Summer Camp 2025

Summer Camp 2025 Homework

 

Week 1 - Nourishment

Assignment 1 - Think about ways the theme of Nourishment affects your world. Do people generally have what they need? What happens when they don’t?

In Havenguard, food supplies are plentiful for the dwarves but dire for the goblin tribes. Where the dwarves are long-lived enough to value established farming practices whereas the goblins are only alive a few miserable years before death claims them. The stark contrast between the two civilisations is one of the fundamental causes of skirmishes and bloodshed.  

Assignment 2 - Summer Camp Pledge

I am aiming to complete Diamond again this year. It will be interesting to see if I am able to achieve this as my schedule for the first week of July is incredibly unforgiving!
   

Assignment 3 - Revisit world / update older articles

I took to trawling through my world, re-reading articles as a refresher. I chose to update my event articles in order to make the world more easily traversable and to set a standard for how I would like them to be displayed.    

Week 2 - Roots

Assignment 1 - Look at the cultures and areas you’ll focus on for Summer Camp, and think about how their past shaped them.

Dwarfkin are steeped in an elaborate history through the ages. Tested time and time again by the forces that have set upon them and time and time again, the dwarves have endured. For historical articles throughout Summer Camp, I will be looking to flesh out some of the areas that I have not yet touched in terms of mechanisms of society. Havenguard’s current content is more of a historic setting to the world I am slowly creating behind the scenes so I feel as though this is fitting. I am essentially filling in the history before building upon it!  

Assignment 2 - Go to your world’s homepage and imagine you’re a new reader discovering the setting for the first time. What should you change to make the experience more engaging?

I have taken the time to work on my world’s homepage. Specifically the navigation. I have added a fancy new layout with icons for each category as well as restructured all of my articles to fit within this new navigation system. My world is growing and tucking away all of my writing has taken some time, but it was definitely worth it!  

Assignment 3 - Find your earliest worldbuilding project. What mistakes did you make that you want to avoid? What good ideas from those early days can you integrate into your current project? Remember to take a moment to be proud of how far you've come!

Havenguard truly is my earliest worldbuilding project! I’m still likely in the throes of making mistakes so any feedback, critique or advice is very much welcome!      

Week 3 - Metamorphosis

Assignment 1 - What transformations and adaptations have the people in your world gone through? What changes are going on right now… and who is trying to stop them?

It looks as though the timeline that my articles will be sitting on for this Summer Camp will be very much in the recent past of Havenguard. When the winds blew frigid and chaos was unleashed. One of the central plots/circumstances driving the events of my world are very much transformative in themselves. Large geological shifts, unknown ailments and mania, disruption and turmoil. I will be looking to add a bulk of writing to better paint the picture of the world close to its present day.  

Assignment 2 - Choose a new genre, style, or author, and take a look at their art! Write what you learned from them and what inspired you.

My main source of inspiration comes from video games and visual media. I've been playing quite a variety in recent months but I've found myself typically drawn to the same grim, dark or tactical games. One which stood out from the crowd though was Escape Simulator and its community made workshop. It's amazing to see the level of creativity that creators can achieve with the same set of tools at their disposal. I feel as though the environmental storytelling in some of those community levels was outstanding and is something that I would like to bring more of into Havenguard. Descriptors are a fantastic way of setting a scene, adding appropriate amounts of foreshadowing and adding pacing. The latter is one thing that I also intend to work on this year.  

Assignment 3 - Read a couple of articles from the community, give them a like (and why not a sticker!), and write about what inspired you.

I chose to read a few articles of some long-standing members of the community. One such article was one of Tillerz’s recent batch     What I like about Tillerz’s work is how every article is laid out nicely with a variety of different blocks and sections to disperse information. Making larger articles far easier to delve into and clearly understand. I would love to emanate some of this across the board for Havenguard.      

Week 4 - Tomorrow

Assignment 1 - Think about current events that will impact the future. Who is working to create a specific kind of future?

Havenguard has three distinct and defining timeframes. The future is an odd thing to think about for my particular setting but many of the characters are still left with shreds of hope for a return to the way things were. I believe that a number of the characters I will create will at the very least be working towards a better future, whether attainable or not!  

Assignment 2 - Make sure everything’s ready—from your writing space to your writing schedule—before Summer Camp begins!

So I might have failed at this particular task! My first week of Summer Camp is jam packed. I'm attending and/or hosting a number of events all throughout the early days of July. I have subsequently booked a week off of my full-time job in order to catch up. I plan on writing 2-3 articles per day in that second week. I am hoping that the quality of my writing isn't diminished by this kind of schedule but in order to counter this, I'll be trying to take more time this year to edit, proof-read and work on structure alongside content.  

Assignment 3 - Who or what will help you achieve your goal? What will your sharing strategy be during Summer Camp?

The zone. I must... get into... the zone.
There is a huge benefit to having dedicated time where I can put my head down, minimise distraction and really dive into the world I am working to create. I am praying that my upstairs neighbour doesn't have any more home improvements to do!