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Welcome to Worldsmyths!
We are a community for fantasy writers at all stages in their writing journey. Our community centers primarily around the forums for discussion of the fantasy writing we all enjoy, our Library for members to share their fiction, member-generated writing resources, and our Discord server for faster paced discussion of writing (and of life in general). If you enjoy writing fantasy, please consider making us an online home!
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Latest News
Welcome to the New Forum!
Hi everyone, and welcome to the new forum!
We're very excited to have you here! We know that the site is different now and it might take some time to get used to, but we're happy to help along the way!
We're excited to have a library for submitting work (one in which you can copy/paste with formatting from Word!) and a section for submitting writing resources, and we hope you'll help us fill them with fun submissions. We're also looking for your feedback on what you like, so we've made a post here for you to give us your feedback in. Any feedback you can think of would be super helpful and greatly appreciated! Also, we'll be posting something soon about potential member donations for getting extra features members may be interested in, or for helping with the cost to run the site, so be on the look out for that!
Recent Updates (and related wonkiness)
Partly based on recent member suggestions and partly because it's something that has been floating in the back of my mind for a while, I shuffled the member groups around a bit today, creating a Newbies group for members who have contributed fewer than 15 items of content (topics, comments, stories, articles, etc) that automatically promotes to Member once you hit 15 content. I also had the site shuffle members into two inactive groups if they haven't been around. Members who haven't logged in for 60+ days and haven't posted content for 100+ days were put in the Inactive member group. Members who haven't logged in for 100+ days and haven't posted content for 200+ days were put in the Prune member group. We'll be discussing what to do with these differentiated groups as Staff. There's the potential that those in the Prune member group might be deleted permanently, but we haven't had time to discuss that and decide yet, so we'll see. If you have any input on the matter, please let us know in a comment! Anyway, the shuffling led to some permissions gaps for a little bit, so if you couldn't access part of the forum temporarily, my bad! Should be fixed, but let me know if you run into any problems. Additionally, I added new guidelines and forms in the Feedback / Beta Reading forum (originally the Find a Beta forum) and archived the Submissions & Review forum. So here are some questions up for discussion that we could use input on. Do you think it would be good to delete the accounts of people who haven't logged in for over 100 days/posted for over 200 days? There's no member list on this software; would you be curious to see our active Members vs Newbies vs Inactive and Purge members now that they've been sorted based on activity? (I ask because I'd be curious lol) Currently Newbies cannot see inside the Brainstorming subforum and can't post their own topics (but can reply to topics) in the Feedback subforum until they're auto-promoted at 15 content items posted. Currently they can see anything posted in the Library, but we could change that. This is to provide a little buffer where new members have to participate in the community a little before they can access members' personal story ideas and before they can request specific feedback on their work. What do you think about these limitations? Would you suggest keeping them in a sort of "Guest View" of the Library until they promote to full membership? Alternatively we could add a Newbie Friendly Library category, but that might be overkill...? @Penguinball suggested that in addition to the 15 content minimum requirement, Newbies need to review something in the Library in order to gain full membership. Something like this is doable, but has downsides too; if there's no admin online for a few hours around the time a member fulfills that requirement, they'll have to wait until an admin notices to receive their promotion. What do we think? Worth it? Should there be some other requirement(s) or alternative options, such as posting a writing resource, posting an introduction, etc? If we limit Newbie access to the Library, how would this be impacted? How do the new Feedback / Beta Reading forms and guidelines look? Anything you would recommend changing or adding? @Penguinball also suggested a sort of purge of the Feedback forum at the first of the year, archiving old threads and essentially re-surveying members to see who's actively willing to be a beta reader/provide feedback. This is what we have at the moment as our best means of determining our beta reader population. What do you think? Any suggestions? As a note I'm going to try to find a way to make a page that essentially shows those search results plus a snippet of the member's Beta Reading tab on their profile, but I'm not sure yet whether I'll be able to. Any other thoughts or feedback you have are more than welcome! I was more long-winded than I intended to be; apologies!
New Features & Changes
It seems I got a little over excited last night and gave the go ahead to put the forum online without making sure all the permissions were good to go! My mistake, and sorry about that. Thank you to all the members who have been keeping us updated on what's working, what's glitchy, and what can be improved! Here are some highlights of some changes and features we have going on after the software switch. The Library Some of you have already begun exploring the Library! It was the main reason for our switch. You're able to copy and paste formatted text (which seems to work best from Word and only sketchily from Google Docs at the moment), and you can divide your work into chapters with the pagination feature. There are fields for author's notes, content warnings, genre, and more. And members can react to, comment on, and review your work! You can react and respond to their reviews, as well. There are a ton of great features. Clubs We have a new feature called Clubs on this software, and I'm giving it a trial run as the Restricted Section instead of having it be a forum. That way members can apply for membership in the club, and if they're 18 or older, we can accept them. I sent invites out to a couple people I noticed who were participating in the Restricted Chatter board before, but I know I didn't catch everyone. Additionally, members can apply to start their own clubs, and they come in a variety of access levels. You can allow all members to view club content, or members can see that the club exists but must join to read content, or even make the club completely invite only. This could be great for a book club or for a small critique circle. Resources We have an opportunity to build our own catalogue of writing resources here on Worldsmyths! We're looking for members to create their own guides, resource lists, and references, as well as reviewing various writing resources and sharing reflections on writing craft. For some information on what to submit, check out our Contribution Guide.
