Manifesto and Style Guide
If you haven’t read the About M-of-M page, you should consider reading that before you read this page.
STYLE GUIDE
Mood of Monk publishes a variety of pieces including standard forms such as feature articles, essays, interviews, news blogs. For these forms, the style guide is as you would expect in the form, with word counts set by the commissioning editor. As a general rule, creative responses are between 300 and 600 words (less for poetry), standard features are 600 words, and extended features are between 800-1200 words.
For creative responses, there are less rules in existence, but we have established the manifesto below to try to immediately address some issues commonly found in the traditional form.
MANIFESTO FOR CREATIVE RESPONSES
In order to make sure that we held ourselves up to some sort of standard, we created a Manifesto which evolves to this day.
We felt that in order to effectively move away from the traditional form, we had to ban those things which have caused the review genre to become stale over the years. This manifesto is, by majority, more about negations than affirmations, we will admit, but it is those negations which create a form which allows true creative expression which is not tied down to arbitrary reference and mindless description.
If you are a Mood of Monk writer, these are your commandments and like many commandments in the modern age, they should be considered malleable within reason.
1. Removal of the Auteur – artist’s work will be viewed in isolation, and their previous work will not be used to support or excuse the work at hand. Therefore…
- There will be no references to other artists within the same genre (responding to an artist by using another artist’s name is not permitted).
- There will be no literal references to the artists themselves, nor other works they have published.
- There will be no references to genre as this seeks to define art through structures which are more socially than intrinsically produced.
- There will be no technical judgements made. Deconstruction of technique is not allowed for the purposes of judging quality.
2. Focus on subjective response – There will be no pseudo-objective statements made about the quality of the work.
3. Lazy writing - Avoid empty similes. Guitars may sound like broken down steam trains, but they are not the subjects of action. Guitars do not act – they are instruments and not subjects.
4. External Influence - Lead singers do not explore. Guitarists do not drive unless behind the wheel. These things are beyond the work itself, and serve only to taint emotional response through biographical impulse.
5. Presentation - MofM responses will be presented:
- in a form which reflects the response (written responses should not be overwhelmed by photography, and vice versa)
- with a simple, unembellished byline (first name, last name.)
- with a simple, unembellished title (usually Title (Artist/Musician/Producer’s Name))
- In the case of an iconic artist whose reputation precedes them, an educated responder should endeavour to pass the release onto a responder whose knowledge does not interfere with the response.