Dealing with Competition

A key part of worldbuilding comes from interacting with a like minded community. For many, this comes naturally and they are able to build up their world's and skills through simple conversation. For others, it is a nightmare of a proposition.
Within Worldbuilding communities though, lies a heart for competition, a great avenue for getting your world seen and for getting feedback on your writing. Additionally, solid competition can put you in contact with great worldbuilders who may be willing or even chomping at the bit to Collaborate with you.

Attempt, and the Worst Failure is Future Material

You never want to completly throw any idea away just because it didn't work or was getting to be too unwieldy. The same is true in competions. Not everything you make can win, but that doesn't mean it is useless or not perfect. Share your failures and ask for what your readers like and don't like. Its key that you learn what could be better, and what people actually enjoy reading.
At the same time, don't sacrifice what makes your world yours! Hold true to what your vision is, but take criticism and feedback gracefully and with a grain of salt.

Types of Competition

There are many forms competition can take. Major ones seen amongst the World Anvil community include quanity and quality based competitions and challenges.

Quanity Challenges

These challenges require that you hit a certain word count, and are usually focused on you making putting new ideas to paper. Don't waste time with formatting or extraneous things like art in these challenges. Some exanple challenges include:

Sprints

Challenge a friend to write a number of words in a short period, usually 30 minites to 2 hours. These require time and a quick mind.

Marathons

Longer challenges usually with a larger goal. These are meant to be multi-day events.

Quality Challenges

These types of challenges require a different mindset, as they tend to be judged for the quality of your writing. Getting these written quickly can help, as solid editing, formatting and other fancy work one would ignore in a quantity based challenge can sometimes tip the scale for a winning article.

Lightning Challenges

These 1-3 day challenges, ran and judged by community members, require you to answer a long form prompt, usually writing more than 300 words in a time limit. Its important to read closely what the event organizer asks for in their prompt.

Master's Monthly

A World Anvil Patreon only challenge, these longer form prompts give a bit more leeway as to what you can write about, and are usually accompanied by an article written by Janet Forbes that can give some great inspiration.

Camps

While only one World Building camp has been ran so far, the idea is to add to your world by answering an entire month's worth of daily prompts. This takes some planning, but can be great for stringing together whole concepts for your world. Similarly, prompt lists such as Inktober and Mapvember also fall into this category.

Getting Better

The best way to get better at any hobby is to share your work with others. Find a group of frienda in the community that can help you and critique your work in exchange for critiquing theirs. Many worldbuilding communities also provide some format for sharing your work blindly with others in exchange for you looking blindly at theirs. The key here is to be receptive of feedback. Other readers will tell you where your work doesn't make sense or lost or confused them. Adjust those areas and lead new readers to critique it. More varied feedback can help you get your articlea into shape for judging.

Entry for WorldEmber 2018

Competition Homepage