Summer Camp V: Back to The Ocean
It's my favorite time of year!
I love challenges. WorldEmber is great, and I've been enjoying the occasional community challenge, but Summer Camp is what I look forward to most. The prompts always take me in unexpected directions. Last year, that was down into the new world of The Deeps. The year before, I debuted The River and explored the world of the ocean people's ancestors. Now I'm ready and eager to be writing in The Ocean again, the setting of my main project. I cannot wait to be surprised by my own world.
Oh boy. I am not food-literate, so this is going to be especially hard for me. It's not that I don't cook, but I have no imagination when it comes to food. I understand what Janet said, that nourishment can be more metaphorical, but I'm pretty sure most of the prompts will be edible.
The River
The Deeps
Oh, the possibilities! *rubbing hands* This could go very deep. The conflict in my story is between two starkly different ways of life, which up until now have been living alongside each other for 20,000 years or so. Now is my chance to look at how they diverged, what led to that split.
The River
The Deeps
Another good, broad theme! My feeling is that any good story will incorporate some kind of change, whether in a character or in events. Stagnant stories aren't interesting.
The River
The Deeps
The River
The Deeps
All these themes are meshing together so beautifully! Beginning with the roots, adding nourishment to produce metamorphosis, bringing an inevitable tomorrow... I feel like everything is possible.
Week 1: Aaaaand I'm off to the usual slow start. One prompt submitted, ideas for a few others. But it's early yet, so I'm not too worried. It tends to get easier for me as more prompts drop.
Week 2: With nine prompts in by the start of the stream, I at least have copper. Not the progress I'd like, but at least my average is better than one article per day. Unfortunately this week is going to be exceptionally busy, and the gold prompts are a tough set for me. Hoo boy...
Week 1 Theme: 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?
Talk about a tall order! What does it not affect? Nourishment-- the acquisition and application of energy--is what drives every system, even nonbiological ones. Heat from the sun powers the movement of atmosphere and oceans, allowing travel and trade. The planet's hot, goopy interior feeds the magnetic fields that keeps the surface from being sterilized by ionizing radiation from outer space. Sunlight drives chemical reactions that grow plants that anchor the food web that supports all life in the world.
The Ocean
Think about ways the theme of Nourishment affects your world. Do people generally have what they need? What happens when they don’t?
Do people have what they need? That depends on who you ask. On opposite ends of the Cluster are two islands with opposite outlooks on quality of life. One is agricultural, and its people focus on producing enough to get by on. They value food over goods, because everyone needs to eat and no two people can consume the same bite. The other is industrial, and its people focus on making every day better. They value goods over food, because their unique products trade for enough to support the island's population. Both cultures think that they are themselves well off, and the other group impoverished.
The River
Insufficient nourishment is a big part of current events in this world. I wrote last year about a future drought that is a turning point for the history of The Ocean. Heated by seething disagreements, a lack of resources sparks violence in one particular village. It's not just food that's in short supply, but connection. The visiting boy packs have been coming more rarely, leaving this village cut off from the news flow up and down the river.
The Deeps
An ancient extinction may have destroyed almost all thinking life in the ocean, but the food chain persists. The Self, the core of which is fixed in an undersea plateau of rock, normally lives on the shower of decaying organic matter that constantly drifts down from the surface. But as swarms go out exploring, scavenging doesn't get them enough to survive on. They need to hunt to keep up their energy. I need to figure out what it is they're eating.
Assignment 2:
Download the pledge document and fill it out with your goal for Summer Camp!
Uh...I don't do the pledge document, because the technology defeats me every time. But I hereby promise that I will achieve diamond and complete all prompts. I also promise to write at least one prompt per wave in each of my other worlds, so as not to neglect them.
Download the pledge document and fill it out with your goal for Summer Camp!
Assignment 3:
If you found any outdated articles in your world, update the most important ones now! Do the same with your worldbuilding meta.
