The Art of World-Building: A Talk

This is the talk that started as twenty minutes at a festival and has grown, unwisely, into a whole evening. It has one argument: that invented worlds come alive through inconvenience rather than through wonder.

The talk

An hour on stage, in four parts. The boring economy — what a place eats, and what that costs. Distance as time and money rather than as a line on a map. Magic as an institution, with an accounting department and an incentive to lie. And finally the five percent rule: how much of your research belongs on the page, and what to do with the rest.

Nine other writers and designers take ten minutes each before the main talk, each on a single object from a world they have built. Past subjects have included a tram timetable, a ration card and a very argumentative door.

Why come

Worldbuilding advice tends to arrive in two useless flavors: just start writing and invent a language. The useful territory is in between, and it is practical, specific and teachable. If you are building anything — a novel, a campaign setting, a game — you will leave with a checklist rather than an inspiration.

The second hour is questions, and they are the reason the event keeps growing. Bring a problem from your own work. Half-built worlds get taken apart on stage, with permission, and the diagnosis is usually the same: the place has no size, because nothing in it is inconvenient.

How to take part

Free to attend and open to everyone; the hall seats three hundred and there is no need to book. Doors at six, first speaker at six fifteen.

If you would like your world to be the one taken apart, send a paragraph to the box office in advance and put world-building in the subject line. Three are chosen each time, and nobody has regretted volunteering yet.