The rabbit hole is part of the fun
World-building, voice notes and the pleasure of following an idea before deciding what it should become.
I haven’t written a chapter yet. I have, however, considered whether the story should become a podcast series, a graphic novel or possibly a computer game.
Which probably tells you something about how easily I can get distracted.
But I’m enjoying it.
In my last piece, I wrote about losing some of the attachment I used to feel towards coding projects. AI can produce something that looks almost finished very quickly, while removing some of the problem-solving that made building it satisfying in the first place.
Writing and world-building have been a different experience. They’re among the projects I’m finding myself drawn towards more.
A lot of the enjoyment comes from letting my mind wander. Following an idea, getting carried away with it, changing direction halfway through explaining it. Sometimes I need to waffle for a while before I work out which part of the thought interests me.
The less enjoyable part was physically logging all of that. Stopping to write things down, deciding where they belonged, organising notes well enough that I might actually find them again.
Now I can talk into a voice note and have AI summarise and catalogue the points afterwards. I can stay with the idea for longer without having to keep interrupting myself to administer it.
That seems to make a considerable difference to how much I enjoy the activity. With coding, some of the work being automated was part of the pleasure. Here, the organisational work was getting in the way of it.
And once I start imagining a world, I find myself wondering how someone else might experience it.
A podcast raises questions about voices, sound and what you can leave to the listener’s imagination. A graphic novel gets me thinking about what the world looks like and which moments deserve a whole page. A game introduces another possibility: what would someone actually do there?
Those questions can make the world itself more interesting to explore. Considering a different medium gives me another way into the same idea.
Of course, each of these things is considerably harder to make than it is to get excited about. A podcast needs scripts and performances. A graphic novel needs a great deal of visual storytelling. A game needs to be something a person can actually play. I’m aware that imagining three possible formats hasn’t brought me three times closer to finishing anything.
There’s probably some overlap with the unfinished projects I wrote about before. I could spend a very long time exploring possibilities without committing to the difficult work of making one of them.
Still, I’m reluctant to judge all of this entirely by what eventually gets released.
World-building gives me a reason to follow a thought somewhere unfamiliar. Considering a podcast or a game sends me down another rabbit hole I might otherwise never have explored. I’m enjoying those detours, even while the eventual shape of the story remains undecided.
I’d like to write the chapters. For now, I’m also having a good time working out what sort of world they might belong to.