How we wrote... well, first off, when you joined a holt (which is what we called the fan club/writing groups, because it was the name of a elvish settlement in the comics--I belonged to Daystar Holt and Tower Mountain Holt and Great Water Holt and so forth, and had different characters and storylines going in each) you got the background from the holt coordinator. It would say something like "Tower Mountain is an isolated enclave of early-generation elves ruled by the mad anti-healer Lord Tyaar. They are artistically and technologically advanced, woshipped as gods by a tribe of humans, and control a small tribe of trolls who supply them with weapons in exchanged for food. Intrigue is rife in the Tower. Most Tower elves are artists, living a life of leisure and aspiring to become a member of the Declared, Tyaar's elite. The exceptions are the hawkriders, Tyaar's guard, who are the only elves to contact the outside world." You also get brief descriptions of the existing characters, and a guide to what you can and can't do in creating new characters, i.e. "The commonest magic talents in Tower Mountain are sending and gliding; no more healers, please. Remember no childen have been born in the Tower for two thousand years; your character should be at least twenty-five hundred years old." And like that. And most important, you'd get a timeline of the important events which had happened or were scheduled to happen.
You were expected to create a character sheet describing your character's looks, personality, history, relatives, etc. Depending on the holt, this could be anything from a paragraph long to six or seven detailed pages. You were also expected to make sure that the coordinator knew about important events in your character's life, so they could be added to the timeline.
Once your character was OK'd by the coordinator, you were encouraged to contact other members and connect your character to theirs: "Hi, I have a new hawkrider character, and I see you also have a hawkrider character about the same age. I have an idea for a story about them going through training together..."
So you'd write your story, and contact the other members whose characters you used to get their OKs on what their characters did (how much OK you needed depended on the holt) and then send it in to the coordinator, who checked it to make sure it didn't conflict with other stories in progress, did any editing required, sent it back for rewrites if necessary, etc. and finally your story would be published in the holt zine. And someone would see it and go, "Hey, if they stole that sword from the trolls, what would happen if some young troll decided to make a name for himself by braving the upper world to get it back...?
And it just built like that. The coordinator was responsible for making sure things didn't go wildly off the rails, and keeping people from bumping into each other, and settling conflicts.
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You were expected to create a character sheet describing your character's looks, personality, history, relatives, etc. Depending on the holt, this could be anything from a paragraph long to six or seven detailed pages. You were also expected to make sure that the coordinator knew about important events in your character's life, so they could be added to the timeline.
Once your character was OK'd by the coordinator, you were encouraged to contact other members and connect your character to theirs: "Hi, I have a new hawkrider character, and I see you also have a hawkrider character about the same age. I have an idea for a story about them going through training together..."
So you'd write your story, and contact the other members whose characters you used to get their OKs on what their characters did (how much OK you needed depended on the holt) and then send it in to the coordinator, who checked it to make sure it didn't conflict with other stories in progress, did any editing required, sent it back for rewrites if necessary, etc. and finally your story would be published in the holt zine. And someone would see it and go, "Hey, if they stole that sword from the trolls, what would happen if some young troll decided to make a name for himself by braving the upper world to get it back...?
And it just built like that. The coordinator was responsible for making sure things didn't go wildly off the rails, and keeping people from bumping into each other, and settling conflicts.