67 - Weeding your World with Seth Ring

What's a Weed? - Finding Focus in Your Worldbuilding === Track 1: How do you avoid getting distracted with every new shiny idea when you're worldbuilding. Seth. And I talk a big game about how best to retain focus in worldbuilding. But I think it's high time. We laid out some practical tips and guidance. Let's talk about weeding. Welcome to the WorldCraft Club podcast, a show for writers, dungeon, masters, and other storytellers who want to create rich, immersive worlds that will bring their audience back time and time again. I'm your host, James and my co-host Seth is joining us here today to get into a nitty gritty topic. As a brief aside, this episode was recorded with members of our discord server, serving as audience members who posted their questions. As we have this discussion, if you'd like to be involved with something like this, go ahead and join. Our discord server link is in the show notes via link tree. Now we like to think of worldbuilding as gardening. We did a whole episode on this idea, which I'll go ahead and link in the show notes for you. We think this approach to worldbuilding is apt because a garden is a human crafted space that showcases natural beauty. Garden's take something natural, beautiful and cultivate it for human enjoyment. We feel this has parallels in worldbuilding where ideas just sort of burst out of your head in a bit of a natural way, but your world itself needs to be mastered and arranged in such a way that it is ordered and beautiful to anyone who joins it. We can see that when we craft a setting, we're trying to order it much like that. Gordon. So. Watsa weed? It's something that's growing where it shouldn't. Arose can be a weed if it's simply in the wrong place. Now we might love roses, but if it's in the middle of a row of corn, it could be inconvenient. This was the conversation I wanted to have with Seth. I wanted to know his thoughts on limiting his settings. How he determined what didn't belong and what he did with those weeds when he pulled them. A Definition of Weeding --- Seth: that is a great question and I think that you really nailed. You nailed the definition. It's a plant that's out of place. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: And so in a world that could be an idea, could be faction a it could be a nation, it could be a culture, could be a piece of technology, Track 1: Mm. Seth: could be really anything doesn't enhance the story, but takes away from it. When we talk about gardening, We really are, we're using that analogy because when you walk into a garden, the intent is that you have a certain experience Track 1: Yeah. Seth: gardens have different experiences. Some of them are full and, they look overgrown Track 1: Mm. Seth: having talked to an estate gardener extensively about this, um, There nothing is ever overgrown Track 1: Yeah, Seth: proper garden, Track 1: yeah, Seth: Because there are plants that are, are designed to look that way. Track 1: yeah, Seth: On the other hand, if, if you go to, um, let's say a French garden, you have these highly geometric planned spaces, right? Track 1: Yeah. Seth: And they are all. They're all focused conveying certain feelings and certain to the participants, the people who walk through, and in the same way, I think that for us, if our world is a garden where we are trying to give our visitant a feeling we're trying to cultivate that feeling. Then a weeded is just any idea or any, artifact or any object. doesn't fit that It doesn't convey the thing that we're trying to convey. Does that make sense? Track 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It, it distracts and I, I think it's also there, there's kind of two, uh, spectrums or spectra for distraction, right? There's the things that distract your visitant, and there are things that distract. You, right. Like, as well, like as a worldbuilder. There are things like, I, I think, um, anybody who describes themselves as a worldbuilder is also somebody that at least at one point, built a spreadsheet they were really proud of and no one was interested in. Right. Like it's a, there's like, we like analysis. There's an analytical component to people who love worldbuilding and the temptation to get carried away with that is, is just very high. Especially when, you know, I think a lot of Worldbuilder's approach it as I am . God in my setting, and I need to expand and elaborate on it, and I need to have, you know, the, the understanding of at a very granular level of my world as well as at a macro level. But the question we have is what are you making for your visitant, right? So like, uh, when we were discussing this over polo, what, one of the things that really stuck out to me is you were like, Frank Herbert did this really well by just eradicating . Computers basically, which like, it's notable 'cause he did this in a science fiction novel, And it's like, that's something that, it's just such a weird thing to do, but it's just not what he wanted to talk about. He was concerned about ecology. That was like honestly, the primary of a primary driver in Dune was that's what he wanted to talk about. And so Seth: Mm-hmm. Track 1: that was an example of, of a weeded. That got pulled from his setting. He's like, I don't want to talk about this, so I'm not going to. Seth: Right, because his story wasn't about technology, Track 1: Yeah. Seth: It was about people and environment, so anything that distracts from people and environment, the core concept of his setting, the fairy cake from which everything else is extrapolated, it needs to be removed. