Day 1: Stub Stomping

New resources for tracking my progress!

In the world-building community, December means just one thing: WorldEmber, the biggest world-building event of the year! It’s a time to clean up that world-building to-do list, end 2024 with an achievement, and start 2025 with a BANG!

Any of these resources will help you keep track of my progress through this month-long marathon challenge.

Haly’s Official WE Progress Report — each participant gets a page that automatically collects their author information and all WE-eligible articles across all worlds into a single, shareable package.

A WorldEmber Chronicle — follow along with a map and timeline of my progress. You’ll see locations and information develop day-by-day as I work my way through the basic elements of world-building.

Haly’s WorldEmber on Argentii Index — an on-the-fly journal page and handy sidebar displaying only new Argentii WE-eligible articles.

Put on Your Stub Stompers and Stomp Some Stubs!

I promised you a look over my shoulder this month as I bring a vague and disjointed collection of ideas together into a cohesive piece of world-building. The focus of this attention is the central location of Crossroads Island. Situated in the middle of the mighty Division River, Crossroads Island served as the seat of power for all of Argentii from the time of Tige the Uniter until King Darian and his great folly, known now as the Division.

Fun fact: it was called Division River long before either Tige or Darian because it splits the island of Capitalla neatly into an eastern and western half.

What are Stubs?

Stubs are those brief notes and half-baked ideas floating around. They are usually just a sentence or two to remind you of the concept. It might even be just a name such as “Axehead Mountains” or “Division River.” Within the WorldAnvil file structure, a “stub” is a WIP article that contains fewer than 50 words.

These often get filed in the mental drawer of “I’ll need to write about that someday...”

WorldEmber is an excellent ‘someday’! Because it’s a world-building word-count goal, every word counts toward the challenge. So taking a tiny scrap and filling it out with more details and new information is the whole point of the event! It really is about taking all of those vague ideas and putting them down on paper — real or digital.

The Sovereign of Stubs

Friends, not only am I a world-building goddess, I am also the Sovereign of Stubs! So much so that the first time I ever appeared as a guest on a WorldAnvil Twitch stream, it was to talk about stubs and their benefit to us as world-builders.

Follow me through this example…Sit down and write a paragraph about something or someone in your world. Anything, anyone, anywhere, it doesn’t matter. One paragraph, three to five sentences.

Now, picture yourself explaining this to someone who’s never heard of it before, a complete stranger. In that paragraph, identify any people, places, or things that also require explanation for those outside your inner brain.

Here’s mine:

Shiv Moonsong is the Head Librarian of Library Inn on Crossroads Island. In addition, she serves as the Elected Caretaker of the United Guild of Scribes, Calligraphers, Illuminators, and Engravers. She spends a good deal of her free time in the heights of Astronomy Tower, gazing through the library’s great telescope at the moon. She is hoping for — and dreading — the particular fiery matrix across the face of the moon that will signal the coming of the dragons.

Do you see all those emboldened words? Those are all stubs, little undeveloped pieces of world-building ripe for the imagination and just begging to have any number of new words written about them. Because while it says a great deal to me that Shiv is the EC of the UGSCIE it probably means less than nothing to YOU! At least, without more context. Yanno…world-building!

Stubs are the roadmap of where your world-building needs to go.
— Haly the Moonlight Bard

Gather the Stubs and Stomp, Stomp, Stomp!

If you’re embarking on a new world-building project or simply exploring a new area of focus, start by collecting those little scraps, those stubs. Put them ‘on paper’, in one place, and see what patterns and associations develop. For example, as I shopped my stub list, I found that I’d already created articles about the Axehead Mountains, Division River, Capitalla, and Crossroads Island. These are places that I’ve mentioned once or twice in other articles, but never devoted time to fully developing.

Therefore, those were the first articles I tackled, and I got them all done today! Because I was forced to spend time in the Axeheads, I was finally able to fully develop an unwritten stub (one that was only in my head) about the particular stone that Library Inn is made out of: pink goldstone! And so “Goldstone” became another article.