Hi hi hi!
My name is Haly, I am the Moonlight Bard, and I am a worldbuilder, game designer, author, and edu-tainer.
In my fiction, I want to take my readers on familiar journeys through strange lands. In my worldbuilding community, I want to help my fellow creative radicals — that’s you! — better build their fictional worlds and inspire their own readers!
You’ll often find me sharing my worldbuilding wit and wisdom in Notes, and I am open to polite DMs. My worldbuilding newsletter, Rhapsody by Moonlight, is currently being published 7 days a week, straight to your Substack and email inboxes!
…Worldbuilding?
As a writer of fiction, I firmly believe that there is no plot hole too big to be filled with an adequate amount of worldbuilding.
Haly, the Moonlight Bard
“Wait, worldbuilding? You mean writing stories, right?”
Worldbuilding is a critical creative thinking skill that allows us to communicate to others our vision of what can be, and to do so in such a way that the desire for the constructed world can override acceptance of the world as it currently is.
If that’s a little confusing, then let me give you a practical, real-world example. Tablet computers and mobile phones are the direct result of the worldbuilding done in the original Star Trek series. The designers of those devices — one of which might be in your hands right now — were inspired by the world of technology in a television show.
And have you seen these dudes with the “lightsaber” torches? The power of the dark side is nothing compared to the power of a dedicated and educated st’an.
These audiences were so inspired by the worlds built by Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas, that they refused to accept the reality of a world without those technologies and have found ways to make them real.
If you want to do the same, then Real Worldbuilding is for you!
Think of it like this: You want your audience to take a journey. Your plot is the map of that journey. Worldbuilding is the vehicle that carries them along that journey. And storytelling is what happens along the route you’ve planned.
In short: worldbuilding is the vehicle that carries your audience along the plot of your story.
Let’s be friends!
Whether you’re into worldbuilding, have questions about how it can help you make your fiction AND non-fiction better, or just love surrounding yourself with creative people doing the thing they’re passionate about, I’d love to connect!
