ST Writers Wanted - Please Read This First!

[Deeza]

As the new Editor of Silgrad Tower, I'm in charge of managing the conversion of literature submitted to us into books that can be read in-game. I'd like to give a warm welcome to any new writers who would like to contribute to our library, and hope that some of those who have written for us in the past will be enticed back by the new activity in these forums!

First though, I'd like to establish a few ground rules. These aren't intended to restrict anyone's creativity, and are more a set of guidelines than anything else. I really want people to never be afraid to submit whatever they've been working on and share it with ST. The only purpose of these guidelines is to focus writers on the things ST needs the most, so that they can put their talents to best use:

1. Please, please, please, please please run your works through a spell-check before you submit them. Believe me, you'd be surprised how many people don't do this. It makes my job hugely easier, as we can concentrate straight away on further improving the quality of your work, instead of wasting time correcting basic errors. With that said, don't worry too much about whether to use British English or American English spelling. This is a multinational mod and either of these is acceptable. If the lore freaks complain then we can just say that obviously on a world as big as Tamriel there are certain to be different regional dialects.

2. Please don't write long adventure stories. We already have plenty of these, and given that most of them are very long and will occupy whole series of books in-game, I can't see us needing any more. That said, if you do happen to have a fantastically original and reasonably short adventure story (like a bunch of Argonian skooma addicts trying to break an imprisoned orc out of a jail somewhere in Skyrim, for example), please post it, because it would be really fun to read. In fact I think I may go write that right now...

3. Please DO write diaries, journals, ledgers and so on as props for your quests. And I'm not just talking about the cliched device of "finding a journal on an impaled NPC's decomposing bloated corpse". If a botanist is working in out the field, he will probably have a book of scientific notes with him, perhaps lying on the table he is working at. A Temple cleric might have scribbled a list of which sermon of Vivec he's going to talk about for the next week and pinned it up near his lectern. Little touches like this add immersion and depth to the world, and I can't encourage them enough.

4. Please DO write "fictional non-fiction". I'm talking here about books regarding characters' personal theories, research findings, and accounts of history. These are often the most interesting books in games, because they give you a sense of the background of the world you're exploring. An example is IATE's book "the 4 mystic elements", totally unrelated to the plot and basically just some eccentric wizard talking about his theories, but interesting nonetheless and gives you something to think about.

5. Please don't write anything sexually explicit. ST as a whole already has views on this, but I'm just going to make things clear in this context so that everyone knows the score. I'm not saying this to be prudish or anything, believe me I'm not, but realistically many if not most of the people who end up playing this mod are going to be minors, and I don't want anyone having their enjoyment of the mod cut short because their overprotective parents won't let them play it because they heard it contained naughty content. We all know how huge a fuss the topless mod caused, just because somebody got over-litigious.

6. Have fun. Even if you're writing a history book, don't over-obsess about lore. Any problems can always be sorted out during the editing process. Modding of any kind is a hobby, and if we're not having fun doing this, then what's the point of it anyway?

Deeza
Editor of Silgrad Tower