If you’re excited about the prospects of a fast-growing, community-driven transmedia franchise, join the club. We are, too.
With the Lore DAO up and running, now seems like a good time to update our submission guide for those seeking to propose new stories. Let’s dive in.
How to Get Up to Speed with Existing Lore
While some readers will already be familiar with the existing lore, others will not. If you’re in the latter group, we recommend reading Kevin J. Anderson’s 16-page lore treatment, which represents the foundational lore of the Alien Worlds Metaverse.
It’s also a good idea to look through the official Tokenized Lore Book, which as well as explaining the concept of community-focused content, details voting processes and provides visual material related to the various races, vehicles, weapons, and architecture that exist in the cosmos.
The totality of lore – including Anderson’s initial treatment and the various community-submitted stories that have since been canonized – is available to read on Github. It is a vast repository complete with dozens of stories and characters, but writers shouldn’t feel creatively constrained to pull the story in new and exciting directions.
For those who fear ‘breaking canon’, there is a helpful tool that can be used: the Lynx AI bot, a Large Lore Model trained on Alien Worlds mythology. There is guidance on how to leverage Lynx here. This Discord bot can answer diverse queries, generate story ideas, and fact-check submissions, saving you the trouble of meticulously poring over the Lore Bible.
Submitting Your Lore to Alien Worlds
So, you’ve turned your novel idea for an Alien Worlds story into an epic yarn, and now you want to get it canonized. Makes sense. What’s the next step? Well, we use Github for story submissions, so you’ll need to follow this process.
- Fork and Edit on GitHub: Visit the Alien Worlds Lore GitHub repository linked above, then fork it to create your own copy. Thereafter, go to the README.MD file in your forked repository and make your changes. UseMarkdown formatting for the text:
Use # Title for titles.
Use ## Subtitle for subtitles.
Use ### Section for sections.
Write the body text in standard Markdown style. (If in doubt, get an AI tool to make your story Markdown-ready.)
Use plain double (" ") or single (' ') quotes rather than fancy quotes (“ ” or ‘ ’), which will ensure text displays properly in the UI.
If you’ve forked the repo before first seeing if Github shows a sync fork, sync it before making a new branch.
Create a New Branch: Prior to making changes, create a new branch from the main branch. This helps manage versions and makes resolving any potential conflicts simpler. Give your branch a descriptive name relevant to your submission.
Commit Your Changes: After editing the README.MD with your lore submission, commit your changes to the new branch. Give it a clear, descriptive title, detailing the lore aspects you’re proposing.
Initiate a Pull Request: Once changes are committed, initiate a pull request to merge your branch back into the main repository. This request will be reviewed according to the lore submission and approval process.
It might sound a little finicky, and we wish it was easier, but it’s not as onerous as it seems. And remember, we’re here to answer any questions if you get stuck!
If you happen to be using Google Docs for your story, there is a way to simply enable Markdown. In your Gdoc, select Tools from the menu bar, choose Preferences from the dropdown, and check the Markdown box to enable Markdown formatting.
Written your story using a separate app (Microsoft Word, Pages, etc) but want to use the Markdown converter in Gdocs? Simply paste your lore into a Google Doc, select all text, right-click and choose Copy as Markdown. Then you can paste this freshly-formatted text over your old text. Just make sure you do a Find & Replace for “ and ‘ after the reformat, replacing them with " and '.
Write the Next Chapter
A community of passionate storytellers is busy writing the next chapter of Alien Worlds, injecting fresh life into the sci-fi genre and building out an exciting decentralized content franchise where everyone can participate and canon is enforced on-chain. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?
Become a worldbuilder today and bring your stories to life.