Fantasy/ Worldbuilding Club

A boot camp type of thing sounds good - but maybe more general, in like 8 week segments (where each week or every few days is a different topic), with multiple people through PMs or the club forums? Not as in depth or specific as a year-long set of challenges, but something basic to help people identify quick problems with things like geography, climate, culture, etc.

@Lareine that sounds interesting, I'd need to see who else would be interested and I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on the matter, maybe more detail on what you feel it should contain etc.

What I'm thinking is like a group of 5 or 6 people in weekly workshops, all in a Writerfeed Pad or something the like where everyone can comment on someone else's worldbuilding and try to help out with revisions. Not a "contest" so much as a group revision system. Since timezones are a thing, each subject would last a week to give everyone time to read and comment on everyone else's worldbuilding in the pad.

The schedule I have in mind would go kind of like this:

Week 1: Overview 1 (an overview of the world, important points, etc.)
Week 2: Geography & Climate
Week 3: Modern Cultural Groups
Week 4: History of Cultural Groups (divided since it's so in-depth)
Week 5: Government & History of
Week 6: Technology (or Magic if applicable) & History of
Week 7: Story Conflict (putting the conflict of the story on paper to compare it with the worldbuilding and make sure it meshes well) or something else?
Week 8: Overview 2 (a revised overview of the world, fleshed out with the information gained through the boot camp)

obviously very rough, and not as in-depth, but I think it would help a lot of people to have multiple comments on their worldbuilding and discussions around what's confusing and what could be improved. You would end with a rough portfolio of the world, and a revised overview, to better guide you.

@haredrier
Worldbuilding Boot Camp sounds like a good idea. It might be nice if, in addition to Lareine's suggestions, the topics be more specific to each person's particular world. This wouldn't be too difficult to manage, as the group would probably be fairly small. Let me know what you think!

Oh, another comment -- the way I see it is, if you don't get a full roster all the time, people could repeat the boot camp with different worlds. I know that I have like FIFTY ZILLION projects and I need to do more in-depth worldbuilding on all of them, haha.

And Meerkat, considering the boot camp would be a group revision system, it basically would be tailored to their world already There's no reason to go through and invent new questions for one person's specific world when they need to cover the basics the same as everyone; maybe we could do that in the future with an Advanced Boot Camp of sorts, once someone has gone through the boot camp at least once with a world.

I was thinking we could either host it here in the forums or do it personally one on on through PMs to get critique and have your distinct progress seperate from others. They could choose to either go through the basics or continue onto more small details of their world, and they could probably do the same with another world after they're done with the first one.

My issue with the forums and PMs is that they're not realtime -- and it's very easy to lose information. By using WriterFeed Pad and the like, information is kept in one place for everyone who participates, and realtime commenting is possible so there's no losing comments.

Mhm, that's a good idea