Difference between revisions of "Create Writing"

Latest revision as of 11:19, 5 June 2014

Writers usually meet in the Writers' Forum. This is where you can go to discuss possible contributions to mainline Wesnoth writing (campaign dialog, unit descriptions, etc.), work on the Wesnoth Manual, collect reference information about the world of Wesnoth, world-build, and do other writerly things. Keep in mind that this involves bringing together information from all over the Wesnothian universe. In other words, this forum does contain spoilers.

If you have an IRC client, you can also join the #wesnoth channel on irc.freenode.net and talk about lore in realtime.

Note: Any text included in The Battle for Wesnoth must be released and available under the Gnu General Public License. Read this forum post by Jetrel and Wesnoth:Copyrights for more information on this.

Reference Material

Warning: These materials may contain spoilers. This is necessary for writers, who may not want or need to play through a campaign to work over the dialog. If you don't want spoilers, you're in the wrong place.

All dialog for mainline campaigns and unit descriptions can be accessed in the game data directory. There is also a current project to copy all campaign dialogue onto the wiki.

The World of Wesnoth

The People of Wesnoth

Useful Resources

The Typography Style Guide details the general standards used by text within Wesnoth. There are two areas where this has a bearing: in mainline campaigns, and in the user interface itself. For user-made content, writers have much more freedom, but any content or writing accepted into the game must follow our established style guides.

ESR has already produced some excellent guidelines on writing Wesnoth campaign material. This guide covers storyboarding, plotting and adding flavor, as well as advice on map design, balance, and some of the pitfalls to avoid.

You can't really have a tutorial on how to write. Everyone has a different process. However, here are some pages from the internet that you could glance at before taking up your pen.

A Primer for SF Workshops

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-== Getting Started ==
+Writers usually meet in the [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=32 Writers' Forum]. This is where you can go to discuss possible contributions to mainline Wesnoth writing (campaign dialog, unit descriptions, etc.), work on the Wesnoth Manual, collect reference information about the world of Wesnoth, world-build, and do other writerly things. Keep in mind that this involves bringing together information from all over the Wesnothian universe. In other words, this forum does contain spoilers.
-=== General Information ===
-Writers usually meet in the [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=32 Writers' Forum]. This is where you can go to discuss possible contributions to mainline Wesnoth writing (campaign dialog, unit descriptions, etc.), work on the Wesnoth Manual, collect reference information about the world of Wesnoth, world-build, and do other writerly things. If you have an IRC client, you can also join the [irc://irc.freenode.net/wesnoth-writing #wesnoth-writing] channel on irc.freenode.net and talk about writing in realtime.
-To be included in the Battle for Wesnoth, text must be released and available under the [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html Gnu General Public License]. Read [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2015 this forum post by Jetryl] and [[Wesnoth:Copyrights]] for more information on this.
+If you have an IRC client, you can also join the [irc://irc.freenode.net/wesnoth #wesnoth] channel on irc.freenode.net and talk about lore in realtime.
-=== Where Should I Start? ===
+<b>Note:</b> Any text included in The Battle for Wesnoth must be released and available under the [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html Gnu General Public License]. Read [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2015 this forum post by Jetrel] and [[Wesnoth:Copyrights]] for more information on this.
-The Writers' Forum is fairly new. It's fairly easy to [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=32 have a look around] and see what's up.
-Part of what writers are doing now is world building; keep in mind that this involves bringing together information from all over the Wesnoth universe. In other words, this forum does contain spoilers.
 == Reference Material ==
-These materials may contain spoilers. This is necessary for writers, who may not want or need to play through a campaign to work over the dialog. If you don't want spoilers, you're in the wrong place.
-=== Current Writing ===
+<b>Warning:</b> These materials may contain spoilers. This is necessary for writers, who may not want or need to play through a campaign to work over the dialog. If you don't want spoilers, you're in the wrong place.
-The current text for Wesnoth can be accessed in various places. Most obviously, you see the text when you play the game. Less obviously, you can look through the scenario config files (found in your [[EditingWesnoth#Where_is_my_game_data_directory.3F|game data directory]]) to see the dialogue, and you can easily access unit descriptions through the [http://www.wesnoth.org/units/ Wesnoth Unit Tree].
-There is also a current project to [[CampaignDialogue|copy all campaign dialogue onto the wiki]].
+All dialog for mainline campaigns and unit descriptions can be accessed in the [[EditingWesnoth#The_game_data_directory|game data directory]]. There is also a current project to [[CampaignDialogue|copy all campaign dialogue onto the wiki]].
 === The World of Wesnoth ===
 * [[Mainline_Campaigns|The mainline campaigns of Wesnoth]]
 * [[History of Wesnoth|The history of Wesnoth]]
 * [[Geography of Wesnoth|The geography of Wesnoth]]
+=== The People of Wesnoth ===
 * [[Faction|The factions of Wesnoth]]
 * [[Races|The races of creatures in Wesnoth]]
-* [[RaceDescriptions-backstory|(Eleazar on Orcs and Trolls)]]
+* [[RaceDescriptions-backstory|Eleazar on Orcs and Trolls]]
 * [[CharactersStorys|A list of hero descriptions]]
 * [[Garardine_Dynasty|A detailed family tree of the Garardine Dynasty]]
 * [[SecretLore|Secret Lore]]
-=== Style Guides ===
+== Useful Resources ==
-A draft [[Typography Style Guide]] is now being added. Once enough people have had a chance to look at it, it will stop being draft. There are two areas where this has a bearing &ndash; in mainline campaigns, and in the Wesnoth user interface itself. For user-made content, writers have much more freedom, but to become mainline a campaign will ultimately need to follow whatever our established style guide becomes.
-A writing style guide is a much bigger undertaking, but may follow later. esr has already produced some excellent guidelines on how to write Wesnoth campaign material, available at the following link: http://www.catb.org/~esr/wesnoth/campaign-design-howto.html This guide covers storyboarding, plotting and adding flavour, as well as advice on map design, balance, and some of the pitfalls to avoid. We also have C coding guidelines at this [[CodingStandards]] link, a [[WML style guide]] (to follow), and a draft user interface (UI) style guide at this link: [[UI Style Guide]]. For completeness, here is a placeholder link for a [[Wiki Style Guide]].
-Note that the [[CodingStandards]] document takes precedence over the other style guides, but it's very general. The user interface has some quite specific requirements which the main programming standard document doesn't cover.
+The [[Typography Style Guide]] details the general standards used by text within Wesnoth. There are two areas where this has a bearing: in mainline campaigns, and in the user interface itself. For user-made content, writers have much more freedom, but any content or writing accepted into the game must follow our established style guides.
-The Wesnoth UI (user interface) has a mixed setup. Part of it is hard-coded within the game's source code, which means you need to be able to at least read C program code to understand what is going on. The remainder is stored in a variety of WML files, which are easier for non-programmers to read and can be altered without having to recompile the program. With the ongoing Wesnoth GUI2 project http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=29640&hilit=GUI2&start=0 this setup will be simplified, making custom 'skins' easier to create. Note that the UI style guide may change significantly once the version 2 GUI comes fully on-line.
+ESR has already produced some [http://www.catb.org/~esr/wesnoth/campaign-design-howto.html excellent guidelines] on writing Wesnoth campaign material. This guide covers storyboarding, plotting and adding flavor, as well as advice on map design, balance, and some of the pitfalls to avoid.
-== Useful Resources: These are not tutorials! ==
 You can't really have a tutorial on how to write. Everyone has a different process. However, here are some pages from the internet that you could glance at before taking up your pen.
 * [http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html A Primer for SF Workshops]
 [[Category:Create|*]]