If you ever wanted to write for the Agony Booth, now's your chance! We're accepting recap submissions from our readers.

Just imagine: Your name on an Agony Booth byline! Basking in compliments on the forums! (Well, most of the time, anyway.) Becoming an official Staff Recapper!

Okay, in all seriousness, there's no money involved in this, and it's a lot of hard work. But if you're a budding writer (especially one with an interest in writing humor), submitting a recap is a great way to hone your skills, sharpen your wit, and get your work out there for the public to see.

UPDATED December 4, 2007—After receiving a few submissions, and accepting some and rejecting others, I've changed the process for submitting recaps. Please read the following instructions carefully before sending in your submission.

Submission Instructions

1. Select a movie that will be of interest to Agony Booth readers.
   
   
   
   • To determine whether or not people might be interested in the movie you have in mind, see Guidelines to Selecting a Movie below.
   
   
   
   


2. Write a partial (unfinished) recap of the movie you have in mind.
   
   
   
   • Do not submit a finished recap. This puts me in a really bad position where I might have to reject a recap you've spent a lot of time on. I don't like being in this position, and you certainly don't want to be in the position of doing all that hard work for nothing.
   
   
   
   • So, please send a partial recap first. No more than 3,000 words. If 3,000 words isn't enough space to be funny and interesting, and make me want to read more, the full recap is probably not going to make the cut.
   
   
   
   • Screen captures are not required for a partial recap, but they do help to make it easier to read.
   
   
   
   


3. Send your partial, unfinished recap to worker11811@agonybooth.com, with the subject line "Recap Submission". I'll contact you ASAP to let you know that your email was received.
   
   
   
   • This partial submission can be in any format: MS Word, MS Works, Rich Text, HTML, plain text, etc. (Keep in mind that the finished recap will have to be a plain text file.)
   
   
   
   


4. Allow me one week to read your submission. I'll email you to let you know whether or not you should continue writing the recap.
   
   
   
   • If you want to increase your chances of getting the go-ahead to finish the recap, please read the Rules of Thumb for Writing Good Recaps below.
   
   
   
   


5. If you get the go-ahead, then finish the recap, and send it to the same address as above. This time, you will have to send a ZIP file (compressed folder) that contains the following:
   
   
   
   • Your recap, which should be a plain text file formatted in RecapCode (If you're wondering what RecapCode is, it's explained below). You can also submit MS Word/Works documents, or RTF files, but please do not send HTML files.
   
   
   
   • The images that you want included in your recap (these should mostly be screen captures). Please make sure to include at least one screen capture per 300-500 words. (I recommend not cropping or resizing the images yourself, but if you want to do this, please see the Image Guidelines below.)
   
   
   
   
   

Note: Even though this section only talks about movies, recaps of TV episodes are also accepted. For the most part, the same guidelines apply to TV episodes.

Please recap movies that a large number of people are interested in reading about. You can easily determine the public's level of interest by checking the IMDb entry for the movie, and the Amazon.com page for the movie. Please limit yourself to movies that:

1. have been released on DVD (Region 1).


2. are currently available for purchase from Amazon.com.


3. have at least 500 user votes on the IMDb. (1,000 is better, though, and 10,000 is even better than that.)

Note: The movie must be available uncut and unaltered on DVD. Movies that are only available as episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 will not be accepted.

In addition, certain types of movies have proven to be popular at the Agony Booth. If you recap the following kinds of movies, I can almost guarantee you will get the go-ahead to finish the recap.

1. Movies with comic book superheroes


2. Episodes of any Star Trek series


3. Softcore porn


4. Fantasy films


5. Movies that are among the highest grossing of all time


6. James Bond films


7. Movies released in the last two years


8. Movies starring popular celebrities


9. Movies starring current tabloid train wrecks

The real trick, of course, is choosing a movie that falls into more than one of the categories above; That's sure to make your recap a shoo-in.

Note that I didn't specifically say you have to recap bad movies. In general, bad movies are the point of the website, but there's no reason well-made films can't make for hilarious recaps. However, you shouldn't recap something you love so much that you can't see its flaws.

1. Your scene descriptions must be clear and easy to follow.
   
   
   
   • You may have written the funniest recap in the world, but it won't matter if readers can't follow the action you're describing.
   
   
   
   • Whenever you write something (in general, not just for this site), put it aside for a few days and then re-read it. Does it still seem clear and concise? If not, revise, revise, revise.
   
   
   
   


2. You must be funny. Don't just describe the events of a movie without providing your own opinion or commentary.
   
   
   
   • The point of a recap is not to transcribe a movie, point-by-point, frame-by-frame, in agonizing detail. The point of a recap is to be entertaining. You should only describe things in the movie that inspire you to make funny and entertaining comments.
   
   
   
   • You're allowed to leave out unimportant details, and even entire scenes, if you have nothing funny to say about them.
   
   
   
   • Do not quote huge amounts of dialogue from the movie without comment.
   
   
   
   • Do not write simply to fill up space. Summarize action and dialogue as much as possible.
   
   
   
   


3. Read other recap sites for inspiration.
   
   
   
   • If the only recap sites you read are the Agony Booth and one other site, you're seriously in danger of repeating stale, tired jokes.
   
   
   
   • There are dozens of recapping sites on the web. Read as many of them as you possibly can.
   
   
   
   • Places where you can find other recapping sites: Recap Roundup, Wikipedia's entry on Recapping (more sites to come as I think of them).
   
   
   
   

Recaps must be formatted with RecapCode, a close cousin of BB Code, developed specifically for this site. If you know how to include bold text or italics in your forum posts here at the Agony Booth, you're already halfway to mastering RecapCode.

I created RecapCode because manually entering the HTML to include screencaps and captions was a huge pain in the ass (not to mention all the work involved in creating "quotable" and Cast of Characters sections). RecapCode does away with a lot of the grunt work, mainly by giving you a way to tell me exactly how your recap should be formatted. The following two links will tell you all you need to know about using it.

• Agony Booth RecapCode Quick Reference. This article introduces RecapCode and gives a quick reference on how to use it.



• Agony Booth RecapCode Full Reference. The complete explanation of how to use RecapCode, including loads of examples.

You're more than welcome to send raw, unmodified screencaps taken directly from your DVD viewing/capturing software. I have lots of programs that take care of automatically cropping and resizing images. But, if you'd like to save me the trouble, the image sizes should be as follows:

• Cast of Characters images: 100 pixels wide by 152 pixels high


• Screencaps (widescreen movies): 402 pixels wide, and the height depends on the aspect ratio of the film


• Screencaps (fullscreen movies): 240 pixels wide, and 180 pixels high


• Screencap of the movie title: 407 pixels wide, and 310 pixels high


• Poster/video box image: (shown at the top of the recap) 139 pixels wide, and the height depends on the size of the image


• Miscellaneous images in the recap (promotional stills, posters, etc.) should be the same width as the screencaps.

And you can always go to an existing recap, and look at the properties of the images to see what sizes they need to be.