Discord

 

Discord is a direct-messaging chat forum program with tons of bells and whistles. Essentially, it’s a platform to chat with other users about presented topics or form your own chat groups. It’s easy to sign up, easy to use, and best of all, it’s free for chatting. Community is the key to this app, and the writing community is there.

The program can be downloaded to your computer or phone on either Mac/PC or Android/iPhone. Or you can use it on a browser screen on either platform. Create an account with your email, add a username and password, and you are good to go. Discord firsts asks you if you wish to make your own server. Servers are essentially big rooms that are divided up into more rooms. Usually, these servers are differentiated by interest—gaming, writing, fandoms, whatever you wish. Let’s skip this and look at channels.

Once you create a username and arrive in cyberspace (man, I’m old), you can search for interest groups, friends, or random topics. On your home screen, you can click the “Explore Public Servers” button and see a huge list of servers to try. Remember, you will chat either through text, voice, or video and voice. On the left are topics to choose from: Gaming, Music, Education, Entertainment, Science & Tech, and School Hubs. (School Hubs are new to the platform and are for students.) You can also search topics such as Writing.

Click on a server of interest and view all the topics along the left side. Click on a topic to read all the posts (or some posts, I’m not judging). Topics with new posts are highlighted to find easily. To chat, click on the text field at the bottom of the screen and type. Make your posts more fun with emojis, or click on a reaction emoji to someone else’s comment. Stickers and GIFs can be added as well.

And that will get you started. There’s more to Discord with the voice chat and streaming with your camera. There are also bots on the servers to help with automated tasks. My Albany NaNo group uses one to control our sprints, so no one has to be on the timer and miss out.

How can authors use this forum as part of their social media platform? Back to creating a server! If you create a server (a bulletin board room full of just your topics), you can organize conversations about your books, social media, research, spoiler groups… I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Click the plus button and create your server. If you don’t know where you’re going yet, no worries. You can change things later. Give it a name and go. Discord puts you in to your server. There are lists along the side to add channels or threads within the server. Add one for fans, one for other writers, or one with only pet pictures—whatever you need or want. Then invite other users. You can directly invite people you are already friends with or send out a general invite by adding the link on your social media, newsletter, or direct messages. Add text channels by clicking the small + sign near the page named General. These channels will be where your friends and fans can talk about books, movies, pets, recipes, whatever you wish. Here’s the great thing, you don’t need to make multiple servers. Channels can be changed to private and you can restrict the number of messages. This lets you have channels that need permissions to access. Maybe one channel is for authors only or spoilers for your latest novels. That lets you keep a rein on what happens in your channels. Remember to set up a “Rules for Use” channel, to keep everyone on the same page.

Why Discord and not a Facebook fan group? Facebook is great for finding readers but tough to divide up groups for real conversation. You can have threads on Facebook, but Discord can keep things organized, private, and streamlined. Rather than creating a Spoiler group for each of your books, you can have a spoiler channel to cover everything. Readers can explore their areas and hit on multiple topics rather than scrolling through pages and pages of Facebook comments.

My fourteen-year-old informs me that this post is missing “sooooo very much, Mom.” Considering her recommendations and expertise, I’ll post a Discord Part 2 next week.