To celebrate 13 weeks of winter, Winterviews is conducting interviews with various book and author communities across the internet. Once a week, we’ll interview a new community to find out what makes that community great.
Join us on the hashtag #13Winterviews, or join in the fun with tonight’s community spotlight #WIPWorldBuilders on twitter! Without further ado, lets get down to the interview!
Can you tell us a little bit about #WIPWorldBuilders?
The #WIPWorldBuilders community is one of the most supportive Twitter communities I’ve engaged with. When I initially created the hashtag, I had no idea the kind of wonderful and amazingly creative people I would meet and work with. The premise behind the community is simple. It’s a digital place where writers come together, share facts about their world, and find support and help with their endeavors. Every month, I post a new calendar full of daily prompts. I divide the month into two different, but sometimes related, themes. I occasionally work with members of our community on theme and prompt development, sharing a week’s worth of prompts they created, as well as inviting them to serve as co-hosts for that month.
The community started as a hashtag to share info about our books but turned into a strong community that looks out for each other, shares each other’s good news, and helps each other whenever we can. It’s been amazing watching this community grow and turn into something even greater than I imagined it could be.
What prompted the idea to start #WIPWorldBuilders?
I love playing hashtag games and I love world building. Sometimes, I think I may enjoy world building more than telling a story, haha! I realized there wasn’t a hashtag game dedicated solely to world building and thought it was a major gap in the Writing Community. I asked one of my friends if they wanted to help me with prompt development and graphic design, and it’s been going strong ever since.
What is unique about #WIPWorldBuilders?
The most unique element of our community is the sheer creativity of our members. I strive to write questions that will challenge members of our community to develop and share facts about their world(s) and am constantly amazed by their answers. Most of our members are genre writers and their answers range from blood-curdling rules regarding ghosts, vampires, and Lovecraftian monsters, fascinating, and complicated laws of magic, and insightful and dizzying world politics. My goal is to talk with each and every member to create an interactive community and I like to think that this inspires our members to share and interact with each other as well, creating the close network that keeps the hashtag alive.
What three things does someone not know about you or #WIPWorldBuilders?
- Many members of our community created their own hashtag games such as @CelesteHarte who co-created #CharacterChaos with @_KKaterina and @gladiusquintus, and @Sarcasmancer who created #InspireWrite.
- I interview writers for my blog Pepper Writes, including many members of the #WIPWorldBuilders community.
- Some of our members are published authors, such as @CaitGAuthor, who not only published her newest novel in 2019, but is also editor of the @NWUAnthology and @SpoonieAuthNet as well as CMRosens who’s book the Crows is available for purchase on Amazon and Smashwords.
What one tip did you learn from #WIPWorldBuilders?
The greatest thing I’ve learned from interacting with members of our community is write what you love and the people who need that book will find it. There are so many creative and passionate people who play our hashtag game and it can be overwhelming to witness that level of imagination on a daily basis. I’ve discovered several books I want to read once my friends publish them and that means that someone out there will want to read my book too!
Hosting Author
Pepper@pepperdaphoenix
