I need help with my virtual series

[aurora_101]

Hi my name is Dave and i am an avid fan of all things Stargate. About a year ago i discovered that other fans of Stargate had created these brilliant virtual spin off serises. I started reading Stargate Horizon, which i got bored of very quickly and i then discovered Stargate Destiny, which i was hooked on. This has inspired me to create my own Virtual series Called Stargate Aurora which is in the early design stages, and i was wondering if any one could offer me some advice as how to go about creating it.
Thankyou

[Crazy Tom]

The best way of going baout it is to haeea trial version. Literarly get some writers and start bouncing ideas around, that way as your developing the sotrilines you can catch any bad apples.

[wraith queen inga]

What is Stargate: Aurora about?

[knowles2]

Personally I would work by myself to developed your own characters and at least a outline of the series. Which explains what the story is about, what the aims of the characters are and where you can see the series going in say five season time. What type of series do you want, serial, single episodes stories. Do you want it to team base or ensemble. Time period is also important.

I would then post it around here and other stargate forums asking for advice, writers, consultants and well just general volunteers, more minds equal more ideas and more skills.

You most likely will not get many volunteers at first and it will be slow going, produce the pilot by yourself to introduce the characters you want to create, set up the situation. Get the other writers to start on the other episodes, writing character bios and generally producing outlines for stories, this way you can start planning future arks while you working on the pilot.

Create a series bible, this should list the specs of the ship/ships and technology and capabilities of the ship, characters biographies, Aliens species and well anything else you can think of.
Having a pilot and a bible will help you to attract and bring in the writers and other staff and also help you to create a foundation for the series to build.

Finally build a website and why freewebs may be free it best to have you own url and server and webspace which you own. This allows you to create as many pages as you want and to organise the site in a proper professional manner and also allow you to host your own series wicki and forum discussions and other features such audio commentary, pictures, arts, news, blogs. Having a professional well constructed site will help you attract readers to your series and more importantly staff, writers, proof readers, consultants, graphic artist and well anyone else interested in helping you out.

I would say do not be picky about adding people to your team, this is where I think Horizon went wrong with the creators wanting examples of work this creates barriers and for a fan written series I feel a unnecessary barriers. Especially in areas where you are extremely lucky to get any help at all such as cgi images. I also believe the best way to get the fan base involve and excited about the project.

But I would say preparations is the most important part of the series, do not be surprise if it took six months+ before your first episodes are release, any sooner and I will just think it will disappear before they have even gotten into it. I personally have had enough of series which release its pilot or even 3 or 4 episodes before disappearing.

Also be prepared for a small audience, it takes time to build a fan base and even longer to expand that fan base.

[Major Mike David]

Cool. What's the story about? I might be interested.

[jonos101]

Cool. What's the story about? I might be interested.

Don't you have your own VS (or 2) to work on.

[Esquin]

I wish we'd been able to keep destiny going. God that was fun to work on for the 1st season. Then ... well the first season was fun.

[sbz]

I second what knowles2 said. You definitely need to work out some kind of main story arc and a series bible before you even start looking for other people to work on it with you. With so many people (eventually) involved, having that structure will ensure both that the series is what you want and that it stays on track. In my opinion there's nothing worse than something that devolves into a directionless mess. As the creator it's your job to keep it all on track.

Plus, once you have a coherent vision of what it's about and where it's going it will be infinitely easier to find people who are interested in helping. The first question you'll be asked is "what's it about?" and if you can't answer that you shouldn't (in my opinion) be looking for help yet.