Week 1: get yourself organized!
This week's theme: Change
May you live in interesting times.— Apocryphal Chinese proverb
Tumultuous times are interesting moments to set stories in, whether they be due to natural disasters, sickness, conflicts, or others. Characters face unusual challenges, infrastructure breaks down, and society as a whole can change.
Change can be big and small—from the size of a small community or city to the entire universe—, and it can be positive and negative.
Assignment 1
Consider what kind of changes would fit in with your world's themes, genre, and other foundational points.
Prepare yourself: Set your goal
How much time do you have to write? How much of Summer Camp can you realistically complete, based on that? Your Summer Camp goals are for you to set, and it's important to have realistic expectations. If you set too high of a goal, you could burn out—and nobody wants that!
Take a look at your schedule, consider other hobbies or activities you want to make time for, and think how much you can write with the remaining time. If you're not sure, time yourself while you answer a
random worldbuilding prompt with a 300-word article!
Assignment 2Based on this, decide how many prompts you'll go for during Summer Camp. Then,
download the pledge document and fill it accordingly!
Prepare your world: Categories & Tags
A great way to make writing faster is to prepare your world so you don't have to think about anything other than writing. Organization is a very important part of any project: as your world expands, it can get quite unwieldy unless you use a proper category structure.
Take some time to review your category tree and tagging system and re-organize them if necessary. The best category trees are those that follow the themes and focus points of your setting. Check
this post about organization and
this one about categories for some advice!
Tip: During Summer Camp, use a special Summer Camp tag (such as sc24). When the challenge ends, you'll be able to quickly find everything you wrote to review it at your own pace.
Assignment 3
Get your categories and tags organized!
For the older worlds: Update the meta
You probably have a meta already, or some sort of foundational document that guides your worldbuilding. But just like your world expands and changes over time, so should the meta! An outdated meta is worse than no meta, as it will introduce inconsistencies and other elements that won't fit your world's themes anymore.
Assignment 4
Take a look at your meta, primer, and any other high-level document and update it according to the current state of your world.
To submit this homework, add your pledge document to a generic article along with a short explanation of your answers to the assignments. Then, submit that article to the Prep challenge.
Week 2: 8th June 2024
This week's theme: Refuge
There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.— Albert Schweitzer, philosopher and polymath
Where do you go when everything around you changes? A refuge can be a literal place (like a building or a city), but it can also be anything that keeps you safe or comforts you. The change someone takes refuge from can also be small in the grand scheme of things—sometimes, small changes can have deep consequences on a specific person or group.
Assignment 1
Consider what kinds of refuge would fit in with your world's themes, genre, and other foundational points.
Prepare yourself: Find an accountability buddy
Summer Camp is a 1-month worldbuilding marathon, and it can be hard to achieve your goal if you don't have an accountability system! Everyone has different strategies here, but having someone who can keep you accountable for your progress is a great way to keep going.
But even if you don't want or need an accountability buddy, having a community to share your progress and you amazing creations is great too! Sharing your stuff can increase your motivation, and it will also help you improve if you're open to feedback.
Prepare your world: Styling
First impressions are important to get readers hooked to your world—but looks are important even if your world is just for your RPG group (or yourself). If you don't keep styling and layout in mind, your articles will quickly become too dense and hard to read to be useful. You may even struggle to read your own articles later on if you're not careful!
So give future you a hand and use this week to improve the styling and layout of your world: check
these tips to get started! And during Summer Camp, while styling shouldn't be the priority, keep this in mind to make your articles well-structured.
Assignment 3
Find ways to improve styling and layout in your world!
For the older worlds: Any CSS upgrades?
If you're a CSS wizard, do any CSS upgrades now! If you leave it for July, CSS will derail your Summer Camp progress when you want to focus on writing. So take a good look at your world, anticipate any CSS tweaks you'll want to do in the near future, and consider editing your theme now.
Assignment 4
If you’re a CSS wizard, maybe take the time now to give it a polish!
To turn in this week's homework, edit your submitted article with a short explanation of your progress in these assignments.