I wanted to talk about how I'm going to be organizing as I progress. I'm starting pretty much all the elements off with just a single “Brainstorm” page, which just has one big text area where I dump everything into it in a sort of stream of consciousness manner. Then, once I've developed more details and I get a better grasp of what it is that I really need to care about, or focus on, in that element, I'll start to develop more and more templates that will organize the information in a way that's a lot easier to read and work through.
As I begin working on my first world in this project, I'm already thinking about alternatives to how I'm setting things up which could work well in other worlds. If I come up with anything that particularly stands out, I'm going to try and note it down in either a bulk notes document, or if they're stand-out enough, in their own location element, to be developed further later. I'm not sure yet whether I'll make these underdeveloped elements and notes public, or if I'll keep them private until I get around to actually working on them.
I'm also still debating whether I want to build a lot of worlds and them work then the stories within them, or start working on the story for this world once I've gotten a lot of it built out, or even to start working on a story for it as I build the world. I do definitely want these worlds to stand on their own, however, so I'm leaning towards building at least a few worlds first before I start really diving into any longer stories. That being said I may write a few short stories (probably < 5k words) along the way to try and get something of a feel for each of the worlds.
Finally, I'm hoping to post new updates at least a couple times each week, whether they're just small brain dumps, or bigger more significant world-building changes. I'll also probably try to do these more meta “Blog” Posts once or twice per week to talk about why I'm doing things the way I am, and what I'm planning on doing in the near future.
- Michael