Whaddup guys? How’ve you been doing? July ended up being a fairly balanced month for me, with a good amount of work and play scattered around.
I don’t have much in particular to announce this time around, but I made a good deal of progress on my current To-Do list Gens and got in a fair amount of fixes and minor Gen updates too, bringing me another step closer to being able to focus on more NEW Gens. I’m also preparing to embark on a new quest to add a Contemporary category for all the Gens that currently cater to the 5 Genres (Action, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Romance, and Horror). The idea is that these results will be more useful for stories that are a bit more down-to-Earth and set in a more familiar time and place.
Ad Experimentation
I’ve also been working on ways to improve the user experience around the site, focusing primarily on the ads. As you may be aware, I work on RanGen part-time and the site is kept afloat by a handful of wonderful Patrons, and primarily by ads. Previously, ads that were being displayed, while successful at producing revenue, would block the left and right sidebars much of the time, making it difficult to see all the content behind them. Now, fortunately, I’m experimenting with a different provider which allows me to have more control over the ads, allowing me to set them in less obstructive locations. If you regularly see the ads or have deliberately deactivated your ad blocker for RanGen to help out (thank you!), please let me know if things look better to you. I’ll be doing a bit more experimenting and tweaking, so please bear with me.
Speaking of Patrons, thank you to
Hailey Sanders, Zena Wagner, Laurence, Sloshy Scout, Kristin Wingo, Kim Lightle, Lokomotives, Duncan Thomson, Sander Countryman, Ellie Sweeney, Terence Halton and Stuart Gipp.
And to
Jessica Marnne and Svenja Filthaut
RanGen’s newest Patrons. Thank you all so much for your support!
The Fantasy Sandbox Podcast
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out The Fantasy Sandbox Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Hosts Andy and Ed explore the process of world-building, with help from RanGen’s Gens, and together they come up with some pretty interesting ideas, and some pretty amazing short stories, so check ’em out! And don’t forget to follow them on Twitter and Instagram!
The August Writing Challenge
Speaking of amazing short stories, it’s that time again! Prepare yourselves for the August Writing Challenge!
The Gens to be used for this challenge are the Country, Personality and Murphy’s Law Gens. The theme of the story is “reversal”.
The objective of the challenge is to use the aforementioned Gens and turn their results into a short story of at least 10,000 words before the end of the month. The story should have a focus on the reversal of fortunes; perhaps things were good but now they’re bad, or maybe things were bad and now they’re becoming good. Either way, change is upon your characters, for better or for worse.
Country Gen (Free use): Use this Gen to determine either the primary location of your story or a major secondary location. Choose one that you prefer, but do not mix and match the results.
Personality Gen (Restricted): Use this Gen to give a personality to a character. It can be for any character with a significant role in the story. Use the first personality it generates; do NOT reroll.
Murphy’s Law Gen (Free use): Use this Gen to add the primary sources of conflict to your story. You can use as many events as you like, positive or negative from any genre.
You are free to use any other Gens to help you with your story, and you can write more than one story if you have it in you!
Upload your stories via your preferred service or social media platform, share the link in the Disqus comments below, with “August Writing Challenge” and your story title, and be sure to include the results of all the Gens that you used in it! (Also, be sure to specify if your story is NSFW or would otherwise have a non-PG rating.)
If you have any questions, you can contact me below. For those taking part in this writing challenge, godspeed!
