SWEFTS: Showcase World Editing/Fine-Tuning Symposium!

[Lmns Crn]

Okay, here's the deal. Getting a world ready for the Setting Showcase is not an easy thing to do! Sometimes it can be incredibly helpful to have some other people's opinions and advice, to fine-tune things before they hit the Big S. S.

With that in mind, this is a thread for people who want to submit something for the Setting Showcase, but aren't sure what/how. It's a centralized place where we can all get answers to questions like:

- What parts of my world are most interesting, most unique, or most strongly presented?
- What parts of my world are weakest, and need the most extra work?
- What parts of my world do you most want to hear more about?
- What parts of my world seem contradictory, confusing, or vague?
- In what ways could I better organize/present/portray my information, to encourage people to read/understand/comment on it?
- What aspects of my world might make a compelling focus for a part of my eventual Showcase month?

Q. But Mr. Crayon, how is this different from everybody's preexisting setting/discussion threads?

A. Two things. First, having one thread for people interested in the Showcase makes it easy to see who's interested in participating, and makes it easy to look at a lot of people's organizational and presentational issues at once. It ought to be easy to browse this thread and give feedback, quickly and painlessly, to quite a lot of people.

Secondly, this thread is about a different kind of feedback than normal setting/discussion topics-- here, we are very specific. The purpose of this thread is not to fine-tune content, but to fine-tune presentation. Like this:

- I think your section on elves could use a lot more detail.
- You should consider collecting all your information on elves into one place.
- Your paragraphs about the elven nations are confusingly written; could they be revised?
- Have you considered making your elves a focal point of your setting in your Showcase writeup?

Q. Sounds great! Now, how do I participate?[/b]

A. It's so easy! Just post in this thread with your material and your questions. In the interest of tidiness, I do have a couple of suggested guidelines...

- Have material ready.
Basically, there should be something for us all to read. This is not the thread for "I think I'll start writing something about Subject XYZ, but I haven't started yet." We can't comment on your work unless we can see what you've done so far, after all!

- Link to (or spoiler) your work.
Two things here. First, don't make us hunt down your setting in order to comment on it. You'll always get more feedback if you do the reader's legwork for them, so posting a link to your setting is in your best interests. Secondly, it keeps this thread from getting cluttered up with a lot of world-specific stuff. If you want to copy/paste specific information in this thread to further guide our comments, put it in {spoiler}{/spoiler} tags so that it's compact. Please don't make me scroll past 20 paragraphs of elvish histories to get to the next person's post.

- Have specific questions.
While I guess it might work to just plop down a link and say "Hey guys, what do you think?", you will probably benefit from asking more careful questions (which'll help you get the most helpful feedback.) Questions like "What do you think needs the most work?" or "What do you think my Showcase should focus on?" are probably going to be more useful to all of us.

Q. Great! I'll post my stuff ASAP. Is there anything else I need to do?

A. Yes: provide feedback for the other aspiring Showcase entrants in this thread. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, eh?

[Lmns Crn]

[ooc]Reserved: list of settings currently in the workshop[/ooc]

[Lmns Crn]

As an example (but also a for-real entry), the Jade Stage
introduction - setting thread - hosted page
Unfortunately, the hosted page can no longer be updated, so new information is sort of floating around in limbo. When our glorious new hosting options go live, I should be much more organized.

After talking with Phoenix Knight in the Showcase news post, I've decided to break my eventual Showcase into four parts, so that each week of the month will have a different "theme." (Hopefully, this will encourage everyone to be active in reading and discussion throughout the month.)

Problem is, I'm having trouble deciding what the themes should be. Things I'm kicking around currently include:

- the dwarven empire (their old glory, the collapse, their influence on the rest of the world, current government, the vanishing of Damira Clan, technology and advances, relation to the humans, etc.)
- religion (the Cardan faith, the goblins' water-based voodoo-type religion, boru ancestor worship and the Cho, various other things)
- orks and the Burning Wars (history of the Burning Wars, the orkish strongholds, orkish relics and ruins that survive, etc.)
- ???