Oh boy, am I glad for the "most important" loophole. My earliest articles are pretty awkward and don't fit my current tone, but they're also elven-shoe-like in how little they actually matter to my area of focus. The more relevant articles are also among the more recently written, so I'm content to give them a quick review and not get bogged down in nitpicking peripheral articles.If you found any outdated articles in your world, update the most important ones now! Do the same with your worldbuilding meta.
Week 2 Theme: Roots
Oh, the possibilities! *rubbing hands* This could go very deep. The conflict in my story is between two starkly different ways of life, which up until now have been living alongside each other for 20,000 years or so. Now is my chance to look at how they diverged, what led to that split.Assignment 1:
Look at the cultures and areas you’ll focus on for Summer Camp, and think about how their past shaped them.
The Ocean
Look at the cultures and areas you’ll focus on for Summer Camp, and think about how their past shaped them.
The first time I ever did Summer Camp homework, I announced my intentions to fill in the underdeveloped 10,000-year span of the Oceanic Era...and then didn't. This time around, I think I have a better shot. I've established more of the general picture of what went on, where people lived, what they believed. I still have unanswered questions, and hope that some of the prompts will lead me to new insights.
The River
All the traditions that the women see as eternal had an origin somewhere in the past. I know that many of them stem from a merger of three tribes who joined together for survival during a famine, but not much about what those earlier cultures were like.
The Deeps
I've focused mostly on what the Self is doing after the sudden loss of their friend, but haven't really established what made that friendship so valuable. I'll try to take a closer look at how they interacted, and possibly what the Self's existence was like before they met the Singer.
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?
Certainly my homepage could stand to be more on-theme--like if I had an ocean background instead of clouds--but I'm mostly satisfied with it as it is. The first thing you see is a picture of a grinning man looking up past a boat's sail toward the oculus of a dome made of water. (I feel like that's as close as I can get to describing the genre of my world.) I still like my pitch as a world intro, because it covers the basics of the setting, but it's literally the first thing I wrote on World Anvil. When I started I had a ton of scattered ideas and only the vaguest ideas for a core story. This past year I've finally started putting that story down in words, and it's high time I expanded this opener to lead into the main events.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?
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!
I can think of three options here.
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!
- The first project I ever worldbuilt--by which I mean wrote something down about it that wasn't part of the story itself--is something I started in high school. It was about aliens kidnapping kids and forcing them to go to gym class as a form of torture. (Don't judge. Reframing the experience is what got me through it.) It's a project I still check on from time to time, although it bears no resemblance now to the dreck it started as. It was the first time I'd ever looked over something I wrote and asked myself Why. Why is this character like that? Why does this happen? I made myself justify what was going on in the story, and discovered that creating unseen details in a world creates extra support for the story.
- My current project was worldbuilding before it was writing. I was annoyed with a number of character-sized holes in a book I was reading, and made up names to fill them. Then backstories. Then adventures. Suddenly I was writing fanfic without realizing how I got there. And even though I wasn't sharing it with anyone, I kept editing and editing and editing. That is where I learned to recognize when a piece of writing didn't satisfy me, and either fix it or ruthlessly rip it out.
- I still have my rambling notes from when I first decided to break my fanfic into an independent world. It was a frightening transition, because up until then I'd been hanging ideas on an existing framework and suddenly I was having to rebuild that frame from scratch. Very little substance from those notes still exist in the Ocean today. It was all ideas pulled out of thin air without forethought. They weren't realistic and often contradicted each other, but I kept the notes because they're the subfloor of my world.
Week 3 Theme: Metamorphosis
Another good, broad theme! My feeling is that any good story will incorporate some kind of change, whether in a character or in events. Stagnant stories aren't interesting.
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?
The Ocean
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?
The last major change affecting this world was the mass evacuations at the end of the Oceanic Era, when all atoll residents were shipped from their eroding homes to the newly discovered Cluster Islands. Shortly after that they discovered how to harness energy from the volcanoes, adding a technological revolution to the mix.
What's happening now is another engineering breakthrough. Tracks running between the islands can get you from one end of the Cluster Islands to the other in less than a day. The impact on trade and travel is going to be far-reaching, but so is the impact on Tideriders whose fleets can't cross those tracks. (Hmm, I wonder who opposes this change...?) It will also make it possible to centralize government over multiple islands into one organization. Surely that can't turn out badly, can it?
