Summer Camp Prep 2025
Stories have no neat beginnings; nor a true end. One beginning is another story’s end, or merely the middle to another. They wind back and forth across themselves, rewriting themselves as they go. To those living in them there is no clear path from “once upon a time” to “happily ever after”. It is for those who come after to weave them into a whole cloth. With each weaving, however, threads are lost. Warp strings loosen. Wefts knot and break. Colors fade. Gilt threads tarnish. Figures become moth-eaten. Truth hides somewhere among those tatters and frayed ends.
Happy Solstice, everyone! After many dabbling attempts, I am going to give this one more try.
Aspects of this world have existed in some form or another since I was in middle school, although it went dormant for many years as I started my adult life. At a chaotic point in my life, I dusted it off for another look. Since then, it has become a true passion project and mental health resource. Now that the life chaos has been tamed somewhat, I might as well try to let it out into the world.
Offline, many aspects of the worldbuilding and the narrative arc of the stories are undergoing major revisions. My hope is that the prompts and themes will provide a structure to focus and motivate me to figure out answers to some of the more elusive questions that are currently stagnating the progress.
The World of the Time Glass Cycle, Briefly
This world is, first and foremost, the setting for a sequence of interconnected stories set at various times throughout its history. As the word "cycle" suggests, most of these stories involve attempts to possess, destroy, or undo magic wrought through the ancient and enigmatic titular artifact. In the broadest of strokes, the history of the world covers some 8000 years before its present day.
The story set in the current era combines elements of magical adventure, political intrigue, and romance in a world loosely 17th century in its technology and a high medieval magical world mostly lost to human memory. These two disparate worlds come together when the interests of two of the central characters coincide. In an age of science and reason, old legends never truly fade away and soon may arise again to threaten the future.
Week 1
This week's 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?
Renourish your motivations
The food cultures are informed by my own personal tastes, as well as my interest in historical cooking. The regions and cultures of the (very imaginatively named) Middle Continent have a wide range of delicious cuisines and foodways. There is much on offer for a hungry wanderer to sample. Zimri, forest and farmland and wild seacoast, is known for hearty stews, salted fish, whole grain breads, flavorful beers, and fruit pies. Many canaled Tyana, elegant and trendsetting, offers herbed pasta dishes, buttery pastries, and grilled seafood accompanied by fine wines and lemon ices. Wayward Angorit, bordered by the vast western desert, provides fruited wines, and succulently spicy sauces covering meat and vegetables (an extra spoonful of Niidari pepper paste may be added for the bravest of diners). One may partake in wine, poetry, and revolution alongside the literary denizens of The Undry salan in Ancabla; feast under the stars with the Se’n’eti on the plains of Angorit; or sample the pickled offerings provided by a most peculiar supernatural being.
Beyond simply food, the ideas of intellectual and cultural nourishment are key to the characters and setting. Many of the characters are exiles, refugees, or otherwise slightly out of step with their kin or culture. In these meetings, connections are made, bonds of affection and shared ideals forged. Will they prove strong enough to weave themselves into new legends?
Assignment 2
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.
Although I have dabbled with articles, homepage, and meta, I have never been quite happy with the results. I am planning on rebuilding it up from the foundations. Currently, I am filling in the Meta, redoing the homepage, and writing a brief introduction.
Week 2
This week's theme: Roots
Assignment 1
Look at the cultures and areas you’ll focus on for Summer Camp, and think about how their past shaped them.
Much to the dismay of some of the characters, the past is never quite past and its tendrils slip through the hidden gaps to influence their future.
Recently, I restructured the narrative arc of the story, leading me to realize I had severely undeveloped some crucial cultures and plot points.
Surprisingly, the Time Glass has always been somewhat vague and mysterious in its nature and abilities. Somewhere between the One Ring and a Silmaril (I can only think I was on a Tolkien binge when I was a teenager). Despite being so intrinsic to the world and its stories, it is possibly my least favorite part and has remained severely underdeveloped as a consequence. In order to resolve the story, I need to give far more thought into it. Solving the conundrum of the Time Glass includes revising the earliest history that can be considered reliable and the age in which it entered the world (or was created, jury's still deliberating on that one).
The Sirite, the not-elves of the world, are another undeveloped aspect that I should have addressed long before now. They began their existence as more-or-less high elves after the Tolkien fashion before evolving into a lost branch of the Tuatha de Dannan and eventually just going into stasis while I worked on other things. As I revise the narrative structure of the current storyline, I find that I need to know more about them, their culture, and relationship to the world. I have been leaning harder into their origins in Irish mythology and considering how they changed throughout the evolution of cultures in their present world. This also ties neatly into next week's theme of Metamorphosis.
