🔥 Prepare for WorldEmber!

Are you up for a worldbuilding challenge?
Join me in writing 10,000 words during December this year 🔥😁

This isn't a sponsored series of posts - it's just my favourite writing challenge! I often leave these kind of posts until the last minute, so this time I thought I'd share my best tips early so you can put them to good use!

Even if you're not using World Anvil I still recommend that you take part in WorldEmber - you may not get any prizes or digital badges, but you will have a lot more lore than you did before! 🥰

🎯 Setting your goal

The baseline goal for WorldEmber is 10,000 words of new worldbuilding during the month of December, but if you're not fussed about badges or prizes you could aim for something smaller like 5,000. If 10k sounds like a walk in the park for you, many folks in the community try aiming for goals of 25k, or even 50k!

The only way to make a good goal is to make one that you can achieve! 🙌 - and the best way I've found of doing it is to make it a SMART goal:

• 🔍 Specific
  The challenge is to write new content and expand your worldbuilding and not copy/paste pre-written lore.
• 📊 Measurable
  This is your wordcount goal!
  If you don't have one, how will you know when you've reached it?
• 🏅 Achievable
  December is often one of the busiest months of the year - how's your calendar looking? You might need to adjust your wordcount goal to fit around your plans. Are you a speedy typist or a slow and thoughtful worldbuilder? Take this into consideration, too!
• 🔗 Relevant
  What area(s) of your world do you plan on developing? Are you writing in just one world, or multiple settings simultaneously? This is really important to have so that you have a direction to go in and it'll make it so much easier to connect your ideas together!
• ⏳ Time-Bound
  The only words that count are those written during December!

🥰 Accountability is key

Taking part in a writing challenge is, well, challenging! But it's a lot easier to stick to it with lots of encouragement from people around you.

WorldEmber is primarily a solo challenge, but you can also team up with other worldbuilders in the community and encourage each other as you work side by side. Also let your friends & family know what you're working towards and if you're going to be busy at certain times of day so you can focus!

Here are some accountability tips that have worked really well for me in this event:

• 😈 Friendly rival
  Find a friend who has a similar goal to you and ask if they'd be comfortable being your friendly rival - see if you can have a bit of friendly competition and keep pace with each other until you both reach your goal!
• 💻 Body doubling
  Hop in a call in a Discord server with some fellow writers (it doesn't matter if they're strangers!) and mute & deafen your audio. You can choose to be on video or not, but the idea is that you are present and you are worldbuilding together. You can use the voice chat text to communicate without distracting each other! Alternatively, if you're a streamer - why not have a focus stream with your audience to hold you accountable?
• ⏲️ Writing sprints
  Set a timer for 20mins, 30mins, or 1hr and see how much you can write! No editing! Only writing! (You can edit after the time's up! 😆)
  Ideally do this with a friend or two, but you can also do this solo! Consider keeping a list of your results to see how well you did each time.
• 🏆 Mini-challenges
  Lots of people in the World Anvil community run unofficial challenges to motivate people to explore specific areas of their world with a prompt. You could also run one yourself, or simply ask a friend to pick a writing prompt or specific article type for you!

📊 Useful tools & resources

Over the years I've made a bunch of useful tools that I use to win at WorldEmber every year, and they're all free (or pay-what-you-want)! 🥳🎉

📔 Worldbuilding Planner

TJ’s Worldbuilding Planner

What you’ll get:An interactive Google Sheet containing: 📈 A goal planner with a wordcount and progress tracker🌍 A place to plan out what you want to create⚡ Somewhere to keep track of your favourite prompts and challenges📜 A bonus quest board that will help you decide what to do next! Features: Suitable for worldbuilding and creative writing challenges! You can use this tool for helping keep track of your worldbuilding ideas, plan out your next milestone and big goals, or even track your daily writing progress!It even has a place to keep track of all of those prompts and challenges that you want to take part in or get around to finishing! (Seriously, how many ARE there in October now?)If you’re stuck for ideas, check the quest board! It will pick a random top priority item from your list, or maybe an unfinished prompt, or maybe just a small thing you can achieve! It has some great self care ideas as rewards for completing them, too. 💜Reach your goals as you track your progressNail that NaNoWriMo, smash that Summer Camp, and win at WorldEmber by keeping a steady pace and avoiding burnout. Complete three short writing sprints and the tool will calculate your average writing speed - it will use this to show you how long your next target will take each day so you can find some time in your schedule to achieve your ultimate goal!Furthermore, if you know you’ll have some busy days during your challenge - it will take that into account and increase your daily target accordingly so that you finish on time!Fully customizableEvery part of the sheet is customizable! You can customise all of the lists used in the dropdown menus, and add your own motivational quotes and self care rewards to keep you motivated throughout your challenges. As always, if something doesn’t suit you - change it or remove it! Only use what’s useful to you :)The drop down menus in the planner are based off of the ready-to-use templates on World Anvil, but you are free to customise it and use the worldbuilding tools that suit you best!LicenceThis work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Gumroad

