The Big Idea

 Let's dive into world-building a bit more. Last week we talked about my five rules for getting started and today we'll dive into the first of them, "Start With An Idea" and expand on it. I'll continue using the demon haunted New York (now provisionally called "Solomon's Shadow") to illustrate examples, to try and provide context for what I'm saying.

This is just how I do it, you probably have a different process, and all of us work differently. 

Let's dive in, shall we? 

1) Consume All Media: While it's tempting to think that ideas will just turn up, our brains don't work like that. Everything we make comes from somewhere and is either a reaction against or toward the things that inspired us.  Inspiration comes from what you consume. 

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

You can find inspiration within any piece of art, be it a story, a piece of sculpture, or a painting. Hell, grab a lyric from a song and play with it if it appeals (Jimmy Eat World's lines from Bleed American: I'm not alone 'cause the TV's on, yeah/ I'm not crazy 'cause I take the right pills every day are running around my head trying to find a place to use them at the moment). 

If I had to recommend places to look for inspiration in this area though, I'd say going back to fairy tales, myths, and legends is a perfect start. You shouldn't just stop there though, read, watch and see everything and anything you can get your hands on (as long as you enjoy it, this is meant to be fun).  

2) Stay Connected to the World: By which I mean, read the news and be involved in your local community or workplace. Ideas can be lurking around every corner and a friend or colleague could say something that sparks your imagination. Solomon's Shadow's origin lay in overhearing something a friend said, for example - leading me to the vignette I mentioned in the first world-building piece.

Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash

Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror are often seen as escapism, but I think that's the wrong impulse. They're a good way to talk about the world around us, highlighting things that bother us. For example, Juliet E McKenna has written trilogies about fantasy weapons of mass destruction and what happens when a fantasy world has a socialist revolution, while William Gibson reportedly abandoned his cyberpunk world in the early 2000s because he felt that so many of the things he'd included in it had arrived in the world that it was no longer science fiction. His novel The Peripheral was written after Donald Trump's 2016 election victory as Gibson realised how different the worlds the political Right and Left lived in were, something you could say was repeated in 2024. So, drawing on the news and writing from life around you is a brilliant thing to do. 

One thing I do is watch a lot of YouTube channels and the Esoterica channel is something I've become quite invested in recently. The video essays Dr Sledge posts are making me think about the nature of demons and as I learn more about Solomon and the various aspect that historically fed into the Bible, it's shaping Solomon's Shadow, for example. It's also making me think about Gnosticism and how a world built around that idea might look in fiction. 

3) Consider Your Values: When you've done this, think about what's important to you and what impact do you want to have on the world. What's important for your audience to take away from your work? Are you trying to talk about the difficulties of being a woman in the 21st Century? Do you want to proselytise your faith through fiction? One of the things we need to remember when we're creating is that we're putting ourselves on the page or into whatever we're making. To keep your work authentic, letting your passions shine is a really important part of the process. As a complete human, you can't keep your interests out of your work, for the simple reason that you won't relate to them as a creator and they won't sound real to your audience. 

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 One thing that resonates deeply with me is the stories of outsiders, perhaps because I’ve always felt like one myself. So, my characters tend to be on the fringes and rarely come from positions of power (and even if I created a character who was in the heart of government, I'd find a way to make them an outcast on another level - perhaps through their faith, their sexuality, or something else). I'm also deeply interested in secretive orders who do the work that needs to be done while other people ignore the problem, which I think comes from my perspective that the climate crisis has been consistently ignored... as well as just thinking that the idea of a 'good conspiracy' that fights the baddies is damn cool. 

Within Solomon's Shadow, I definitely see Mac as an outsider, someone who's not widely trusted but who provides a service some people need too much to ostracise him completely. Left bitter and to some extent broken by the war, he finds it hard to trust people - part of his emotional arc will be learning that there are trustworthy people in the world, rare as they may be. 

Photo by The Chaffins on Unsplash

4) Don't be Afraid: One problem I often have when I'm world-building is the question of what's believable. It's so tempting to think that there's a limit on the human imagination and that we can shoot over it into a place that's so weird or ridiculous we'll instantly be ridiculed. Within Fantasy I think that's especially true when you think of how much of the genre has been rooted in historical facts recently. In the quest for greater realism, it does seem, sometimes, like the Fantasy element is being sacrificed. I'm guilty of this in my own work, there's a part of me that wants to underline the pig dung in the streets, the smell of people who don't bathe as regularly as modern people, and the elements that bring the worlds I build back to a darker, more desperate tone. It's a way of saying "this ain't Kansas". 

However, if we go back to mythology, we can see how many weird ideas humans have accepted and believed in over the millennia. In Ancient Egyptian faith, for example, humanity was created from star dust and the seed of the god Amon, while Norse myth shows that the Nine Worlds were made from the dead body of Ymir, a massive ice giant who existed before the world was made (obviously). 

My point is, even if your ideas seems too strange to be palatable to many people, they're valid and you can make them work. 

5) Take it seriously: This, weirdly, is one of the hardest things to do. You have to take the idea and hold it up to the light, at least metaphorically. Being able to do this is a key skill, as is noticing the idea in the first place. Our brains fire nearly 3000 thoughts across their surfaces everyday, and we don't notice most of them - there's some proof that we attune our minds to notice what fits the narrative we're telling about our lives, so noticing your creative thoughts is a great skill to develop. The problem is that we live in a world that discourages curiosity and creativity, holding them up as something "special" people do, instead of something that's as natural to humans as breathing. While its true that many people do grow out of creativity, it's probably more realistic to say that its a skill we lose touch with because its not encouraged. 

Solomon's Shadow, as I've said, started from a vignette that was sparked from something a friend said. Holding that in mind, I started to think about what images and other ideas that vignette prompted - in this case the seamstress and a young woman. That's a great basis for a single story, but I like to have the option to build out from the initial concept to create a bigger picture. 

Once you have the idea, look at it, turn it over in your mind, and work out if it's something you can work with. Not every idea is going to be a winner, or it may your initial inspiration could require other ideas to expand it into something that works. Personally, this is the point that the Exploration stage starts. 

For instance, one of the things I did this week was start exploring the idea of the Demon Haunted New York. I wrote "Demon haunted New York in the 1920s" on a piece of paper, and circled the key elements: Demon, New York, and 1920s". Taking these key points I started to word associate, writing down everything that came to mind. 

While I was working I remembered an old idea I'd had about a grimoire that had existed throughout all of human history. The spells in it were almost living things, and people would have moments of inspiration which led to them writing the spells down (usually with bad consequences). The grimoire wanted to be completed and would drive whoever had it to hunt down the spells. I never worked out what the end game was, but I was starting to think (appropriately enough) that completing the grimoire would bring about the end of the world by allowing Hell to invade Earth. 

Practical Tips

• Write everything down—whether in a notebook, on your phone, or in a digital file. Whatever method works for you, just make sure to record your ideas
• Record the things that inspire you, most of us read our new online so having a folder of things that inspire you on your computer or phone keeps you in touch with them. 
• Read, read, read. I can't say this enough (and it's something I fall down on at times) you have to read as much as you can. 

Now that we've explored how to "Start With An Idea," it's your turn! What ideas are you brewing for your worlds? Share your thoughts, inspirations, or creative challenges in the comments—I’d love to hear them.

And don’t forget to join me next time, where we’ll dive into the Exploration phase and see how those sparks of inspiration can grow into fully fleshed-out worlds. Let’s keep building together!