The River
The women's culture is all about not changing. As long as each one follows the customs and performs her role, they'll continue to exist in security forever. The story I'm writing here is about a woman who gets a glimpse of what her village's leaders are hiding. The revelation this leads her to could drastically change her culture's practices, but there are powerful women standing in her way.
The Deeps
The Self has just begun exploring the world above the water, and finding in it a richness that has been missing from their existence for far too long. Their physical limitations prevents extended stays on land, but this won't be the first time they've deliberately evolved compatibility with new environments. Soon swarm parts will be able to survive indefinitely out of the ocean. The next goal? Flight. The only forces working against them are the laws of physics, but without the buoyancy of water to help them, that's going to be a tough battle.
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.
Choose a new genre, style, or author, and take a look at their art! Write what you learned from them and what inspired you.
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'll do some reading, but the trouble is that the things I like about other worlds tend to be things I can't apply to mine.Read a couple of articles from the community, give them a like (and why not a sticker!), and write about what inspired you.
Week 4 Theme: Tomorrow
Assignment 1:
Think about current events that will impact the future. Who is working to create a specific kind of future?
The Ocean
Think about current events that will impact the future. Who is working to create a specific kind of future?
The engineer behind the boat conduit envisions an economic unity bringing all islands to a better standard of living through access to high-quality medical care, fair treatment in courts of law, equitable distribution of foods, reduced cost of raw materials, and swift rescue in emergencies. What she doesn't see is how each of these benefits comes with significant flaws.
The River
The future the women are working toward is exactly the same as the past. They want to keep things the same, and the village leaders are willing to go to extremes to achieve stability.
The women banished after the drought conflict are in the opposite situation. If they don't carefully consider how to create their future, there won't be one for them.
The Deeps
In 25 million years of exploring the ocean, the Self has never created anything. Swarms collect interesting objects, store them, and trade them among the land-dwelling animals, but the idea of doing something with them has been unimaginable. Until recently, when they observed an animal modifying one thing to make another. It's a revelation to the Self that they could perhaps do more than passively observe the world.
Assignment 2:
Make sure everything’s ready—from your writing space to your writing schedule—before Summer Camp begins!
I have a chunky notebook ready to record ideas, a slightly messy desk, and an alarm clock to keep me from losing track of time. That's ready enough.Make sure everything’s ready—from your writing space to your writing schedule—before Summer Camp begins!
Assignment 3:
Who or what will help you achieve your goal? What will your sharing strategy be during Summer Camp?
I am really shy, and sharing my work is hard for me. I've gotten used to publishing articles and submitting to challenges, but hitting that notify bell is still intimidating. Participating in the March of 31 Tales was good practice, though, so I intend to send more notifications this summer. Not for everything, because that's too much of a deluge, but at least once per world per prompt wave. I'll also attempt to post on Discord more.
Speaking of which, I met my first World Anvil bean in person! I took a road trip this spring and connected with Lexi Con (WordiGirl), and we spent a lovely couple of hours chatting. (I am so much more talkative in person than online.) She agreed to help me stay on track for Summer Camp, so I have an accountability buddy!
Who or what will help you achieve your goal? What will your sharing strategy be during Summer Camp?
All these themes are meshing together so beautifully! Beginning with the roots, adding nourishment to produce metamorphosis, bringing an inevitable tomorrow... I feel like everything is possible.
Week 1: Aaaaand I'm off to the usual slow start. One prompt submitted, ideas for a few others. But it's early yet, so I'm not too worried. It tends to get easier for me as more prompts drop.
Week 2: With nine prompts in by the start of the stream, I at least have copper. Not the progress I'd like, but at least my average is better than one article per day. Unfortunately this week is going to be exceptionally busy, and the gold prompts are a tough set for me. Hoo boy...
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Better late than never! It was so fun to meet you in person as well. Much success with Summer Camp! <3
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