58 - Gardening Your Setting

B01_08 - Gardening Discussion === do you take your setting from just a bunch of cool ideas and turn it into something that feels cohesive, something full of stories around every. , this sort of informal discussion between Seth and I is gonna break this down for you, explaining how you can take your best ideas and turn them into your best worlds. Let's get gardening. James: Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. This is the WorldCraft Club, the podcast. That's all about creating rich immersive settings to bring your visitant back to your world. Time and time again. I'm your host james and we have Seth with us today in studio The topic, the topic to dujour we were, what we were talking about is this idea of world cultivation. So I'll give you some background. and this really started off with an interview with, Andrew, Andrew Ziba a little while ago. We had, um, an opportunity to talk with him and, um, also a little bit of relationship with, uh, George R. Martin and his kind of professed style of, of writing stories. Mm-hmm. . So, um, Seth, like, I'd love, I'd love to hear your, your thoughts on this. There are, there are different approaches, schools of thought. They're, they're, um, nearly personality types in authors and they can broadly. be shown as, basically a pantser mm-hmm. Who flies by the seat of their pants and just sort of writes and writes and writes and stories come out. And then you have a planner, or an architect maybe. Mm-hmm. , somebody who, lays out all of their groundwork, knows exactly every story beat that's coming. And, but George r r Martin will describe himself as a gardener, where he lays a strong foundation, a good sense of what he's trying to do, and then he sort of cultivates characters. Mm-hmm. and worldbuilding artifacts and storylines, and lets them grow in a direction that feels natural for them to grow, presumably toward an end that he's desiring as well. Mm-hmm. , though we have no proof that there is an end, he's desiring because he hasn't fixed his sodding. He Seth: said, he said he's within 500 pages of the end. What does that mean? James: I don't know. It means absolutely nothing. It means nothing. But like he said, he said he's within 500 pages of the end. Yeah. I just love, love. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as, as an author, as a, as a writer. Like what, what's been your journey with the, with the Plotter, Pantser, Gardener, mm-hmm. thing. What do you think? Yeah, so Seth: I, I think that this is a really interesting idea because I think functionally, a lot of authors are gardeners without necessarily realizing it. Mm-hmm. And until he started talking about it, until this sort of bubbled up, people didn't, like, they just divided themselves really harshly into I'm a plotter, or I'm a pantser. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But the reality is that most authors that I know, Fall somewhere in between. It's more of a spectrum than an actual dichotomy. Yeah. And I definitely started on one end of the spectrum as a panther. I made no plans. I just wrote, and then I learned over time that from a production standpoint, in terms of like how fast I'm able to produce content and from a mental health standpoint, like how much my stories just drain my energy. Yeah. It's really helpful to have some plotting ahead of time. Yeah. To have some sense of boundaries. I mean, that's one of the reasons that's the WorldCraft Club, we talk about boundaries in worldbuilding. Yeah. Because it's so helpful to know where you aren't going to go, and it's really helpful to know where you're starting from. Right? Yeah. And so that's where that core concept and boundaries come in. But I really like this idea of. Gardening, because often I don't know exactly how my characters are going to grow, believe it or not. Sometimes I'm writing and they do things that surprises me. Hmm. And that surprise adds an element I think, for the reader. That is really interesting. Yeah. Because I couldn't, as, as the author, I couldn't see the twist coming. I couldn't see the turn. And for a reader, they're not going to be able to see it either because it's coming sort of so, organically out of the story. James: Yeah. