Worldember 2018 - Verti's Journal
WorldEmber 2018 is coming is already here and this here will be my place to document my progress! For those of you who do not know of WorldEmber, it is an annual event during December where worldbuilders are going to write as many words and details as they can - with the goal of at least 10,000 words during 31 days. Though there are extended goals of 25k, 50k, 150k and... we do not talk about 200k, the so-called Kitashi-Award
This article here is to journal my progress and give you all an overview of what I write - leave some likes in there, comment on them! Likes are, in fact, another way to gain an achievement during WorldEmber.
Considering that this article is bound to become very long, there will be a Table of Contents in the sidebar!
Preparation
I saw many people prepared with lots and lots of spreadsheets, detailing the articles they want to write and the word goals they have per article. I won't do it that way. Last year I ran into the trap of planning too strict and detailed ahead and this resulted in a few articles that were way too long, a note in my notebook detailing 23 (!) elven leaders with characteristics and dark twists and objectives... that never got made - and a burn out on day 10, roughly, feeling forced to only work in that area since I planned it so detailed and I cannot leave it
So, learning from my mistakes, these were my preparations:
Relax. Be excited for World Ember to start and avoid jumping into details.
Having a very very vague idea where to work and what is happening there. Here, Guys' Book "The Complete Guide to Creating Epic Campaigns" helped me a lot! Here, campaigns work out a plot top down starting with a master plot - in one sentence. I made such a sentence for me, and this shall be my seed for all of WorldEmber.
The Sentence
The Platin Precator of Rhomedan wants to controll the Rhomean Church of Apac's Might before the next Iron Emperor is proclaimed but has trouble getting it using the Order of Divine clarity because of rapid technological developments in parts of the nation.
Nothing of that - except Rhomedan - had been described or developed in my world so far. Yay for ideas.
My second preparation was the creation of a map. I wanted to be able to know where I move around and be able to mark what I create on a map, for people to find it there. This led to the map of Rhomedan:
The Map of Rhomedan
That were, in fact, all of my preparations. Of course, since I had the sentence weeks before WorldEmber started, I kept think about who is who, why, what would they do for this, how I could display the revolution that apparently is brewing and how to build up the political system that warrants for some kind of high ranked person wanting to take over a complete church to ... do what exactly? I do not know. Yet. Isn't worldbuilding just wonderful?
Day 0, Friday
WorldEmber had a sudden early start and suddenly we had twelve hours more for writing! Amazing! I started with the one thing I knew already to exist, the capital of Rhomedan itself. Unfortunately, I had trouble thinking of where to go directly next.
So I returned to my map, randomly devised many many names of provinces and states, and that is where everything will come to life now! This lead to the description of the largest river in Rhomedan and some smaller things, of which I only published one.
Words after Day 0: Circa 1300 (of at least 0)
Day 1, Saturday
Slow day, I admit to that. Migraines are not fun and they tend to hit when you were excited about something very long. Oof. I did start a lot of drafts (about 8 of them), to be able to use the links, but nothing published yet. I think I have to revise that strategy though.
Words after Day 1: Circa 1800 (of at least 834)
Day 2, Sunday
Another slow day, but at least two more provinces down. Also at the evening stream, Janet (that Amazing Banana Raffleraptor) reminded me of a very important and so far by me underused feature: THE PURPLE BUTTON.
No need to always keep creating drafts, just quickly create the article with maybe one sentence and the correct category and then use the link it produces. Yes, it is a bit slower but a lot of articles are made directly, without the need of opening the written article, clicking on every placeholder, creating the drafts or articles and then... forget about them.
This way, the articles are prominently marked in the TO-DO LIST as well.
Words after Day 2: circa 2900 (of at least 1668)
Day 3,Monday
And back at the workweek, thankfully I have two days vacation still. My dear apprentice ninne124 reminded me I should do a journal - so today this was created. Also, thanks to Janet, a lot more very small articles got made, creating a bigger network of interlinked articles. I continued covering provinces of Rhomedan. In Bargzik I now seeded a spooky haunted forest at the border between two empires. Maybe something to return to later.
Words after Day 3: circa 6200 (of at least 2500)
Table of Contents
by Vertixico
by Vertixico
by Vertixico
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