Oh, Wikipedia. My best friend, my darling… my downfall. How many writing sessions have I supposedly “started” by saying I need to google “just one thing” first, and twelve Wikipedia articles later, I’m still telling myself this is fruitful, writerly productivity happening even though not a single word has appeared on the page?

But sadly, you can’t research everything. You’ve got a whole world there that you invented from scratch off the top of your head, that probably doesn’t work like ours at all! And when you’re trying to hammer out a first draft in thirty days, guess which one of those things should probably be taking priority?

Now, if you fall more towards the planner end of the planner-pantser spectrum, you probably went into this month with all kinds of documentation pertaining to the world, characters, systems, species, and technology that make up the landscape of your novel. But even the most dedicated Planner ends up making up a few things on the fly during the course of a first draft – particularly one written under such an extreme time crunch – so don’t think already having your worldbuilding written down means you can’t take part in this exercise. This is for anyone who’s found themselves at the bottom of a Wikipedia black hole this month, with no chance of escape and their daily word count still resolutely stuck at zero.

Today’s assignment is to write a mini Wikipedia article about something in your novel. It can be a person, a place, an object, an element of your magic system, or anything else you made up to make this little universe of yours make sense. And specifically, I want you to write about it as if it happened a hundred years ago. You’re looking back on this event the same way someone in the modern day might look back at the end of World War I, a silent film star, or the advent of air travel. You know all the facts. You know how it ends. You are to deliver this information in dry, straightforward, academic tones, to be rampantly plagiarized by a desperate student who’s about to flunk history if this essay doesn’t get done in the next ten minutes. Bonus points if the thing you picked is incredibly obscure and potentially altogether irrelevant, like the villain’s favorite brand of shoes or something.

This exercise will do several very big and very helpful things for you.

First, the fruits of your labor will serve as a helpful answer when your future self looks at this draft in a year and thinks, “Wait, I know I thought I’d remember that, but… what?” (This will happen. Don’t argue with me. I’ve seen some shit.)

Creating this documentation will also give you a new perspective on a story you’re probably used to looking at from a much closer vantage point. Informational articles in the style we’re going for are quite distant and emotionless, which is probably the opposite of where your brain has been when you’re actually writing this stuff. Pulling back and looking at it all from further away might help you visualize how the pieces of your world fit together, and may just give you a fresh dose of inspiration.

It will also be fun, which is a good reason to do it too.

Here are some things to write down – again, in the coldest and most dispassionate of terms:

• A 3-5 sentence summary of the topic, containing relevant names, dates, and terminology
• A picture (or sketch) that would go at the top of the article
• History: a person’s early life, a crumbling government’s hopeful beginnings, the invention this newfangled gadget was designed to replace and why
• Some mention of the story’s main conflict. This conflict should end up being interwoven with just about every fiber of your story. Really think about the connection between the main conflict and the thing you’re writing about.
• Things that are related. If it’s a character, maybe an account of their sordid dating history. If it’s a town, how are their relations with the town next door? If it’s a corrupt corporation, who are their competitors, and are they better or worse?
• Reputation. Is this thing referenced in pop culture? What has its enduring impact been? Do people look back on this character’s actions favorably in a hundred years, or not?
• A section with the most utterly random and bizarre heading ever seen. The Great Cream Cheese Controversy! The Easter Bonnet Scandal! The Canadian Picture Frame Incident! This isn’t mandatory, but it’s a fun way to spice up the mundane details of your story, and give yourself something hilarious for characters to mention off-hand that actually adds depth to your worldbuilding.

No matter how boring and small the topic you started out with was, this exercise will more than likely leave you feeling extremely invested in it. That’s awesome – you should be invested in your story, because if you’re not, how do you expect your readers to be? And even if not every detail you just wrote down ended up in the story (and chances are very few of them will), the richness of the world behind the scenes will show through in every aspect of your writing.

Also, you’ll spend less time knocking your head against the wall three revisions later when you’re desperately trying to remember what the villain’s favorite brand of shoes were, and cursing yourself for not writing it down.

Happy writing.