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes sense. And it, it also adds, so, so in terms of immersion, I think that adds a lot as well because the, the, the characters are responding in a way that would appear reasonable to the reader. So when they look at it, absolutely. They go, oh, that actually, yeah, that adds up. Seth: right? Because I'm not trying to be random, and that's the important thing, right? I'm just letting my consciousness make connections between the character's actions and their motivations. James: Hmm. Seth: Right. What's actually driving them when they walk into this situation? What are they going to do? James: Yeah. Seth: I may have, I may have plotted a scene, but once I get into the scene, I'm typically letting the characters act and speak as if they were real people, and I was simply sitting in, in the room observing them and writing down sort of what they're saying and what they're doing. Yeah. But the reason I like gardening specifically is because often things will happen and I will choose to remove them because I don't like the direction that it takes my character. I don't like the, the direction, like the branch. , right? James: Yeah. Seth: And so I think that that gardening is a really apt it's a really apt way of describing this because you're not just helping things grow, but you're actually guiding the growth to some degree. James: Mm-hmm Seth: you're saying, I'm not just going to let this grow however it wants. It's not wild flowers. James: Yeah. Seth: This is, there's some planning to it. There's some, there's some intention to it in order to try to create the most beautiful thing you can, the most beautiful space you can for the visitant to enjoy. James: Yeah. Seth: Out of these various characters and plot lines and world super structures, all of these different things play into creating a scene where my visitant or my reader can come in and can sit down. and can enjoy it. James: Yeah. I, I really like that. And I've, I've become sort of enamored of this for a while. So, behind the scenes, Seth and I have been working really hard on creating a, kind of like in, in a, in a way, like a worldbuilding sort of system and, and, and methodology. So, those of you who, were, were with us on the Kickstarter, you'll have seen some of this, you'll see The, Worldbuilder's, Journal as well. It's really an outpouring of some of that. but we have been kind of trying to figure out like what is the best approach, what's the broadest approach that we can take Seth: mm-hmm. James: with, with the most generally applicable things. The goal is to find somebody who is so close to writing a book. Seth: Yeah. James: And it's just not quite ready yet. We wanna just be the ones to nudge them like that little bit over the edge into Seth: mm-hmm. James: into, the insanity of writing books . So, We we're kind of, we've had this mentality with it. We've been trying to kind of piece this together and, and this idea of cultivation and gardening has really become like some, something I've kind of gotten fixated on for a while and have been pulling Seth about and like, just kind of, we've been going back and forth on it for a minute and I've been kind of throwing it into the, discord server. What do you think about this? And just seeing what, how people respond. Generally it's been, it seems to be really, folks are really receptive to this, but we, we started out with this idea of almost like a pyramid and, and building off of these sort of core concepts. And in some ways, like the Worldbuilder's pyramid, the idea of, of immersion wonder and participation and all of that laid on the foundation of a great core concept. The key boundaries. What you're not making, to me, this is like the soil , you know, that, that you're starting to cultivate something in. This is how you get that rich growth. But the thing I'm really liking about this notion of cultivation is that like, You can plant the seed and you can trim, right? You can prune, you can graft, you can do all kinds of fun stuff with the plant, but the plant's the one doing the growing. And I, I like this idea that the story is a little bit out of your hands, that the world is a little bit out of your hands and there was a natural growth. There's a pattern that it wants to go in. And I think like that idea to me is, is very useful because I think it creates a world that surprises the author. I think it creates a world that surprises the visitant or you're, you know, your players if you're doing TTRPG or readers if you're writing a novel. Seth: Mm-hmm. James: and,I think that is, that's fascinating. Yeah. Seth: And in a lot of ways that is the wonder that we talk about. James: Yeah. Seth: That sense of surprise of, of, awe. James: Yeah. Seth: When it happens, right? That's the flower blooming or opening its pedals as the sun comes up. Right? That's, that's realizing that your sunflowers are turning to face the sun throughout the day. Right. It's that feeling of awe and wonder as you are experiencing this living, breathing space. . James: Yeah. I've got such a visual I wanna put together for this. I think I can actually like lay this all out now and say like, this is how, like, I, I think the gardening metaphor really works. I think the core concept is the sun. I think it does. I think the core concept is essentially the sun. Like that's the direction the thing wants to grow toward. Yeah. you lay your boundaries in there, that's where you determine where to plant the thing. Right. and and Seth: you know what's so awesome about this? James: Yeah. Seth: You can do this whether