Week One, SB118 Writing Improvement Month

Written by Marissa Jeffrey from Starbase 118

The first week for UFOP: Starbase 118’s first ever Writing Improvement month has been wildly successful. Not only was the first event, an IRC Q&A with Star Trek and Sci Fi author Margaret Wander Bonanno, insightful and helpful to writers of all kinds, but it gave everyone involved a taste of what’s yet to come.

Some of our leadership also got together to help create tutorials that could be used by simmers both in the Fleet and in RPG games across the net, to improve their writing. This week’s theme was grammar and research, and how we could use it to write better. To this end, we found further insight from Fleet Captain Jaxx and Captain Nicholotti, who lent their experience to the cause with Tackling Common Grammar Errors and Using Research tutorials.

This week also tested writers’ grammatical skills through a ten question, simple quiz that brought together many of these common errors. How well will you score? Stay tuned for next week’s announcement to get the answers.

Don’t forget the open writing challenge that Starbase 118 is holding this month either! Open to anyone, from any Fleet or Club, the writing challenge will give writers a chance to put to use some of the skills they are honing throughout the month. The best part about this challenge is that there is prize for the winner!

And finally, we’ll wrap up our first week of the month with a live Grammar and Research IRC workshop, led by Captain Diego Herrera, of the USS Vigilant. The event will be held at 3pm EST (12pm PST/8pm GMT) on Saturday, February 9th. This event is open to anyone, from any group, game, or club, so head on over and say hello!

It’s been a great week so far – we can’t wait to see what happens next! Hope to see you there!

By Marissa Jeffrey, Starbase 118.