SANJIESAN LORE / Setting-guide editing
Write the first page of a setting guide for a new reader
An opening page can overwhelm readers when it introduces six eras, ten factions and an unexplained cosmic rule at once. Google’s audience guidance asks writers to consider what readers already know and what they need. For a setting guide, begin with a particular reader’s next question rather than the oldest event in your notes.
Choose the entry situation
Decide whether the reader has just finished a story, seen an illustration or encountered the world for the first time. Write one sentence describing that starting point. A reader arriving from a character portrait may need the place and conflict around that person before a complete cosmology. A collaborator preparing an illustration may need a different opening. Do not combine all these audiences into one supposedly universal introduction.
Limit the first set of unfamiliar terms
Draft an opening around one place, one present tension and a small number of essential names. Explain a new term through its role in that tension before introducing another one. If a term is not needed to understand the next paragraph, move its fuller explanation to an appropriate later entry. This does not delete worldbuilding; it gives the reader a path through it. Keep a clear route to the deeper material.
Test one useful question after reading
Give the page to someone willing to read it and ask where the story’s immediate concern is located and why it matters. Avoid asking only whether the world sounds interesting. If the answer is a list of impressive names without a relationship, revise the orientation. The first page succeeds when readers know where to go next, while the guide’s later sections remain available for the questions they have not yet asked.