Worldbuilding Wednesday #3: Imitation vs Inspiration vs A Secret Third Thing
Ahoy worldbuilders! Hope this Wednesday finds you well and that 2025 hasn’t been 2025ing in your direction too much.
So, we started with basics, then got into some loose ground rules. Now what?
Now, we have to do some real damn work.
No, we are not creating, labeling, and then updating fourteen types of currency based on ingot size and which Queen is now ruling.
No, that fun is for later. Today, we’re talking about the difference between being inspired by our world, directly imitating our world, and a secret third thing which is forging your own path between those poles.
The world is inspiring. How could it not be? Have you seen the world?! There’s A LOT going on and there’s a lot that’s really incredible. Flora, fauna, history, language, culture, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, art across mediums, music, the very concept of evolution! And that’s before getting into the nitty-gritty, the real specific stuff, like why do some cultures use and love specific condiments? How were coins shaped? What beasts became those of burden and which of protection? Why is a goose worshipped in this one small town, or at least highly regarded?
NOW, let’s break this down.
Inspired by: Wow, I really love this particular era of Chinese history, and this dynasty and this emperor and this poet, let me think about this for a little bit . . . a-ha! I can use them to springboard my own idea because I love the dynastic in-fighting and how this emperor’s paranoia made him hire a copy-cat actor who may actually be a better leader than him, and this poet, yes, I love how she wrote really scathing poems but you had to know the right combination so everyone else just saw nice poems about nature . . . yes! Okay, so what if it’s a royal family made up of magical duplicates who pose as public figures for the family and the government, and the real family has been locked away by the duplicates and this poet in the palace is publishing work to try and tell people and her REAL poems can only be read by moonlight!
Imitation: Oh wow, I really like this time of Chinese history . . . figure I’ll just change some names, file off some serial numbers, and hey, EVERYONE copies right, it’s the first form of flattery—
NO. STOP. DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT 200 IMAGINATION DOLLARS.
Now, caveat . . . of course people copy . . . at first. When I first started writing, there were authors that I loved and who I wanted to write like, so get this . . . that’s what happened. A lot of original stuff of mine was, uh, not original. Copying happens. Lifting directly from history and the world happens. It DOES happen, and that IS okay; we all start somewhere.
But you should WANT to grow out of that. You should want to find YOUR voice and your specific ways of finding the stories within you. Stories that are YOURS to tell, because that is a whole other essay: learning when an idea or a story is yours to tell and when it isn’t.
I.e. are you appropriating the true, lived experiences of others, especially marginalized and historically disenfranchised peoples and communities?
Short answer: if you are, please don’t! If you don’t know if you are, ask your readers. If people say you are and you disagree, you’re probably wrong! A longer essay, but something we all must be aware of as we build worlds and tell stories; more to come on this front but if you’re reading this and going, wait, have I done that? That’s a good thing. It means you’re learning.
When it comes to being inspired and directly imitating, again, you can do whatever you want, but what you want to do may have consequences. If you just paint over something already in our world, maybe the story is engaging, but the world is either going to be boring or too familiar, so much that it knocks the readers out of the story entirely.
But something that has inspired you, if you give it time, if you’re patient, your writer brain can alchemize it into something entirely different AND YET still related.
See, there’s this concept in improv comedy, which I have performed and taught for over half my life: A to C. This concept embodies the idea that what you immediately think of and/or associate with a prompt is in fact NOT the most interesting one. If you follow A to B, again, it may make sense, but it’s not very interesting.
Example: Someone says octopus, you and your scene partner start doing a scene around having 8 of something.
Writing Example: You’re inspired by the Roman Empire, you start writing a story about an Emperor in charge of a society of Roman-esque people.
BUT A to C says to move on to the next idea. What does B remind you of that can bring you to idea C, that resonates with A and B and is NOT what you expect!
Example: Someone says octopus, you and your partner pause; you think, okay having 8 of something is the next logical stretch, but then 8 of what? 8 shoes? Simple. But 8 umbrellas? 8 bouquets of flowers? Meeting someone for the first time and they’re 8’8 feet tall? Wherever we go, we are no longer in octopus area.
Writing Example: You’re inspired by the Roman Empire, you sit with that; why are you inspired? Well, it was inspirational how many civic projects they did. And maybe it’s more interesting to follow a civil engineer than an emperor, but still explore empire, right? Or maybe you have an emperor who is more interested in that instead of war? Or is trying build a road someplace unnatural? Wherever we go, we’re now someplace totally different, and that’s the goal.
We’ll get more into the nitty and gritty of exact details on worldbuilding, etc., but if you can push yourself past the obvious inspiration, if you can challenge yourself to evolve past imitation, then no matter where you end up, this alluded to “secret third thing,” is YOURS, no matter what.
Once your work is yours, even if it sucks, we can build a strong foundation of what your work and worldbuilding looks like, and then? From there, we can build.
Prompt: Pick one of the words below and using A to C, see where they lead you and what sort of worldbuilding they lead you to:
Facet, cinnamon, gregarious, peridot, expectorate, tachyon, versatile, sandals, dinosaur, vivacious, sunset.