Other lesser priorities are continuing to revise how magic is integrated into various cultures; the nature of the people who later came to be worshiped as gods; and the cosmology.
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?
As a mainly written project, the homepage definitely lacks an eye catching visual theme. Likewise, I have moved the starting point around so many times that I am unsure of where the best entry point is. Hopefully, letting myself break out of my routine will help ignite that missing spark. I might even use it as an excuse to brush off my long disused drawing skills.
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 have written and drawn stories since I was a kid. The first project that could truly be identified as worldbuilding in the truest sense of the word is the hugely ambitious Arthurian retelling I started making up when I was in 6th grade. Over the years, it evolved from a typical medieval fantasy Arthurian world to one rooted in the real world history and culture of the 5th and 6th centuries. It culminated in novel that I wrote for my undergraduate degree. Maybe someday it will get a world of its very own one here!
The World of the Time Glass is nearly as old and has gone through just as many changes. There are aspects of it that I wouldn't have chosen today, but one rule I made for myself is that everything I made up as a teenager stays unless I absolutely cannot make it work.
Despite going through so many iterations, I don't consider any of it wasted time. As I have grown to adulthood, expanding my education and lived experiences, the project has matured with me. Themes, plots, and characters have developed nuances and understanding far behind their original concepts, although always seeming to remain true to the core idea.
One thing I have definitely learned from experience: "don't throw anything away!" So many old notebooks have gone missing over the years that sometimes I am left wondering just what my younger self was thinking. However, I often find interesting kernels of inspiration in what is left. It's already in the text, or so it seems.
Also, lean into the weirdness! I have to remind myself of this. The real world is messy, open ended, and often confusing. Let the fictional world be equally so. The characters shouldn't know all the answers, or even be able to get them.Week 3
This week's theme: 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?
As mentioned before, the Sirite are the people undergoing the most revision. In universe, they verge on legend in the memories of humankind. Three hundred years before the present, they withdrew into the seclusion of their realms on the boundaries of the Otherworld. In the current storyline, they are debating breaking their seclusion to reintegrate into the wider world. Opinions are divided and no agreeable compromise seems forthcoming.
The human regions are in a state of transition as well. Eleven years earlier, the northern kingdom fell to decades of political instability and conflict with nomadic tribes from the steppes. The Zimrans sought refuge in the south where they have been attempting to rebuild their lives and keep their traditions alive in a society different to their own. Likewise the south lies uneasily in the balance of power. The sea-girt city of Tyana, which has long dominated its fellow city-states, is in a tenuous state. The western province of Angorit has successfully declared its independence and established a republic. Revolutionary sentiment boils under the surface, despite the best efforts of the Tyanan government.
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 interests have always leaned towards history, folklore, literature, and the arts. In recent years, I have been rediscovering my childhood love for paleontology and zoology. This has, in turn, led to discovering numerous amazing speculative evolution projects across various platforms. I adore the scientific approach to imagining creatures and the deep time aspects of building a world history. It has definitely inspired me to allow myself to lean harder into the weirdness already inherent in my own projects. Pleistocene megafauna now exists on the margins (at least according to rumor).
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 have been admiring a great many homepages and introductory articles.
Week 4
This week's theme: Tomorrow
Assignment 1
Think about current events that will impact the future. Who is working to create a specific kind of future?
This is the burning question. For all the work I have done on this project, I have no clear idea of how it ends. Can the shards be rejoined? What will happen if they are?
On a more conceptual level, I can see the society progressing into the future in ways that mirror our own, much as the current era bears a resemblance. Enlightenment. Industrial Revolution. Gaslight. Possibly powered by magic rather than coal and fossil fuel.
Assignment 2
Make sure everything’s ready—from your writing space to your writing schedule—before Summer Camp begins!Carrying on as I always have, just on a more public forum.
Assignment 3
Who or what will help you achieve your goal? What will your sharing strategy be during Summer Camp?Tea. Tea is the answer.
Magic gives way to science.
Pike and horse give way to powder and ball.
Printing presses fuel revolutionary ideas.
A fledgling republic, forged by unlikely allies, faces the threat of war from a powerful city-state. Yet, just beyond human concerns, a half-forgotten world persists. One rife with chaotic magic, where beings of a legendary past still walk and ancient tales remain unfinished.
When the search for the lost shards of an enigmatic relic brings these two worlds together in an uneasy alliance, will these stories finally be ended? Or will new ones begin?
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