[Meta] Story Hour Annotation? (for authors & readers)

[Enkhidu]

In the Small Beginnings story hour, my partner and I ended up going with the "fold in all exposition in the story text" approach - no end notes, no sidebars. Instead, any time we wanted to add something that included game mechanics, we put it in a Rogue's Gallery thread.

Mostly we've just used it for stat blocks, but I think we've done a fair job of covering everything we needed to cover so far. Later on down the line, we may end up throwing in notes, but so far we haven't needed them.

 

[Delgar]

I've just started so I'm not sure what my overall goal is as of yet. I guess if/when I get some actual fans I'll try and figure it out!

I think everyone needs to go with a style that works for them.

Delgar

 

[Indigo Veil]

Hello, all. ^_^ Just wanted to add my two cents here.

As a reader, I appreciate little notes at the end if they will enhance the story for me, but I prefer that the notes be differentiated enough from the narrative that I don't mistake them for being part of the narrative itself. (using a smaller font, or a different color helps) For extensive explanation, I rather like Seasong's "Academia" approach, where the subject in question (usually some peculiar aspect of the world) gets its own post, and serves as a little break from the main story.

This is a little irrelevant, since I don't post my SH here (because it doesn't follow the Granny rule), but I *do* use little notes at the end of my posts when they're needed. Often, my notes have to do with cultural explanations, or with translations of actual Chinese and Japanese phrases that have no good English equivalent. I also like tagging them on at the end of a post (as opposed to using another thread, or having a link) so that those explanations are readily accessible. But my SH doesn't have anything like character stats, or game mechanics, or whatever. =^^=