Greetingz fellow ritin’ gitz. Itz time for dem Orc n Gobboz wot iz good wiv a pen ta get busy! Waaaagh!

As many of you know there has been a growing rumble among the members here at Da Warpath. Talk of our guild is spreading, and stories are appearing faster than we can read them! Rather than writing in a vacuum, we want the writers here to feel a part of a community where help and a sympathetic ear goes hand in hand. Taking our lead from the Painting and Hobby Forum and especially Bidiot’s excellent army blogs, we want to create an informal but helpful environment where writers can submit their stories and get feedback from the community.


Guild Tasks
So, we have decided to create Da Warpath's Writin Gitz Guild, and we are looking to the Guild to do the following tasks:

• Assist writers by providing constructive feedback, similar to the ways people help in the P&H forum.
  
• Provide some thoughts and ideas on how to write stories along with resources and links to other locations that can help writers.
  
• Host mini challenges on a monthly basis. Already posted by an excited member named Uruthi, we are going to have a monthly challenge that is essentially a minicontest. This month is the first one: a 1000 word story on stealing in Bretonnia. Members will write stories based on this theme, and we will vote on who is da best! The winner comes up with the next topic and ground rules.
  
• Work with other sites such as Warhammer-Empire (through Wissenlander) and the Imperial Literature Forum to bring in some talent and help other writers out there.
  
• Assist writers and developers for online campaigns. We can produce or help others with their campaign by providing feedback/ideas or becoming loremasters for campaigns.
  
• Assist members in developing background fluff for their own Warboss and army. This ties into the online campaigns where this kind of thing becomes important. It would be nice to help some people find their inner orc so to speak. Also it could give us a scope for a (potentially funny) 'Meet the Warboss' segment, where we let a different writer each week introduce their Warboss. Maybe let them write 250 words on their own and send them a series of 'interview' questions to answer underneath their piece. They key to the Army Blog section for me is that there is always something new to see. Fluff can get a bit overwhelming if it is a constant stream of stories about bashing things, so little fun bits like that which change the pace could be good.

Giving Comments and Feedback
So, how does one give comments? What are we talking about? Here are two simple suggestions:

1. Do your best to add something constructive when you read someone’s story. Try not to just post ‘I like it’. Say why. It’s always nice to be told when you do something right. Pick out a line or a passage you really enjoyed and tell the author why it appealed to you.

For example. Here is a passage I wrote once upon a time, and Draig provided some comments:

2. Even more importantly, don’t be afraid to criticize someone’s work if you think it could be improved upon. This is something that is lacking here at the moment. Just like any aspect of the hobby, writing requires practice and feedback. No-one is as good a writer now as they will be next year and we can all improve our writing with a little help and some hard work.

Try and isolate a quality that you feel is lacking in the story. Maybe something is not explained properly or a particular sentence just doesn’t seem ‘quite right’ or a particular person seems to be acting out of character. Whatever it is mention it to the author so he can make the changes, but don’t be too harsh about it, no one likes to have their face rubbed in their mistakes!

For example: This is an example from a few years ago as well.

Remember, it doesn’t matter if you are a writer or not, everyone here can read - the key is to get stuck in and help out. Everyone has an opinion, just make yourself heard.

Finally a few points to bear in mind before you post your story:

• If possible, re-read your work before you post it. You will be amazed how many little errors can creep in and a quick proof-read will help catch these before anyone else sees them!
  
• Run your story through MS Word or a similar program to check for spelling. This is especially useful if English is not your first language.

So if you haven’t tried writing give it a go, and if you do write, post something for everyone else to learn from, and who know, you might even learn something yourself.

Feel free to add your (2c) here. This is a rough guideline and mission statement for the Guild, and your input is always appreciated!

Goomb, Draig and the other fluff mods

Great to see this up my friend!

The gist of it is get stuck in! If you have stories, post them. If you enjoy someone's story, say why. If you think it could be improved, tell them. And keep those stories coming!

Yep, like you said elsewhere, sorry that this is a massive WALL of text! Your crib notes sum it all up, Draig!

Goomb

Spotted a mistake there, it should be 'spat' not 'spit', wrong tense lol.

Haven't been around here for ages but hopefully will become active again soon now free time is on the horizon. Just wanted to post in here to say that I'll be reading and commenting on stories in the fluff section again.

Gasgruk

PS good to be back (if anyone remembers me!)

Gasgruk! Gasgruk! Gasgruk!

Heck yes I remember you, mate! Where have you been? It's about time you showed up again. Make Krusty re-appear and I will give you a big prize. It is just like old times: Draig is back; Gasgruk is back....AHHHH!

Welcome back! I am Goomb, Administrator here at Da Warpath....ACK! You know who I am.

Good to see you. Now get writing or join the campaign (see the siggie). :yarr!:

Goomb

Or join the campaign AND write about it!

Nice to meet you, I don't think I remember you so I'll look forward to reading some of your stories!

Congrats on the inexorable rise to admin Goomb, last time I was on you were just a mod! Haven't been online for ages due to having to split my time between gf, uni, working, applying to graduate schemes and martial arts training so sadly writing and chilling out on the forums had to take a back seat, nice to know I'm remembered though
:wub:
Probably wont have a chance to join the campaign at the moment due to the fact that I'm gonna be moving house two times in the next 3 weeks (moving back home from uni tomorrow night and then moving to norwich for my new job starting in two and a bit weeks) but may have chance to spin a few yarns over the next two weeks when I'm at home with not much to do. :D

@Draig I think I remember you from back in the day I wasn't a super active member so I may have passed under the radar. As for my stories I just had a quick browse through the forum and couldn't find any but quickly checked and realised that there's only really recent stuff.

Just wondering what happened to all the old stories, mine and other peoples, is there an archive somewhere?

Unfortunately there have been a few forum accidents over the years and all of the old stuff has been lost, as far as I know. Hopefully you kept copies. I had to get my old laptop out of retirement to find some of my older stories (only to realize most of them weren't that good anyway!)

As for Goomb's rise to Admin, we all know the git's only there because everyone is scared of that damn rusty choppa of his :D (Kidding of course, git!)

A few of the big forums have gone through something like that over the last year or so, TPV had to restart itself entirely.

Yup, I'm going to post one of the short ones up now it would have been posted up two years or so originally I think.

Actually having just checked through my stories all I've got left from O&G stories is two paragraphs that were written for a competition on this site as something to go on the main website (think I left before there was ever a result for that) and a fairly long one involving orcs, empire, dwarfs and a siege that I wrote specifically for da warpath.

So I'll post up the first section of that story.

I've seen what he can do with it, I'm zoggin' terrified.

Well, you're a bit before my time, I think, but it seems Goomb and Draig know you :D. It's always good to have more writin' gits in here!