The Galactic Times

[DragonAether]

Hi everyone, I'm new here, and i wanted to start a little project few months ago, in a nutshell is a mix between a magazine and a monthly news paper that has as subject a specific and (if i can) real part of our galaxy where I want to create a living and complex (as much as i can) universe to use to write my fake news, that spreads between multiple subjects such as politic, economy and a couple other things that will characterize my "magazine".
I want to know if you think it's a good idea to develop or something to trash asap.

 

[farntfar]

It's a nice idea, and could work, but with the single proviso that you want to leave out the politics and economics.
They are an invitation for discord. You will soon find that, under the guise of parody people are making political points and the ill-feeling will multiply.

For a long time on this site, we manage to have political discussions and remain friendly and well mannered and avoid flame wars and suchlike, but even here, eventually the sniping got too much, and it had to be stopped. So the moderators wouldn't allow it now anyway.

Make it a magazine and avoid those subjects and it could probably be fun. (Though actually people can make political statements with a salad recipe if they really want to. )

 

[Brian G Turner]

Welcome to the chrons forums.

The thing is - what would you aim to get out of this? Is it basically setting up world-building notes in public? Would you be wanting to develop an audience in itself? What would the actualy purpose be? It might be worth asking that, first, so you know what to aim for.

 

[Phyrebrat]

My rules for writing:

1)Never trash anything; it'll cone in useful in some form or other one day.
2) never ask permission from others. Not helpful perhaps, but you're steering this ship

pH

 

[DragonAether]

Thanks for the Welcome, the whole universe i want to build is deatched from earth's problems, the earth isn't an empire is just a random planet with a random population with their own problems, so economy and politics wouldn't be related to the real human's economy or politic.

I want to create a sort of news paper that instead of talking of the news of an earth's country or of a specific region of our world, it would talk of galactic's empires with their problems and stories (crisis, agreement, scandals, wars, riots, discoveries and so on), that's what i aim to develop. I write this because I love the idea and it would be issued monthly.

I didn't understood this "Is it basically setting up world-building notes in public?", if you can say it in other words.

Currently I'm working on the first issue and it's half complete

 

[Dave]

If this was a regular Blog with news from a galaxy far, far away but written in real time; a story told in serial form but as newspaper columns and magazine articles, I think that might work, and I think it is an original idea. You would still need to have you story detailed in advance because you couldn't go back and add a report about something; if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. I think that this would be a good way to slowly build up a following online, especially suited to promotion by social media. You would have to begin slowly and you would have few readers to begin. Whether I personally would read it or not would depend on the quality of the writing the web design to make it look like a real newspaper/magazine.

PH means you would be developing your story in front of your readers and asking for help. I'm saying that won't work too, you need to have it all mapped out in advance.

 

[DragonAether]

The stories would be set in a real piece of our galaxy, basically our galactic neighbourhood (that's giving me hard time because i have to find a detailed map of our galaxy in 3d, currently i have a database that i'm trying to understand), i want to try to settle everything near our earth because a part of my "magazine" is based on humans, and it's basically a report of their (our) development to the stars, which means it would talk of what we are and how far are we to enter the galactic life with all the other empires in the galaxy.

If the forum allows to upload pdf, i can upload what i've done so far if you want.

 

[Dave]

Now, it is sounding like you do want us to help set up your world building notes in public. Sorry, we aren't going to do that here. Once you become an established member of the community you can have a piece critiqued. When you have 100 posts we would allow you to "press release" the finished product. We don't allow self promotion by new members, otherwise Chronicles would just become a bill board.

 

[DragonAether]

Well, i'm not asking that, sorry if it looked like that. I have my idea to develop my world, i needed onyl to know if the basic idea behind my project can work if developed.

 

[J Riff]

Yes, it would be fun and funny, or ot probably wouldn't work. But there is lot of SFF material around lately, fans would have to be gathered one at time online somewhere, a blog from another planet. Great opportunity to invent ET names, planet names, cultures, reporters and whatnot.

