The Guest Writer Manifesto

Since the idea of a blog germinated in my mind, I've been interested in persuading select friends and family to consider doing guest posts on The Inquisitive Loon. The possibilities were very compelling to me; more content is always beneficial along with additional points of view and fresh perspectives on all manner of hobbies and interests. Thus, having finally convinced a friend or two to do so, I figured I would write a brief blog post about the guidelines that they will be writing under before their posts show up.

Guidelines

• Subjects: The main purpose of the blog is to provide fun, interesting, and compelling posts that are informative and appeal over a broad range of interests. These interests include fiction, nonfiction, history, politics, movies, tv shows, education, and possibly more as time goes on. Consequently, guest writers must have their posts be relevant to these subject areas. Given the wide array of choices, this shouldn't be too hard.
  
  
• Accessibility: is of paramount importance. For a blog post to be considered, it must make an effort to explain what it is talking about for people who have never heard of or read about the subject before. Advanced discussion and details can only come once an informational foundation is laid.
  
  
• Length: must be monitored. Anyone seeing a wall of text is instantly discouraged from actually reading the blog post, so the general guideline I've been using is to stay as close to 1,000 words a post as possible. This is still a substantial amount (about a page and a half, single-spaced in Word) and thus is a fair restriction. To be frank, I've busted this length a couple of times so far, but I'm the blog creator and I'm allowed to break the rules occasionally.
  
  
• Grammar: Posts must be decent and readable without more than the occasional typo. Almost goes without saying.
  
  
• Images: are encouraged within reason as it provides a visual aid along with a break for the eyes from reading all the text. I spend a good deal of time finding good stuff too, so I hope that future guest authors will do the same. I think four or five maximum per post is a good benchmark as, with 1,000 words, more than that makes the post seem disjointed and picture heavy.
  
  
• Fun: Guest writers must write about something that both interests them and is fun to write. If not, then why the hell are you writing it? The goal of the blog is to have readable and enjoyable posts over many topics and, without the enjoyable part, it all falls apart.

On that note, let it be known that guest writers will be coming soon, and if other friends and family find this framework appealing and want to make posts of their own, feel free to let me know.