you like wild gardens that are full of just packed full of overgrowth. Right? James: Yeah. Seth: If you like your plant spilling out of their containers or growing in amongst each other, you can totally do that. You can have a garden like that, right? James: Yeah. Seth: If you want a tiny, small, detailed fairy garden, you can build it. James: Oh, yeah. Seth: If you want something that's grand and big and has lawns and is ordered and all the hedges are perfectly trimmed and everything's at right angles, you can do that. James: Yeah. Seth: They're all gardens. They're all gardens. James: And, and this is, this is the kind of like flexibility that, that we've really been looking for because in some ways, early revelations for, for us and like, you know, kind of our,our, our, our kind of moments. Kind of key insight that we've had and gone like, oh, actually this is a really cool idea. We've kind of veered away from the idea of planning in some ways and kind of tilted more into kind of this sort of wild inspiration kind of style of worldbuilding, which I think is, is really, really good. But there's part of it that was missing for me cause I've never, I've also never wanted to alienate folks who are wanting to make more intricate clocks. You know what I mean? Like Seth: Right. James: It's cuz I, I honestly, I will happily disappear into dragon ages Wikipedia for days at a time. I love the lore in that game. I love it. And I will read every dry piece of info on that thing because the world just captured me and I love it. I love it. Mm-hmm. . So like, there's part of me that just like wants to crack open a spreadsheet and like get into the details. I love it. I'm GURPS player by, by nature. And that is all detail. And like I, and I think that this, this tool set, of this notion of gardening and kind of how we build it out is really starting to, starting to, starting to draw me up. Like it's starting to get me to a point where like, oh, this is, this is the missing piece of, of kind of our approach. so yeah. Sorry. I I can, I can see you. The intake of breath there. Yeah. Seth: So it, it's really cool because it also has built in. a lot of techniques the Worldbuilder's and storytellers and writers use without even thinking about it. Right? James: Yeah. Seth: We talk about, we talk about pruning. James: Yeah. Seth: Where you might pull something, a character says out because it doesn't quite fit the way you want that character to grow. Or you don't want other characters reacting against them in a certain way until you pull that out. Right. But you might also graft in, you might also add something to your world or to your story because you do want a specific characteristic to be displayed. You do want a specific story beat to be hit. James: Yeah. Seth: Right. And you add, you know, different types of flowers, different pieces of your world in order to create the overall effects. of it. It's not just, here's one thing, right? You even in a, even in a garden that is, is highly regulated, highly controlled, you aren't just going to have one thing, right? James: Mm-hmm. Seth: You don't just put one flower that makes it a field of flowers. , it's not a garden. James: Yeah. Seth: Right. A garden is going to, even if it's just lawns and hedges, you still have a gravel path. You still have a specific, way that everything is laid out Right. To achieve this vision. And, and there's planning that's involved. James: That's the beauty actually, like a garden. A garden has dual implications of, a built space and a natural space. Mm-hmm. . It's both. And like, that's what I think really like, works with this. And it's the, the natural, wild, untamed inspiration of a pantser married to the, built space. Seth: That's exactly right. James: Organization of a planner, which kind of embraces this spectrum notion that we've kind of been like looking at. Seth: And I'm not gonna lie though. Yeah. It hurts my soul a little bit to say that George R R Martin might be. , like have identified the best kind of worldbuilding . James: Well, yeah. Seth: Something about that that's just like James: yeah. Especially when he was so soundly defeated in that rap battle against Tolkien, . But it's like, it's, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's one of those things where I, I think as we, as we've started to untangle it, this metaphor of mm-hmm. of gardening, has just kind of come into it. And so, like, I'm actually interviewing a couple of people very soon who I think, will have fascinating takes on it. One is, a, a Twitter, a twitterer, that I, that I encountered. Me, me and him. I don't think there's actually a ton of daylight between us, but we had like an interesting discussion about, mm-hmm. worldbuilding in railroads versus sandboxes. So for those who aren't familiar in, in, in TTRPG s role playing games, you're leading your players through a story. Right? so a railroad is this idea