 

[zmunkz]

(that's giving me hard time because i have to find a detailed map of our galaxy in 3d, currently i have a database that i'm trying to understand)

Check this out. Easy to lose an hour flying through interstellar space (and intergalactic space, for that matter), and a bit scary to recognize that all these stars and galaxies are real, placed and sized by actual astronomical data. Controls take a little getting used to.

Celestia: Home

 

[farntfar]

My apologies, DragonAether, for laying into you somewhat in my first reply about the politics thing. I had understood you to be wanting to set up a thread on the Chrons, inviting people to contribute articles, and I was afraid of what that might produce.
As a personal project on your own blog it sounds like a great idea, and I wish you the best of luck with it.

Also, of course, Welcome to the Chrons. ( which I should have said earlier.)

Coming back to doing it on this site, I think that might well work in the writing section too. We'd probably have to make some pretty strict rules, but the idea of a sort of newspaper that people could write the sort of articles that you read in local newspapers, ("Brave local troll rescues cat stuck in tree" sort of thing.) but allowing the "locality" to be anywhere or anywhen and either SF or fantasy, sounds like fun if you don't mind us stealing it.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Hi Dragonether,

I was trying to think of what your project would be. It's a bit vague in your description to really have much of an opinion on - the best thing would really be to knock out one and let others have a look.

However it did spark a reminder of what I think might be a similar sort of project. Not the same genre, but it was excellent.

Namely The Framley Examiner (see: The Framley Examiner). It is a loving piss-take of UK local newspapers and it did worldbuild a fictional part of the UK with recurring characters, issues and storylines. Of course it's main intent is to be comedic and absurd, which IMO it succeeds with spades (but humour is subjective of course )

So when I read about your idea, I think that it's something like that.

Except I don't see what your intent is with it. It is just to worldbuild something? Or do you have ideas to develop a narrative of sorts?

I personally do think you need something else driving the whole project, other than worldbuilding something. It has to be driven on multiple levels to be interesting. People can get obsessed with worldbuilding, lore and backstory - just see the volume of blogs, podcasts and youtube videos on LoTR or ASoIaF! But that's because it's hanging off grand plots, storylines, and compelling characters. Worldbuilding by itself, with nothing else to attach it to, can be extremely dry and dull - and usually only of interest to the person writing it!

Anyway hang around a bit more, join in a few more conversations - maybe about related topics, or whatever, and when you get to 100 posts put it up (or 30 posts and put a piece of it up for Critting - max 1500 words)

 

[DragonAether]

Thanks to everybody for answering. I knew Celestia but i didn't knew you could use it for even things outside of our solar system, many thanks for the advice.

My idea is to start stories that spreads through multiple issues, short example, a war start and i follow the events, like a planet has been destroyed; or even a corp. is in bankrupt, i follow the events after that and all the consecuences that an event like this could have on the galactic market, and so on.
There aren't complex stories where you could write a book on them (i would like to add something more deep that would build a behind story that may lead to multiple other things, for who played stellaris there is a precursor event that you can do, i would like to replicate something like this) or particular protagonist, those are stories made by multiple people or multiple empires, there isn't a proper protagonist except for the galaxy itself.

Can you explain what do you mean with multiple levels? i don't know if we mean the same thing.

Hope to have explained what i'm working on.

[just tried celestia] it doesn't seem to have what i need

 

[Brian G Turner]

I didn't understood this "Is it basically setting up world-building notes in public?"

I just meant as in putting up background information on setting and events that might provide the basis for a story - a novel, or similar - without actually providing a story.

Most writers developing their own worlds make a lot of notes about all sorts of things about their setting - but most remains hidden, or set aside, with only some of the details actually being referenced by the story itself.

However, aspiring writers are often tempted to indulge in this "background information" a little more than they perhaps need to.

 

[R.T James]

As a lore builder I actually started a fictional non-fiction account of a journalist who went from one country to another one to get a sense of what it was. During his months there he eventually stayed and published the works.

I could easily do Newspaper of said country too. Only issue would be I am not as skilled in artwork, and it would need to be some form of artwork as the things that exist there don't exist here!

My advice to you would be to try it out, see what happens. If you get rich from it I'll be following your footsteps!