New Year's Resolutions 2024
When WorldAnvil started a new contest on New Year's Eve I just sighed and thought I had enough writing waiting as it is.
To take part, read 10 articles from fellow Anvilites and write about what you learned from them. Then, think about your New Year's Resolutions for your creative projects.That was what it said. And I figured I not only should have time for that, I ought to have time or even must have time. It is about learning my craft. A craft I have a habit of thinking I excel in. It is a good thing to take that kite down myself before I crash. So, I picked the ten most liked articles in the Document category because I do a lot of documents, and I want to see what others do with the same base. Me, I usually upload an image of the actual document and then have a transcription under "Read the document", while facts about it end up in the right-hand section. There were two kinds of writings among the ten I read. One where the article was the actual document, like the cookbook I found, or the introduction for the new intern. The other was describing a document and in some cases adding the text from the document into the article. To let the article be the actual document, is without a doubt far less confusing than a few of the other articles I read, but you can also get a world in a world, so to speak. I'm the writer of Väruld, and I stand as the author of all texts. If I produce an article with my character Avia the warrior as the author, with her writing a letter, then I get a world in a world. If I write an article writing about and/or showing a letter she wrote, then it is still me, writing about Väruld. Personally, I think it is important to know who you are in all this. Do you take on the name of a character in your world and let him/her write, or is it you? Don't mix. A few of those who described a document in their world had made it confusing what was what. And here is the media against them. If you write about the document in one paragraph and in the next include content from the actual document, it will look the same as the paragraph before unless you actively change the look of it. To not make it confusing and messed up, you have to be very clear to the reader what it is, not only in text but visually. One "document" I read was a collection of transcriptions of radio transmission and pages from a log book. It was so well done. It was not a question about what I was reading. While another, though it clearly said "content" in the headline, got me confused because it looked the same as the rest so I thought it was a description of the content at first. Another thing I thought about, opening a single article belonging to a whole world, is how much am I supposed to convey to a reader diving right into it? After these ten pages, I would say that the visuals and the header should give you an idea about what you are about to read, but you cannot introduce your world on every single page. That should be the task of the world's homepage, which is easily accessible top left of the article. I was surprised how often I was not much wiser looking at the homepage. I understand that it is hard to make a summary that is not boring but sparks interest, but personally, I think it is better to have a boring sentence that tells me that this is a dystopian world for that or this game, than some mysterious fluffy text to try and set the mood. You have an endless amount of articles, and images, to set the mood with. Be boring and clear first thing, please. I learned from my ten articles that I can write about a document, without actually showing it. It can be quite thrilling to read about a fantastic book without having access to the actual book. I also learned that I should look into how my Library of Kennis is arranged. Quite a few had libraries that in themselves had documents arranged so you could search in categories. And so, my New Year's Resolution of 2024:
- Get my three new countries - Deris, Hinvagh, and Östan Sunnan - in place. DONE
- Make a list of all places and persons mentioned that do not have their own article - then write them. ONGOING
- Rearrange The Library of Kennis. ONGOING
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