I'm basically worried that the dwarven empire is a pretty enormous topic, and that it overlaps a lot with religion (because of the Cardan faith.) I don't know how much of a problem this is, though. Also, I don't know what to fill the last "empty" week with. I've thought about using humans (including Ithyria and the Indrist Road), goblins, simocs, or the Wilding Fen (and probably other wilderness/frontier type areas as well). Or I could break technology away from the dwarven empire topic and give it a week of its own-- it might be big enough. Or I could do a week on organizations and factions (although I don't think I have enough detail on those-- yet.)

Basically, I'm curious about what aspects you find most interesting, and which ones would most entice and encourage you to read and respond.

[Hibou]

Hmm...

Perhaps someone could be appointed Showcase Editor, for aiding in presentation? If there isn't someone who already does it, I mean. It would be great to have someone go over material to be presented before it gets in the spotlight, just so it's easier to read. I've recently had a friend do this with some of my stuff and it's made my setting much more clear.

[Lmns Crn]

Perhaps someone could be appointed Showcase Editor, for aiding in presentation? If there isn't someone who already does it, I mean. It would be great to have someone go over material to be presented before it gets in the spotlight, just so it's easier to read. I've recently had a friend do this with some of my stuff and it's made my setting much more clear.

Problem is, that would be a huge job, and the Opal Council folks are busy enough without adding it. I am hoping that a thread like this will help us all self-edit our submissions so that it won't be necessary. (And anyway, a lot of presentational decisions-- such as what to highlight and emphasize-- really ought to be made by the author, when possible.)

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Well, LC, as for your last topic, what about your liriss (sp? the reptile men people). That was a fun section for me way back when.

[Elven Doritos]

I'll be working with the selected author on the front page and Guide articles, assuming they need help. Although it hasn't really been publicly stated, I'm going to be the admin responsible for the Showcase, so that's part of my responsibility.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Something else just occurred to me (thanks LC!). I have been think of revising my setting whenever new hosting options go live, both to correct old issues, and to push back the timeline so that it corresponds with my writing (set about 350 years before the assumed date on my website). I was thinking of not doing Showcase until after then. But now it occurs to me, doing it before might give me a better idea of things to change and revise when I do get to it.

As the coordinator for the workshop, and given our prior conversation, I'm especially interest in your opinion on the idea, LC. I could see merits to doing it either way. One the one hand, presenting information I know will change (but I can't easily change on the website under the current circumstances) might not be great, but it could tell me other things to fix.

[Túrin]

Problem is, I'm having trouble deciding what the themes should be. Things I'm kicking around currently include:

- the dwarven empire (their old glory, the collapse, their influence on the rest of the world, current government, the vanishing of Damira Clan, technology and advances, relation to the humans, etc.)
- religion (the Cardan faith, the goblins' water-based voodoo-type religion, boru ancestor worship and the Cho, various other things)
- orks and the Burning Wars (history of the Burning Wars, the orkish strongholds, orkish relics and ruins that survive, etc.)
- ???

Since the Showcase is supposed to be interactive, perhaps you could let the last theme (or even two) be decided by the reviewers. This could either be done by explicitly asking them (perhaps through an informal poll) what topic they'd like to see featured in the last week or by handpicking a theme that you've noticed the reviewers seemed to take interest in.

I think the Showcase would be an interesting experience for everyone if you pick themes for the first two weeks on the criteria of 'What topic would I particularly like to have comments on?' while the latter two weeks could be themed about 'What do the reviewers want to see?'. You could  prepare for the latter two weeks during the former two weeks.

This is just an idea of course. Do with it what you want.

Túrin

[Lmns Crn]

I'll be working with the selected author on the front page and Guide articles, assuming they need help. Although it hasn't really been publicly stated, I'm going to be the admin responsible for the Showcase, so that's part of my responsibility.

Since the Showcase is supposed to be interactive, perhaps you could let the last theme (or even two) be decided by the reviewers. This could either be done by explicitly asking them (perhaps through an informal poll) what topic they'd like to see featured in the last week or by handpicking a theme that you've noticed the reviewers seemed to take interest in.

I think the Showcase would be an interesting experience for everyone if you pick themes for the first two weeks on the criteria of 'What topic would I particularly like to have comments on?' while the latter two weeks could be themed about 'What do the reviewers want to see?'. You could prepare for the latter two weeks during the former two weeks.[/quote]This is pretty much the most awesome idea I've heard all day. I'll be adopting it, for sure.