that you tell the players and now you go. here. And now you go there and you're kind of like taking 'em by the hand a little bit, and you're leading them along plot hook to plot hook. And then a sandbox is more of like, you just plop them into a setting and go do as you please and people get to wander around in it. So like mm-hmm. and, and so like, that's kind of the, the two opposing elements. So really everybody's sort of on a spectrum with it, in, in practice. But like, it was an interesting thing to discuss. And so, we, we were discussing that and, this, this, this, this, Twitter user is, is a big fan of sandboxes and I think that mm-hmm. cultivation and gardening suit, sandbox development so well, and, and another guy that I'm really looking forward to is, my, my dear friend Dan, who's busy writing a book, and he has found a really, I think kind of an intriguing way of developing his setting and sharpening his writing skills that I'm really excited to share. But it ties in really nicely with this idea of gardening and cultivating your world. Seth: Yeah. James: And I'm so excited to bring that to everybody. So, and then I want to come on and talk about railroads. Yeah, a hundred percent. And why they're awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, right? Like this essentially, essentially like the discussion was, on Twitter with , with this guy. I'm so excited to bring him on. Was,This person was more excited about sandboxes than I felt like they should be. And I was like, sandboxes aren't that great. You know? It's like, railroads are awesome. It was essentially like where I came in, I was like, I mean, they're both awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Seth: And a railroad in the sandbox is the greatest thing that has ever been invented. James: Yeah. Well, I mean, it was, steel, steel stash on the server had a good point. He said like, it's a little bit like what, what in practice a lot of people do is they kind of go from sandbox to sandbox via the railway. And so like they get taken from one location to another and then they, they explore that sort of area. Seth: It's, it's like a video game, right? That's open world. Oh yeah. And it's actually just an area you can explore with a load screen going to an area you can explore with a load screen. Right? James: Yeah Seth: it's a railroad. You don't get to not go to that next place. James: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seth: But it's a sandbox in that you get to explore the environment you're in. James: Yeah. Yeah. Seth: I'm really excited for that conversation. James: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Seth: I'm really excited to what he has to say. James: Super, super stoked on that. but yeah, anyway, I, I do, I do,digress, Seth: What!? No! James: I know, right? Total rabbit. Never total rabbit trail . so yeah, I don't know. This is, this is really kind of what, what I wanted to break, break down with. It was just this idea of gardening. I wanted to introduce this concept to our listeners and, and seek sort of their insights on it as we kind of break this down because, you know, historically, I don't think, when we were doing The, Worldbuilder's Journal, that's really where we started to kind of,crystallize a lot of our ideas. Yeah. And, since restarting the podcast and getting that going, I kind of just want to invite more people into the process of kind of like Yeah. Building this stuff up more. Seth: One of the things we really learned with the Discord server is that people have really good ideas. And when you get them in conversation, those ideas start coming out. You start hearing people thinking through different things and coming up and playing off of each other and coming up with better, more refined ideas. And we've done that too, right? In listening to people on the Discord server, we've come up with better, more refined ways of talking about this thing that we. James: Yeah. And, and, and the Discord server, honestly, is like a real star of the show here, and like a great, a great place where we just sort of pressure cook ideas mm-hmm. and increasingly we're starting to play around with more stuff on there and getting, we're getting, more kind of organized and developed as we go on, which I'm really getting a kick out of, starting to take on more sort of like consistent projects and stuff like that. It was, Seth: so if you're not on the Discord server, James: yeah. You should be on the Discord server. Seth: What are you doing? Get on the Discord server. James: Transcribing... Stinger --- James: We should probably segue into, The, the, the topic, the topic . Yeah. Yeah. That's not a, that is the worst segue though. Like, , we should come up with a good way to raise the topic. Good idea. Seth . Yeah. I will bring this conversation to a screeching halt with the revelation that we should not bring this conversation to a screeching halt,