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bionicjoey@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

If I were a JRR Tolkien or Herbert with a universe in my mind, it would be so much more pleasing to make an engine that generates anything from that world that to just write out a few stories from it.

One of the foundational tenets of good writing is that worldbuilding is just masturbatory unless it serves the story. You don’t create a cool world and work your way backward into a story. You create a great story and craft a world around it which supports the story you’re trying to tell. The stories are the thing that have value, not the setting or the lore.

Telling a great story is a completely orthogonal skill to worldbuilding, and it requires creativity, emotion, and authorial intent. Star Wars and Harry Potter are both dogshit at worldbuilding, but they’re both some pretty rad stories. Avatar: the Legend of Korra is set in one of the best fantasy worlds ever created and it was a very mediocre story.

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