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: needs to be pulled aside. And I think that that a lot of writers, a lot of writers have a sense for this, Track 1: Hmm. Seth: but there's a reason that getting lost in the weeds is a common phrase, Track 1: Yeah. Yeah. Seth: It's the idea is that like you can just get lost in the detail. Because the detail isn't actually helpful for what you're trying to, to articulate to your visitant. Joe's Question - What do you do with ideas that keep coming up? --- Track 1: Hmm. Yeah. . No, I really like that. We've actually, we, we've got a question in from the audience here. I think, uh, I, I was intending on opening this up Alith bit later, but it leads really well into what I wanted to talk to you about. Do, do you have any tools? Uh, this is from, uh, stoic Simian on our server. Do you have any tools to deal with those amazing ideas you want to get in as a writer? Uh, do you put it on a shelf? Do you throw it away and if it pops up again, give it a second. Look, I've heard some authors don't take notes and only include those ideas that persist in their memory. That's an interesting one. An idea that sticks out. What do you do with that? Seth: I think that, um, The answer to that depends on the kind of writer you are. Track 1: Yeah, Seth: But at the end of Track 1: Yail. Seth: I favor ruthless elimination of ideas. And what I mean by that is if the idea appears in your head and you're like, oh, this could be really cool. But it detracts from what you're trying to communicate from your fairy cake, from your core concept of your world. Get rid of it, put it aside, and whether you write it down or not, and honestly, sometimes I write it down and sometimes I don't write it down. But whether you write it down or not, say not right now. Put it aside. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: comes back up, put it aside again. If It comes back up again, maybe build a different world around it, but don't allow yourself to be pulled in too many directions at once. Right. Build the thing you're trying to build, a person who's building, like we talk about gardens, but in a lot of ways, when you're constructing a world, also like building a house, right? Track 1: Hmm. Seth: A person who sets out to build a house, doesn't sit down with their plans, make their plans for their house, then go half, alright, let's, you know, let's get started and then halfway through be like, no, let's add a room over here. really feeling like we could add an extra room, in this section. No. They get the materials to build the house and then they build the house that they're trying to build. Right? Track 1: Yeah. Seth: we don't shift course when we're building something physical. So it makes sense to me that we wouldn't shift course when we're building something. Uh, I don't know, um, in our head, creative It makes sense to me that we would stay the course get the result that we're trying to get. I am, I'm a huge fan of iterating, right? Track 1: Hmm. Seth: when I'm building something creative, not using physical material my case, because I'm writing and I'm just, and, and, and so there's no waste, right? People don't build, like people don't deviate from plans and physical buildings because that ends up with a lot of waste, Track 1: Yeah. Seth: It ends up with a building that doesn't even work. I don't have that problem, but I do think that if I allow myself the luxury simply building, I'm never going to actually be done. I'm never going to run out of cool ideas. I'm never going to stop. Thinking of things that could be added and Track 1: Eventually, Seth: have anything Track 1: yeah. Seth: there's so much involved. There are so many conflicting ideas. There are so many things that are not, um, coherent together. Even though they're cool, they're not coherent together, that I don't have something that I can give to other people and invite them into and have them and create for them the experience that I'm trying to create. So I'm a huge fan of being ruthless in, in saying not right now, and pushing those ideas the road. Track 1: And I, I, I think that's an incredibly hard impulse to break. So like one of the big issues that I think we run into in the podcast, one of the ways that we sort of think about things is, is this podcast sort of exists and this community exists sort of at the intersection of creativity and practicality. Um, and it, it's kind of what one of the things is like. Just writing is a really important thing to get started. It's actually just creating, not creating a world for the sake of a world, though that is a completely fine pursuit. Um, it's not our aim as a group. We're aiming to, to make stuff. We wanna make something because we think that that. Art has value when it is shared, right. Among people. Maybe not exclusively that, but that is partly a, like art has value to the creator. But like, anyway, this gets into metaphysics, but, um, kind of have this, this conviction that sharing art is, is, is, is a very important element of it. When Steve Jobs gets to Apple, right, they had dozens and dozens of projects they wanted to complete, and Steve Jobs was Honestly, like not a nice man to be clear, but like he sort of turned up there and was just like, Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And just like hammered off all of their projects and he noted enough of them that they were able to focus on the ones that mattered. What effectively, what effectively happened was he cut them down to as few projects as possible, and that enabled them to focus on what was really important. Now, all of those other ideas were winners. Like they were good ideas, like Steve Jobs wasn't just going in there saying it's crap. Well, he probably was, but the ideas themselves were brought up by some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs and, and, and thinkers of the time in, in the computing field, but, They were not the idea they were gonna go with. And so this is to me, like that's what I hear when I hear these, these crossovers. And coming back to your core idea and this sort of ruthless elimination of additional ideas, because your additional ideas that you're coming up with are probably really good, like fascinating things. They might be a good grist for another book altogether, but. That's not what you're writing right now. And so you need to be on what you're writing right now and thinking about what you're communicating to your, the audience of this book, not a future book. Seth: That's, so, that's exactly right. this that can sometimes grip us, um, whether consciously or unconsciously that this is the only one. This is it. There isn't another chance. