08-13-2013, 09:22 AM
Reading Stephen's thoughts, a notion occurs - From time to time we've had stories or vignettes (e.g., traveler's notes) that take place at a written up locale within the setting. Usually, it shakes out that we put a link from the relevant EG article(s) to the story that illustrates it. Perhaps we should push this a bit more and in a somewhat different manner.
Instead of writing stuff that just happens to be in a particular place we've already written about, maybe we could look to add stories/vignettes to the already existing worlds/systems in the setting. So the EG on Djed could get a vignette or day in the life set there or the like. Ultimately we might shift these to their own tab or window on a redesigned website so that people could have a more 'holistic' experience of them as part of the overall description of that world or system. Illustrations relating to the story could also be included if anyone gets a yen to do some.
On a couple of related notes:
a) Sort of tying into the 'Pulling Out All the Stops' thread I posted earlier - one of the thing we (and a lot of hard SF) tend to do is spend a lot of time explaining the nuts-n-bolts of the setting when writing stories. Lots of exposition on HOW something (usually a gadget) works. Perhaps we should move away from that or try to avoid it in our storytelling and simply 'show' the tech in action without bothering to explain how it works. That's sort of what the EG is for anyway. If we really want to we could perhaps include links to the relevant EG pages if the author cared to. Or fold excerpts from EG entries into the story.
b) One thing we might also do to help address the diversity of the setting (which can sometimes feel as intimidating as trying to drink from a firehose) is step back from trying to describe the vast swathes of diversity across the entire setting or an entire empire and instead focus just on one world or system or hab. An easy starting point for this could be the capital systems of each of the Sephirotics. Many of them have fairly extensive writeups already, so it would give us a starting point.
Basically we might set up a major page or series of interlinked pages about a given capital system (although could use others if we wanted) that gets into aspects of not just the tech and infrastructure but the different races and clades living there, the various cultures, the religions, arts, etc. etc. including the lives of the 'average' people. This could let us concentrate a lot of information in one place while also giving us the flexibility (via the magic of linking) to add or collect content organically instead of trying to produce a single massive article covering all aspects of everything (which can be pretty daunting in its own right).
What do y'all think of the above? What other ideas do folks have on how we might improve our depiction of the setting?
Todd
Instead of writing stuff that just happens to be in a particular place we've already written about, maybe we could look to add stories/vignettes to the already existing worlds/systems in the setting. So the EG on Djed could get a vignette or day in the life set there or the like. Ultimately we might shift these to their own tab or window on a redesigned website so that people could have a more 'holistic' experience of them as part of the overall description of that world or system. Illustrations relating to the story could also be included if anyone gets a yen to do some.
On a couple of related notes:
a) Sort of tying into the 'Pulling Out All the Stops' thread I posted earlier - one of the thing we (and a lot of hard SF) tend to do is spend a lot of time explaining the nuts-n-bolts of the setting when writing stories. Lots of exposition on HOW something (usually a gadget) works. Perhaps we should move away from that or try to avoid it in our storytelling and simply 'show' the tech in action without bothering to explain how it works. That's sort of what the EG is for anyway. If we really want to we could perhaps include links to the relevant EG pages if the author cared to. Or fold excerpts from EG entries into the story.
b) One thing we might also do to help address the diversity of the setting (which can sometimes feel as intimidating as trying to drink from a firehose) is step back from trying to describe the vast swathes of diversity across the entire setting or an entire empire and instead focus just on one world or system or hab. An easy starting point for this could be the capital systems of each of the Sephirotics. Many of them have fairly extensive writeups already, so it would give us a starting point.
Basically we might set up a major page or series of interlinked pages about a given capital system (although could use others if we wanted) that gets into aspects of not just the tech and infrastructure but the different races and clades living there, the various cultures, the religions, arts, etc. etc. including the lives of the 'average' people. This could let us concentrate a lot of information in one place while also giving us the flexibility (via the magic of linking) to add or collect content organically instead of trying to produce a single massive article covering all aspects of everything (which can be pretty daunting in its own right).
What do y'all think of the above? What other ideas do folks have on how we might improve our depiction of the setting?
Todd