WorldEmber 2023 Homework

WorldEmber Prep 2023 Instructions
WorldEmber 2023
My Progress Report

Week 1: Pledge Your Goal

Focus

My area of focus is important background information for my current WIP, an epic Science Fiction/Fantasy trilogy. There are two major parts that I plan to work on.

• Star systems and their major population areas:

  The trilogy takes place in Ruartei, a FTL galactic society. Specifically, among the upper society which spans dozens of central, major, and minor worlds. Although the books themselves only take place on a few worlds, the characters and events refer to many of the other worlds. The second book of the trilogy, in particular, takes place at “The Court” on the capital planet of the Grand Society. Therefore, having the worlds outlined will help me bring life to the culture and story.

• Characters, historical and in the current book:

  The trilogy, due to the genre and plot, has a large number of characters. There are a more reasonable number of primary and secondary characters. But in addition, there is a larger number of more trivial characters (that play important parts, but can't really be consolidated). The main, secondary, and significant characters will each have their own article. The trivial characters will be listed on different pages, depending on the character's purpose. And I will also have a reference list of all characters.

Pledge

For December 2023, I pledge to write 15,000 words of worldbuilding on Ruartei Worlds & People. I make this promise to myself, my readers, my fans and the world which is made better by my creative spirit.

—Joella Kay

WorldEmber 2023 Pledge for JoellaKay by World Anvil Fillable PDF

Week 2: Prepare Your Area of Focus

Mini-Meta

My current WIP (a trilogy) has quite a few characters and star systems of note. During Worldember 2023, I plan to sketch out the primary and secondary characters as well as sketch out the relevant star systems. The focus on each will be the background information that will help me keep the events and description in the books consistent, relatable, and intriguing.

Category Structure

The star systems will go into the Atlas. Star systems with significant population centers and other stellar objects will have their own categories.

For the People, I've added the category of People to the top level organization. I have not decided how to organize the articles under this category yet, but probably into groups according to organization, family, or world. In addition, I plan to have articles which list people (with links to their articles) according to the book in which they appear or are (significally) referenced.

Week 3: Welcome your readers!

My World's Home Page

Currently, my home page is just an image header and an image-rich table of contents. When I restarted my world website (a little over a year ago), I decided I would wait on creating a proper home page until I had a reasonable amount of content. I still don't have much — most of the articles are still stubs. But since I now have people reading my articles, it makes sense to at least add a simple introduction (an elevator pitch).

But, I'm having quite a bit of trouble coming up with the elevator pitch. It's difficult for me to pick out the key elements of my world and describe them. Partly, this is because I plan for this world website to serve three purposes (see the right column).

I know, I know. You're not supposed to do that. But until there are child worlds or some other mechanism to share pages between different worlds, I figured I would just come up with a design that allowed the reader to easily find and explore the three different views of the world of Ruartei.

Anyway, I'll work on a brief introduction and add it to my world's home page sometime before Worldember starts.

My World Website's Purpose

I have three (so far) different purposes for the Ruartei World Website. These are:

• Author's World Codex — a complete reference to the world
• Reader's world for the Arke Portal books
• Reader's world for the Arke Station books

My plan is that each purpose will have their own presentation so that a visitor can easily view and read the part they're interested in.

Note: The Arke Station books take place many years after the Arke Portal books, and significant changes occurr — with worlds, leadership, general knowledge, etc. So I will need to pay attention when writing articles so that they handle both timeframes. Having separate sections, especially timelines, for each set of books will help.

Week 4: last minute prep!

I've been preparing for WorldEmber nearly all month. I have a lot of stub articles prepared, a basic plan of action, and focus areas. I've also been updating CSS and custom article templates (that I plan on using) in advance.

The last few things I have to do are: fix the sidebar on my custom character template and decide on some categories.

Articles

Completed

Partially Done