Revolutionary Ideas: Rebirthing Your World
Rebirth is a natural part of worldbuilding! Haly covers her strategy for handling that feeling when you are suddenly tempted to abandon all the work and start over.
Suddenly the World Came Crashing Down
I was sitting here this evening, meditating on this week’s theme of rebirth, trying to get an angle that felt right for a Manic Monday. Naturally, my brain refused to stay focused, and instead switched into worldbuilding mode with the surprise of a lifetime…
The entire perspective of my world is wrong; I can simplify things and instantly align them with how they are in my head if I just change the central storytelling from the perspective of a castle to the perspective of a ship.
What if…the library was a ship instead of a castle?
And just like that, Argentii came crashing down around me. All of the worldbuilding that I’d done, and redone, and re-redone, and re-re-redone… All of it now just meaningless drivel, irrelevant and obsolete.
…Or is it?
Take a step back with me and let’s look at the problem. I began a worldbuilding project to help me figure out why the novel I wanted to write wasn’t working.
My misshapen plot went to the back of my brain to stew into something tasty while the front of my brain set about getting to know the world. I spent a few years flinging ideas at the wall and, slowly, some shapes began to form. Vague lumps, unfamiliar and undefined…
And then I looked around and no longer recognized where I was. The worldbuilding I was doing was not keeping with the tone and plot that was supposed to be my guiding star.
I fell off the edge of my map. I built what I didn’t need. I lost the fucking plot.
Where is the haunted feeling? Where are the ships, the pirates, the mystery? Where is the mechanical allure and danger of the magi-punk?
Step 1: DON’T PANIC!!!!
Looking at the list of things I’ve written for Argentii, I felt suddenly panicked with the idea that I would have to chuck it all into the bin and start over from scratch.
Part of me thought, “creating a new world isn’t that difficult, and I’ve been planning to overhaul my css; this might be a good excuse to just torch it all.” But allll of that woooorrrrk for nothing! The tragedy and grief are so real, y’all.
As the overwhelm settled and the panic receded, and I began to wonder if everything was really useless.
Step 2: Evaluate the Change
When I began thinking clearly about the portions of the world I’d developed, I quickly saw that they weren’t useless, only outside of my initial focus. Sure, there are things that need to be changed (that pesky perspective problem, again), but I certainly don’t need to start over.
Whew! What a total relief!
Changing the perspective of my entire world is a large-scale task. It will require me to rewrite every single article. Though, with the historical stone-setting I’ve already done and the css changes I plan to do, that was going to happen anyway.
In fact, this new angle of perspective gives me much more clarity on presentation issues, visually speaking. All in all, it’s not nearly as bad as the panic wanted me to believe!
Step 3: Realign, Renew, Regenerate!
Now that I’ve gotten a better feel for where I am — that is, now that I’ve recentered myself on the map — I can see how what I’ve done will be vital to the new direction. The rewriting I’ve already committed to will be easier; it will be more in line with the tone and genre I want.
There are a few things that won’t align immediately. They will need to be transmuted through some worldbuilding alchemy into gold that adds value to the stories I want to tell. And anything that fails the regeneration will simply be discarded. As much as i would like everything to fit, I do not hold it as an expectation.
Next Steps
Losing the point of your worldbuilding is something that happens to everyone, at some point. The passion and enthusiasm we take on for our own imaginary projects can lead us in unexpected directions. Like coming across a Wild Hunt and being caught up in the magic, drawn off course, and abandoned on the moors.
I hope that this look into how it’s happened to me has been both helpful and encouraging. Whether you find yourself in the same situation as me now, later, or long in your past, having a strategy to handle the problem is never a wrong answer.
Tomorrow, I’ll take you through a few of the reincarnations and reconstructions that will be taking place, as well as ways to incorporate some of these cyclic ideas (rebirth, recycling, renewal, resurrection, reincarnation, rejuvenation, reawakening, etc.) into your own worldbuilding.
Coming This Week:
Twisted Tuesday: Interpreting Rebirth in Your Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding Wednesday: Send me your questions for this week’s “Ask the Bard” worldbuilding advice column!
Throwback Thursday: Decay
