All good stories have fantastic world-building. Think of Lord of the Rings, Dune, Baldur’s Gate 3. These worlds contain underlying rules, even if it’s not explicitly stated: the Hobbits cannot machine gun down Sauron. They define how stories are told, and what kind of stories can be told to begin with.
Every world-builder’s end goal is to create a setting so rich and abundant that people want to spend time in there. You want others to step into your world, explore, and use the rules you’ve created to build their own things.
Worlds are complex systems. So is any hard problem worth working on. If you’re shipping a major product update or new marketing campaign, you’re working on a system. If you’re building a new startup that rearranges an industry in a novel and interesting way — that’s a system, too.
Once you start thinking about systems, you’ll find it’s hard to stop. Pretty much any difficult problem is worth trying to represent as a system, and even without numbers plugged in, I find them powerful thinking aids.
The thing about systems is that the links between events are subtle. Humans naturally think in causality — A happened because of B — but few events occur in a vacuum. And when a system’s output impacts its input, you get a feedback loop.
Steady state systems aren’t steady because they’re static. They’re steady because they’re held in place with feedback loops. You can change one variable all you like, but the system will snap back into place the minute you let go.
This makes fixing system problems difficult for two reasons: complexity and time.
Complexity: For any sufficiently interesting system, you’re not going to know how to push on every part of the system the right way. That means you need other people to help, and people are complicated. They tend to get bored or distracted or busy with other things.
Time: There is only one of you. You cannot be everywhere at once, working on every part of a system. And even if you’re the CEO and can compel employees to prioritise what you want, that doesn’t help them continue a system. You want people invested, not ticking off to-dos.
So how do we fix system problems? We build a world.
It’s not enough to simply tell one good story. You have to create an entire world that people want to learn more about and familiarise themselves with Basically, you want your team to write fanfiction..
What’s in a world? First: the background information people need to understand your world’s setting. These are the underlying components or elements of a system.
Second: purpose. Your narrative is to change your world state from A to B. There needs to be a compelling purpose why. People like stories because we like clear goals and interesting story arcs.
The world-building sets the stage, and the purpose drives the narrative. If you manage to create a clear and compelling world that’s more interesting than its current steady state, then people will be attracted to that world. And when you give them a purpose and they accept that purpose, then they’ll stay in your world and start pushing towards that.
That’s how you get multiple people pushing on the same system at the same time.
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
Elements of a world
There are some basic features that all good worlds share.
Geography. Where does your world take place? What groups of people exist there? Are they close to each other (are they alike), or are they far apart (completely different)? This can apply to almost anything: teams within an org, competitors, ideal customer profiles.
Politics. How does society run? Who’s important and whose voice holds more sway? Is it a monarchy (monopoly) or is it feudalism (many small orgs competing for market share)?
Economics. How do these different groups and regions trade with one another? Is trade constant, or is it cyclical in some way? Think about annual exhibitions and conferences versus industry Slack channels.
Currency. A subfeature of economics. What is the unit of currency in your world? It can include money, but money often isn’t the most important form of currency. Reputation and social capital is important almost everywhere — people trade favours and stake their reputation on projects.
Time. Understand the history of your world — who came before you? Who rose and who failed? Then ground your world in the present. Most of your storytelling efforts should focus on the here and now.
And once you’ve done that, establish a direction of time. What causes time to advance? What is entropy in your world?
Today’s emerging AI products will be constantly fighting a never-ending battle: your product must get better and better, while slowly all of our previous assumptions about AI and its infrastructure — which you based your product on — is changing. That’s a direction of time, and it’s the backdrop for your world.
Addendum: the missed opportunity for brand books
When I started thinking about examples where world-building is useful, one came to mind immediately.
The first thing any startup has to do is build its brand. All too often, this leads to the creation of a “brand book” that contains logo applications, approved colours, and font usage. If this is the only thing your brand book contains, it’s not a brand book — it’s a style guide for designers.
An incoming brand marketer doesn’t need to know what colours to use for social media banners. They need to know who your competitors are, how you’re positioned against them, and what the company’s purpose is.
In short: they need a world.