Donating to Worldsmyths
Worldsmyths isn't a costly endeavor, really, but it's not free, and if you're interested in helping the site keep going or in adding new and improved features, we'd certainly appreciate donations! Here's a breakdown of the costs of running the site, keeping it up to date, and some new features that could be added. If you do choose to donate, please tell us what you want your money to go toward so we can use it appropriately! Minimum Operating Costs Hosting (Hawkhost): $3/month Domain renewal cost (namecheap): ~$10/year That's all it takes to keep us running, and we don't depend on donations for these minimum costs, but if you want to help out we appreciate it! You're also welcome to help us recoup the costs of the site upgrade if you like, but we upgraded without expecting anything like that. Software Support Renewals (per 6 months) Core software: $50/6 months Theme: $10/6 months Installed modifications: $9/6 months Discord widget: $5/6 months Member of the Month: $4/6 months We don't need to renew the software to use it, just to get updates when they come out and support if we run into issues. Potential Modifications to Add iAwards: $25, $7/6 months, members can earn awards and achievements that show up on posts Member Away: $12, if you're going to be on hiatus you can put an Away message Threadstarter: $14.95, $4.95/6 months renewal; pull Goodreads info about a book into a thread Moods: $10, allows you to show a mood (with a mood icon by your avatar) Add Items to Mobile Navbar: $9, if you want to change the main nav buttons on mobile You're also welcome to browse through modifications yourself and see if there's something you want to see added to the site, but we ask that you discuss it with us before donating if you choose something that isn't already on this list so we can make sure it'll work out. This is the main site for modifications and themes.
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Upcoming Events
December Writing Challenge
01 December 2018, 05:00 AM 31 December 2018, 10:00 PM
NaNoWriMo is over, and it's back to monthly writing challenges! This month you have a choice of two challenges: 1. Write a story that ends in a cliffhanger. Torture us. Leave us wanting more. But in a good way! (and/)OR 2. Pick 3 or more ideas you played with for the daily Advent Calendar challenges and combine them to write a new story. Word Limit: No minimum; max of 5000 words
Deadline: Monday, December 31st, 5:00pm GMT-5 (the event may show 5pm in your home timezone, but it closes at 5pm Eastern Standard Time!) If you're planning on entering, we'd really appreciate you RSVPing so we get an idea of what turnout will be! There's a maybe option if you aren't sure 🙂 How do I submit? Easy! Just add it as a story to the Library and tag it with "dec 18 challenge." You can comment here or on the associated topic if you want to make sure we don't miss your submission, but as long as you tag it correctly and submit on time we should see it! Voting will go up sometime the evening of the 31st.
Advent Day 15: Faith Flash Fic
15 December 2018
Hopefully Saturday gives you ample time to write a flash fic 🙂 Check out the prompts below and see if one or both inspire you! The general theme is faith, but it doesn't have to be religious faith. It could be faith in yourself or another, or faith that the sun will rise tomorrow -- whatever you want. Once you write your flash fic, share it in the library and tag it with 'advent day 15' so I can find it. Like the other advent events, there's no hard deadline on this. Try to get it done December 15th, but if you need to do it early or late -- well, better to participate than not! Keep track of all the Advent challenges here! Here are the prompts:
Advent Day 16: Faith Magic
16 December 2018
Time for a little worldbuilding, specifically dealing with magic as it falls under the theme of faith. Check out the prompts below and see what you come up with! If you write fic, share it in the library and tag it with 'advent day 16' so I can find it. Otherwise, feel free to leave it as a comment here! Like the other advent events, there's no hard deadline on this. Try to get it done December 16th, but if you need to do it early or late -- well, better to participate than not! Keep track of all the Advent challenges here! Here are the prompts:
Advent Day 17: Faith Character
17 December 2018
Let's work on character/characterization. Give us a few details about a character, or a basic character concept, or maybe a little scene showing some characterization -- whatever inspires you based on one or both of the prompts below and the theme of faith. If you write fic, share it in the library and tag it with 'advent day 17' so I can find it. Otherwise, feel free to leave it as a comment here! Like the other advent events, there's no hard deadline on this. Try to get it done December 17th, but if you need to do it early or late -- well, better to participate than not! Keep track of all the Advent challenges here! Here are the prompts:
Advent Day 18: Faith Tradition
18 December 2018
This time for our worldbuilding of a tradition or celebration, given that our current theme is faith, consider telling us of something similar to a pilgrimage. You may use one or both of the prompts below to help inspire you. If you write fic, share it in the library and tag it with 'advent day 18' so I can find it. Otherwise, feel free to leave it as a comment here! Like the other advent events, there's no hard deadline on this. Try to get it done December 18th, but if you need to do it early or late -- well, better to participate than not! Keep track of all the Advent challenges here! Here are the prompts:
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