My favorite part of writing is world building.

I could live in that phase forever. It’s generative and joyful. It’s open-ended and exploratory. It’s the part of writing that feels most like play. It’s probably why I also love improv: you’re literally building a new world with every scene.

Like good improv, I also think the best world building tends to be collaborative. Sure, it can be done solo. There’s no shortage of authors and auteurs who keep tomes of extensive knowledge locked inside their brains, masters of their own imaginary pocket universe.

They can tell you precisely what is and isn’t true about the world they envision… but when you get a group of people together to create an imaginary place, I think the worlds tend to stand up better to scrutiny.

And maybe even feel more accessible and lived-in?

Worlds organically built by groups allow you to test the rules and boundaries of your universe like a pack of velociraptor prodding an electrified enclosure.

You’re looking for weak points. Does it intuitively make sense? Does it track with your story? Does it follow an overarching logic? Does it actually need to?

Maybe not! But that should be intentional.

After you raptor-proof your imaginary world, the real fun begins.

Because once you have a world that makes sense, you can deliberately challenge the boundaries you’ve set up. How far you can push those limits without breaking them? What stories might come out of that? What feelings might that evoke in your characters? In your audience?

Maybe it’s the improviser / TV writer in me, but I think that’s easier (and more fun) to explore with a group! Case in point, my experience on Infinity Train.

Writing for that show was a dream for somebody who loves world building. Each season follows new protagonists on a big mysterious interdimensional train where every car is essentially a pocket universe that can be anything.

World building felt limitless, straddling all the things I love, from incredibly stupid visual jokes to genuinely uncanny science-fiction and horror.

It was like a Russian nesting doll of world building - there were the worlds within the train car and the overarching world of the train itself. Episodic fun housed in serialized lore. It was a writing job that never felt like a job.

But as much as I liked the ahem infinite possibilities for drumming up train cars and lore, working on the show also taught me how important it is to only reveal the parts of the world you need to serve your story and characters.

It seems obvious, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to include every cool detail you brainstorm onscreen. Doing that can overwhelm or muddy what you actually want to say or help people feel with your story.

On Infinity Train, world bluntly intersects with character by design.

Because telling a serialized, emotionally cohesive story in a relatively tight package was our main focus (and challenge) in the writers room, and the world of the series needed to support that.

So the world itself literally traps characters until they experience emotional growth. The external stakes directly reflect the internal stakes - because a character literally has to grow and change in order to leave the train.

Which is to say, what’s mechanically needed of a character from a traditional screenwriting standpoint for a satisfying story becomes the onscreen, diegetic plot of the series. And it all hinges on a fully-realized world.

Is there a piece of media you think does a great job at world building? Did Us work for you or piss you off? Reply to this email to let me know!

NEXT TIME: The dangers of world building! Ahhhh!