WAC: Events & Benefits
How do challenges help you grow as a worldbuilder and why you should join them.
As you join worldbuilding communities, websites, forums, or others, it is quite probable you will find community events. These events are great to learn, improve, and meet new people! So let’s talk about them.
Hello, I’m Catoblepon, and I’ve been worldbuilding for a decade on my own, and for about 6 years in an online community where I’ve been participating in different events. I’ve always found events interesting and fun to do, and I’ve loved seeing the community participate in events to the point where I’ve created my own unofficial events.
This is the first article of my “Worldbuilding & Challenges” series, where I will talk about worldbuilding events, why you should take part in them, and share some tips for them.
Reading time: 5 minutes.
Table of contents
The Events
Worldbuilding communities often host various events, also known as challenges and competitions. They are great ways of learning, improving, and even finding new readers!
I strongly believe people should try to join as many events as possible while ensuring they will not burn out. Events are great for growing as a worldbuilder and connecting with a community with the same hobby.
Events can help in multiple ways!
The Benefits
Expand your world in new ways. This often happens when the event involves prompts, asking about topics one might not considered before, or people ask interesting questions about the idea that help you expand it.
Learn new things. By reading other people’s content, you can learn new ways of formatting ideas, new fun things you can think about or add to your content, and even find new features of your preferred writing software.
Receiving feedback. Being in a community makes it easier to find someone willing to give you feedback (for free!). Make sure to specify what kind of feedback you are looking for (grammar, formatting, comprehension, styling, etc)
New reading material. Reading is a great way of both having a small break and learning. Share some love around and follow their content, they might even follow you back! You can find new people to follow as easy as finding new followers!
Expanding your circle. Being in a community provides opportunities to meet new people and make friends. These friendships can help keep you motivated, as you can share and discuss projects.
Talking. Talking with people about the event and your work is always encouraging. It boosts your confidence and motivation when they show interest in your content.
My Experience
I’ve been worldbuilding in a community for over 6 years and participated in events since almost the start. I’ve seen a lot of events during all these years and always found them interesting and fun to do.
The sense of community around events is part of why I’ve stuck with this hobby instead of getting bored with it as I have with most of my other ones. The brainstorming chats and people sharing content and reading yours are always motivating to keep doing the events even when you initially don’t know what to write about.
But there is also a bad side to events, especially when they get judged: brain goblins telling you that “Your content isn’t good enough” or “Your idea is bad” are common, especially when starting to do the events, and when there are prizes and you don’t win anything, it can lead to disappointment.
I think it’s important to remember those things when joining events, there will be good moments and bad moments, but in the end, you should be having fun and learn as much as possible.
WA Challenges
World Anvil has plenty of events each year based on prompts surrounding different aspects of worldbuilding.
It often makes you write things you don’t necessarily like (which you can always not do if you don’t enjoy it) or thought about before. All the ideas people come up with from the same single-word or single-sentence prompt are awe-inspiring!
The two most popular and biggest events of World Anvil are “Summer Camp” and “World Ember”.
Summer Camp happens during July and will give you over 32 prompts (this year has been 42) to write about. For every 8 prompts you write about, you’ll get a badge (the biggest badge is doing 32 prompts).
World Ember happens during December and you are given free range on what to write, but you need to reach a minimum of 10k words. There’s a badge for finishing the event and reaching 25k and 50k words.
Other than these two big events, there is a month-long event every month or two. These often offer a variety of activities, some are reading events, some are single-prompt events, and some are a competition.
Tell me
I want to try to make my posts in substack a bit interactive, so, I’d like to always end up with a question or two that you, the reader, can answer in the comments!
So let me know, what’s your experience with events? Is there an event you are looking forward to?
Keep reading the series
Event & Benefits (this article!)
Burning out (to be published)