Grab a copy of my worldbuilding planner and use it to set your goal, calculate your writing speed, and plan out days off in your schedule to figure out how many words you need to write each day to succeed! It's also got a place to plan ideas, set rewards for yourself, and has a quest board if you get stuck on what to work on next! 🥰

✒️ Worldbuilding Prompts

400 Worldbuilding Prompts

What you’ll get:🌍 400 inspiring worldbuilding prompts suitable for any project 📊 An interactive Google Sheet to keep track of your progress 📄 A bonus printer friendly .pdf version Features: Suitable for any worldbuilding project! Every prompt is genre agnostic so that you can use it for any type of world that you’re creating. There’s a huge variety of prompts spanning from broad concepts to quirky and complex ideas for you to expand on!You can use these prompts for:writing inspirationgame developmentbuilding a TTRPG campaignexpanding your existing worldbuilding projector even starting a brand new world!Watch your world grow as you track your progressMake your own copy of the interactive Google Sheet and watch your world grow as you keep track of your worldbuilding progress! Use the notes area next to each prompt to jot down brief ideas, or use it as a place to reference where you’ve answered the prompt.See how far you’ve come by using check boxes!Go at your own paceThis is not some crazy writing challenge! 🤣 You can pick and choose the order you want to write them in, and answer as briefly or verbosely as you like. Go at your own pace and only answer the ones that you want to!Find inspiration quickly by category400 worldbuilding prompts is A LOT of ideas so I’ve organised them into 25 different categories so that you can easily find inspiration for what you want to build next!You can click on the links in the Google Sheet to jump to each category instantly! 💡 Generic & Broad Prompts 🧱 Buildings & Structures 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Characters & People 🦠 Conditions & Diseases ⚔️ Conflicts & Feuds 📝 Documents & Records 🙏 Ethnicities & Cultures 🏞️ Geography & Places 💰 Items & Treasures 🗨️ Languages & Phrases 💎 Materials & Substances 🛡️ Military Units & Armed Forces 🐉 Myths & Legends 🌪️ Natural Laws & Forces 🏛️ Organizations & Countries 💼 Professions & Jobs 📜 Plots & Events ✒️ Prose & Written Word 👑 Ranks & Titles 🏙️ Settlements & Cities 🦌 Species & Creatures ✨ Spells & Skills 🛠️ Technology & Inventions 🎨 Traditions & Customs⛵ Vehicles & TransportThese categories exist as ready-to-use templates on World Anvil, but you are free to use the worldbuilding tools that suit you best.LicenceThis work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Gumroad

If you're struggling with a blank page, I've got you covered with 400 worldbuilding prompts, all sorted by different article types and easy to search through. You can use the checkboxes to mark prompts as complete and watch the progress bars fill up as your world develops! It also comes with a printable version.

📁 Organise your worldbuilding

Having a jolly good spring clean before adding 10,000 more words is a really sensible idea so that you know where to put all of your new lore. I've got a deep dive on some different ways you can approach it:

📁 How to organise your worldbuilding

A deep dive on methods to organise your worldbuilding so that your lore is sorted, searchable, and easy to explore!

🌎 TJ's Worldbuilding Blog ✨TJ Trewin

📚 Review of past World Anvil homework

Officially, WorldEmber prep month starts in November - so if you prefer, you can bookmark this and save it all until then 😉

Homework tasks typically include:

• Making a pledge article and announcing your goal to the community so you have accountability
• Reflecting on your world meta (example) and updating it if necessary
• Planning your focus area to develop
• Organising your world
• Gathering inspiration

Last year World Anvil set up a specific challenge page so you could submit your preparation homework, and they'll probably do so again this year! Why not take a look at some of the entries to see how other people made their plans? 👀

📰 Bonus WorldEmber posts

This post covers everything you need to get excited and ready for the event, but I'm releasing these bonus posts SUPER EARLY just for newsletter subscribers if you want to go the extra mile 😜

• 📚 Things you can prepare in advance (without cheating)
• 📜 How to boost your wordcount (also w/o cheating) to achieve your goal
• 💖 WorldEmber FTW: how to increase engagement without spamming
• 🧯 How to keep pace without burnout

So, what's your goal for this year? 🤩