Are you ready for some WORLDEMBER PREP 2022?!

It’s that time of year again—Summer Camp is a distant memory, and the fires of WorldEmber inspiration are bursting into life. It’s time to get yourself—and your world—ready for WorldEmber 2022!

We’ll be updating this blog post week-by-week to provide you with the latest WorldEmber Prep homework! So stop back here weekly, or tune into our livestreams (listed below) for the latest releases, your questions answered, and more!

What is WorldEmber, you ask? Only the greatest worldbuilding challenge ever made! You can learn more about WorldEmber here!

WorldEmber 2022 Homework Squad badge

Want a chance to win this fab badge for your World Anvil profile? Drop your homework in the comments of the blog (along with your WA username) and it’s yours!

Make sure you check out our Homework Club assets!

Week 1: Make a plan and announce your project to the world!

WorldEmber is a month away, so it’s time to start thinking about those 10,000 words of worldbuilding! What will you write about? Completing WorldEmber is a feat in itself, but that worldbuilding should also be useful and rewarding for your own goals!

That means that the first step is to think about your goal and motivation. Ask yourself the following questions:

  1. If you have more than one world setting, which one is the most important to you right now? Why?
  2. Which area of that world setting will allow you to achieve your goals (Continuing your novel/campaign, or starting a new one?).
  3. How will it help you achieve those goals?

If you’re having trouble answering these questions, you might want to take a look at your worldbuilding meta to get inspiration! 

Some examples of worldbuilding goals might include:

  • I want to build out the area of the fantasy world behind my NaNoWriMo project because it will help me with Draft 2.
  • I want to start a brand new setting because I want to explore a new genre.
  • I want to expand a new continent in my world because I want to take my players there! 
  • I want to create an introductory one-shot to a new area of my world, because I want to introduce new players to it!

The first part is what you want to do. And that because is super important—it’s your motivation for WorldEmber, and it’ll keep you on track! 

So, your WorldEmber homework, should you choose to accept it, is:

  1. Create a generic article template called “My WorldEmber Pledge 2022”.
  2. Answer the numbered questions above to figure out your goal and motivation for WorldEmber 2022.
  3. Optionally, you can create and add your very own WorldEmber Pledge Certificate here! Just fill in the fields and it’ll generate you a gorgeous certificate like the one below!
  4. Share the URL of your pledge document in the comments section of this article (that’s important to claim the Prep badge!)
WorldEmber prep pledge document

Now that’s a fancy Pledge Document right there!

 

Week 2: Meta, mini-meta, and inspirations

This week we’re getting META in a whole new way! 

The world meta is important because it:

  • lets you define the big-picture elements of your world
  • Gives tour world strong internal logic and cohesion
  • Focusses you on your GOAL, and stops you getting lost in details
  • GIVE YOU MOTIVATION! 
  • helps you overcome writer’s block

But did you know that you can also create Mini-Metas? They’re like a standard meta but focused on a specific area of your setting. These handy planning guides can help you work through a new area of your world setting, or a new world building project! You know – kinda like WorldEmber 😉 

We’ve written a whole blog post about mini-metas, but here’s how to handle them in brief! 

  1. Create a scope for your mini-meta! What is the area or topic your project will cover. If you did last week’s homework, you’ll already have defined your scope! 
  2. Which themes do you want to include? How will you express them? This should be based on the main worldbuilding meta you’ve created for your world, but you might have specific themes you want to explore in this area.
  3. Finally, create the moooooood! If you have access to Whiteboards, use them to create mood boards with quotes, images, articles, and other inspirational stuff to help you out during WorldEmber. Otherwise, you can do the same thing in a worldbuilding article. 

 

So, your WorldEmber homework, should you choose to accept it, is:

  1. If you haven’t filled in the meta, or haven’t checked it for a while, make sure you fill it in! 
  2. Check out the inspirations for the meta.
  3. Create a mini-meta and link it in your pledge document.

 

Week 3: Clean up categories, tagging, general organization

Having a good internal organization is essential to write high-quality worldbuilding—and that’s what this week’s homework is all about! There are several tools on World Anvil that you can use to organize your work, but this time, let’s look at categories and tags!

Categories are like folders where you can classify your articles—just like physical files and folders, an article can be inside a single folder, and a folder can also be inside another bigger folder. Check out our blog about categories for more information!

Tags, on the other hand, are a parallel organization system that you can use to group all articles that share some similarities. These could be about their topic (#nobility, #magic, etc.), form (#short-stories, #journal, etc.), meta information (#wip, #version-2, etc.), or anything else. Then, you can use the tag in the search bar to see all tagged articles or even generate a tag-based list of articles anywhere in your world. Check out the guide to the tagging system for more information about this feature!

We also have other features that you can use to organize your information and present it in a structured way. For example, diplomacy webs, family trees, content trees, and whiteboards.

Take this opportunity to read through any articles you might have forgotten exist! If anything affects your minimeta from last week, now is the time to change it. 

Your WorldEmber homework, should you choose to accept it, is:

  1. Create or review your category tree. Check that all articles are in a category.
  2. Create a tag system to better organize your articles.
  3. Let us know if the homework has been helpful so far! 😉 (if not, how can we improve?) <3 

 

Week 4: CSS, presentation, and graphics

It’s the home stretch and World Ember is JUST around the corner! If you’ve been following along, you’ll have:

  • A goal.
  • A meta and mini-meta.
  • A BEAUTIFULLY organized world.

So, now it’s time to prepare your visuals!

Now, of course, it’s not necessary to have a shiny world full of complicated CSS and amazing original art. But if you like using art—either as inspiration or to make your worldbuilding articles feel more finished—then now is the time to prep it. Plus, if you’d like to win one of the special categories, having visual eye candy will make the articles stand out more to the judges!

If you’re an artist, you can start sketching art for the articles and areas you know you’ll work on. If you aren’t an artist, look for free-to-use graphics online! Here are some resources to get you started:

Your WorldEmber homework

So, your WorldEmber homework, should you choose to accept it is:

  1. Look at your world’s style and layout and tweak it (or decide that it already looks amazing!).
  2. Collect visual resources for your world. You can add them to your Pledge Document to  give the community a taste of what you’ll be working on!

The WorldEmber sponsors are Kobold Press, Norse Foundry, and Dungeon Fog

A massive thank you to Norse Foundry, Kobold Press and Dungeon Fog for sponsoring this WorldEmber! Learn more about the prizes you can win from them on the WorldEmber page.

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