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Dispatch → Meta → Reference
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The 💛🤍Iɱαɠιɳαɾყ Cσυɳƚɾყ💜🖤 of New Anarchisticstan.
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New Anarchi's guide to effectively building your country lore
First of all, I have noticed people seem to recreate actual countries. While I won't stop you, I advise that everything you make is original. You can take inspiration, sure, but do not just copy and paste an existing country's information into your factbooks. The best thing about implementing original ideas is that they are flexible: you can change the name of your ideas, give them their own lore, and connect it to other lores. What I am saying sounds broad, so I will give an example. Instead of taking an actual city for my factbooks, I have created one called "Smodej", and gave it its own story. I have connected Smodejan lore to another city's, Leiden. See? Nationstates' goal is creating your own country. Do not worry if what you write seems unrealistic or in a parallel reality at first; slowly but surely, everything will connect together, factbook by factbook.
A country will have its own weaknesses, and you may want to exploit said weaknesses to reinforce your country's lore. New Anarchisticstan has a department with the scope of erasing criminals' memories. Sounds draconian, but it will give that spice of action to everything. Your nation's main problem can be anything: from a high crime rate, to corrupt politicians... Let your mind flow!
If you skim through my factbooks, you'd see that they're simple and full of elegant images: that's because I am caconically an utopia. I remember seeing a very black/blueish factbook for a country governed by aliens. What I am trying to say is, design your factbooks in a way that describe your nation. Dark/monotone colours for dictatorships, light green for eco-friendly hippie utopias... Remember to add some images too, such as a nation emblem. PS: I absolutely despise templates.
In the end, what you are doing is writing. When writing about interviews/personal experiences of key characters in your nation, remember to show, and not tell. When you churn out a description such as "LEADER is a pragmatic schizo old man", it just won't go through a lot. Take a look at these 2 sentences below.
"I live inside trains. Enter any Violettan line, and you’ll find me at a corner seat violently smashing a portable typewriter. Occasionally, I watch from behind the window, and let my gaze terrorise any nearby vegetation."
"Somestaja often takes the Violettan line, where she writes articles with her typewriter, while gazing at the scenery behind the windows"
Same information, except the 1st sentence is better in terms of inferring information. What you can understand from the 1st one is that Somestaja is a sarcastic woman, and she acknowledges that. Third person sentences can still be used, but have a healthy mix with first person interviews/happenings. The latter can be really useful to show how characters view themselves.
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