a cluster in the FiringSquad Matrix, submit their articles in the contest and then let the FiringSquad staff evaluate them and our readers rate the articles on the site. In the last preliminary round, the highest ranked entry was “Dear Star Trek Legacy (For The PC)” by Millroy, and is a perfect example of the kind of work authors in the second prelim should be shooting for in terms of both quality and subject choice.

Millroy chose to write a review article for his entry which in of itself is not the most spectacular kind of subject to pick. However, he managed to make it memorable with terrific writing and a unique hook that made the review of a disappointing PC port into a kind of jilted lover note expressing sadness that the title did not live up to expectations. It was funny, it was unique, and best of all it didn’t detract from the fact that the review was also in-depth and detailed on the pros and cons of the game.

Another outstanding entry was “Windows Vista: The Future Of PC Gaming (Part One)” by author jacobvandy. This feature was right at home with FiringSquad’s format of giving our readers exactly what they expect. It’s a article that was written to be clear rather than stylish, so that it could be understood by anyone but at the same time was filled with the details of how Microsoft’s new operating system would affect PC gaming. It’s this caliber of writing and info that our readers expect. They don’t want their features to be so simplified that they are talked down to; they want feature articles that are informative and give them insight into a subject that they didn’t know before.