This page outlines the stylistic and tonal guidelines for writing fiction, lore, and descriptive articles in the Neo-Europa wiki. While creativity is encouraged, maintaining a coherent voice across entries helps the world feel unified and immersive.
Use this guide when writing stories, creating in-universe documents, or expanding lore articles.
🎭 Tone Overview
The tone of Neo-Europa is:
- Lyrical but grounded — blend poetic imagery with tactile detail
- Serious, with symbolic depth — treat memory, power, and identity with weight
- Mythic-cyberpunk — high-tech and low-life, but layered with ritual and legacy
- Emotionally resonant — characters feel real, haunted, flawed, ambitious
- Fragmented and layered — use glimpses, echoes, and unreliable perspective
Avoid:
- Overly comedic or slapstick content (unless it's darkly ironic)
- Over-explaining technology—let form follow function and feel
- Flat exposition—let the city breathe through action, mood, and voice
✍️ Writing Style
=== ✅ Use:
- Short, punchy sentences to create rhythm and urgency
- Symbolism (stairwells, masks, echoes, scars, light) to reflect themes
- In-world terminology consistently (see Glossary of Terms (Out of Character))
- Names with flavor and cultural depth: "Sota Tanaka", "Julia Clutine", "Rex Kilo"
- Italics for thoughts, emphasis, or internal memory fragments
- Ellipses and dashes sparingly to imply decay, doubt, or interruption
=== ❌ Avoid:
- Long technobabble unless it's intentional world texture
- Out-of-place modern slang (use in-world slang or formal speech depending on class)
- Rigid hard sci-fi tone—this is stylized cyberpunk with mythic bleed
🧱 Structural Tips
For lore articles and locations:
- Start with a summary paragraph explaining the entity's role
- Use section headers for: Origin, Appearance, Symbolism, Function, Impact, Related Factions
- Link to other relevant pages liberally
- End with a short in-world quote or cultural reference, if appropriate
For stories:
- Character-focused is best. Even massive events should be seen through eyes that feel real.
- Use vivid sensory details to bring environments to life—smell, noise, light distortion
- Let Cypherspace bleed into the real, and vice versa
🧬 Perspective and Voice
Articles should sound like they were:
- Written by in-world archivists or corrupted AI systems
- Extracted from corporate memory archives
- Compiled by slum-embedded operatives or cultic historians
Narrative fiction can use third or first-person POV, but maintain:
- Emotional immediacy
- Setting-rich descriptions
- Inner conflict and thematic depth
💬 Language and Diction
Nobles, corporate Banners, and system AIs:
- Speak in elevated, formal, or performative prose
- Use metaphors, references to history or code, and veiled threats
Slum dwellers, Nulls, and street gang members:
- Speak more plainly or with stylized slang
- May use metaphors born from survival, glitch culture, or oral myth
📚 Example Sentences
- "He paid the toll in silence—one finger, two memories, and his mother’s name."
- "The Dagger moved like a rumor, dressed in shadows that hadn't updated since last cycle."
- "You could still hear the laughter loop in that stairwell. Some say the ICE left it there on purpose."
🎨 Visual Writing Hints
If you're stuck, try writing with an image in mind:
- A figure kneeling in a rainstorm beneath a broken Chapel Node
- Neon light refracting through shattered memory glass
- A noblewoman with gold-traced implants praying in an empty office
🔚 In Summary
Writing for Neo-Europa means embracing contradiction:
- Sacred and synthetic
- Memory and surveillance
- Power and decay
- Steel and myth
Let your writing reflect the city: beautiful, broken, encoded, and unforgettable.
Old thrones. New circuits. Write the pulse of the city.