Follow along with my WorldEmber progress!

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. 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.

Q: Aside from being cool, what benefits are there to well executed crossovers?

A: Simply: audience and exposure.

The funny thing about we humans is that it’s not enough for us to simply create something new, we are also driven to share it. Otherwise, we would all be sitting in our bedrooms using one from that tall stack of hardback journals we keep buying for all our pretty thoughts but never use because our thoughts aren’t ‘good enough.’

Crossovers are an excellent way of serving that SHARE SHARE SHARE urge. It is often an example of, “You know, if you love my work, then you should really check out this other work.” It’s how a lot of collaborations are born.

Sometimes it’s a matter of fan service. I mean, we’ve all sat around and had the “which ultra-healing mutant would beat the crap out of which other ultra-healing mutant” argument. We just lack Ryan Reynolds’ money to bring it to the screen.

Another…not so much benefit of, but reason to do a crossover…is satire. While it’s not to everyone’s taste, if you’ve got a talent for it, this could be an excellent way to use that. Remember that episode of Family Guy where they went to Springfield? Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is a sort of crossover — what would it be like if we crossed a contemporary ‘real world’ character with the knights of Camelot? Voila!

Crossovers can also add depth to a world. For example, did you know that the daytime soaps, All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital are all in the same world-building universe? Over the years, residents of the fictional cities of Pine Valley, PA, Llanview, PA, and Port Charles, NY have crossed into and out of each other’s lives, and daytime dramas. These crossover stories are often the culmination of huge storylines, or else celebrate special events or milestones in the shows’ histories. (Think: 50 year anniversary, etc.)

Q: How do you deal with all of the ideas you have, but can’t fit in right away?

A: Stubs.

I wrote about those on Monday. Stubs are little articles, one or two sentences, that are important enough that you need them RIGHT NOW, but not important enough to derail you from what you’re doing. In WorldAnvil parlance, they are literally WIP articles that are less than 50 words.

However, not everyone uses WorldAnvil, and so the best way there is with index cards or sticky notes. Something small and easily organized, something that you can visually move around like little puzzle pieces or building blocks. Something where you can’t fill in too much information, just a couple of bullet points to capture the key ideas.

My friend, Janet, is fond of the phrase, “concepts, cogs, and tables,” and that’s sort of the idea here. You want to give yourself just enough information so that you have that idea springboard.

It’s so, so, SO easy to get distracted when world-building. It really is an exercise in self-discipline. Especially if you are doing it with a goal in mind, such as a novel, game module, or movie. Only those who build worlds strictly as a hobby can afford to let their ideas wander down random paths.

Unfortunately, when world-building, this isn’t a problem that will go away. Hopefully, you will ALWAYS have too many ideas to work on in the moment. (Which is what makes the quick article creation and auto-linking functions of WorldAnvil worth every penny, IMO.)

This problem is part of why I write this newsletter, and also why I’m developing the Ocean and River methods to help people like you and me — who need a map to follow on big projects! — stay focused on the GOALS of our world-building without falling off the edge of the map, or getting swept away onto the rocks.

Q: Help! So many stubs! How do I prioritize?

A: By order of importance.

When I’m stuck, or starting on a new track, I always shop my stubs first. And I’m always blown away and overwhelmed by how many there are! (I create new articles on the fly like breathing. That little green hammer is my best friend.)

Here’s how I choose from 109438710324981732 different stubs.

1. What is important to the story you are telling RIGHT NOW? If you are prepping for your next game session or drafting a novel or writing a movie, look at the list and see what you need immediately to tell that story. For me, it was the North Dock. It’s the opening scene of the solo RPG I’m currently writing.
2. What have you linked to over and over again, but not written? In that list of stubs is some number of ideas to which you’re constantly making reference. Maybe it’s a particular city, or a spell, or a food. This need was the very reason I chose Crossroads Island as the location to develop for WorldEmber.
3. What are you most excited to write? Most fun? As creatives, if we’re not in this for the fun of it, then what the fuck are we even doing here? Writing is too brutal on an emotional and spiritual level to ever be worth doing unless we love it and have as much fun as we can while we’re doing it. So when all else fails — or when the mood strikes you — write whichever one feels like the most fun at the moment.

Also, and this is the most important part…. There are no wrong choices. Only less useful ones.

Wrapping the Day

Week by week, y’all are growing this column into something really unique and special. To those of you who are new this week, welcome! Thank you for trusting me with your precious creations, I hope my advice helps bring them into the world exactly as you envision them.

And to those of you who show up week after week, you are the sun gears in my clutch assembly: I couldn’t operate this thing without you.

Tonight’s world-building article: Honey Nut Bacon (includes actual recipe).

As I write this, I am sitting at 7,139 new words of world-building toward my 50,000-word goal.