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: And that's ludicrous. We have creativity. And so long as, you know, we don't walk outside and get hit by a bus. We have, we are going to have another chance tomorrow to be Track 1: Yeah. Seth: right? so you can write more books, you can create more settings, you can make more games. You can, you know, create more art. And so trying to as many things as possible into a single piece of art, It is totally counterproductive. Now, I will admit, coming at this from the point of view of somebody who, um, practices commercialized Track 1: Yeah. Seth: I, I write books for a living, and so there are certain constraints on what I do and the way I think about this that does not, um, that maybe does not sense for somebody who's not intending to be a full-time creative. At the same time, I think it's helpful to think about in these terms no matter how you're doing it, right? No matter what your intent is, being professional in the way that you Track 1: No. Seth: is probably better than being unprofessional. right? We like people who do this for a living. Do it in, I say this, people who create art for a living Track 1: Yeah. Seth: typically create it in specific ways, there, there is convention around it, Track 1: Yeah. Seth: one of these conventions is, you're gonna to make something else, so save a good idea. Track 1: Yeah. Dave's Question on hoarding --- Track 1: Do you ever hoard ideas where maybe they'd work in what you're writing, but you wanted to save it for something else? Seth: yeah, absolutely. So I actually have a notebook that I keep next to where I write. And in this notebook I specifically put ideas that I think have legs. I think we can, and, and this sort of actually fits in with our garden analogy perfectly. Sometimes there are plants that really good by themselves. be a centerpiece of a garden. Sometimes you have plants that don't look so great by themselves, but do a really good job of highlighting another plant, And ideas are the same thing. Some ideas on their own. ideas not stand on their own, so the, the ideas that can stand on their own should stand on their own, right. You, if you are designing a, a, a garden, we don't just sort of mash all of the cool plants Track 1: Yeah. Seth: That's not how we, how we do it. We instead come up with themes, we come up with ideas. We, we create that experience. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: So if I have, if I have, let's say I'm writing a grim, dark novel, right? So grim dark fantasy. Uh, somebody was telling me about this idea. I thought it sounded pretty cool. sort of post war, uh, in the ruins of a sort of, um, 18th century Russian City Track 1: Yeah. Seth: and some, uh, the main character is trying to like, uh, discover what's going on in the city while protecting their, their sibling. And I thought, oh, that's a cool idea. So let's say I was writing that story, if I all of a sudden come up with a brilliant way for zombies to interact with the population, I could just put it into that novel and it could be great. But let's say I've, I've done that. Let's say I came up with a really clever way that the zombies engage with the population. Maybe some of the zombies aren't actually zombies. Maybe there's something else going on, Track 1: Yeah. Seth: and I've set this up. I suddenly have another really cool idea about the zombies, I may be better off just saying, well, I've actually got this nailed down already. and rather than add confusion or add a slightly different track, if my idea is good, Track 1: Yeah. Seth: let me just save it. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: Or maybe I'll use the second idea and I'll pull the first one and be like, let me keep this for something else. Right. I do have stories are literally just a collection of a bunch of ideas I'm, in fact, I'm writing one right now. It's a collection of a bunch of ideas that I had for other stories. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: Was just like, well, they don't, they could fit in these like separately, or I could just combine 'em into one awesome thing. Track 1: Yeah. And, and, and this is where the core concept test really comes in. Like, this is why, like, one of the things we started with when we, when we were really developing our ideas about, um, worldbuilding, was this idea of just beginning. Sort of with something almost, uh, it's, it's Alith bit intangible, but it helps focus things is what's the vibe of your story? What are you, why are you trying to, like somebody plops into your setting? What are they feeling, right? Like, how are they interacting with that setting? And so that, that is a really good test when you're looking at something and going, do I want to add this? Um, It, it, it gives you this sense that you, you can, you can, you can use it as a test to determine does this fit or does this not? Is this the vibe that I was going for? Because like, settings can involve contrast and like a, a, you know, a beautiful bouquet of flowers is going to have contrasting colors in there, right? Like, there's going to be things that like may sit outside the theme and they might quite happily do so. But the core concept idea is, is a test you can run where You can sort of just go, well, does this look good? You know what I mean? Does this fit in here? Does this, uh, in either a way that contrasts or a way that compliments what you're creating. So like it's, it's a useful tool. What if the World is Random --- Track 1: Um, oh, interesting. So it's, uh, we've got the fairy cake is that it is a patchwork world. So random works. I think that's, that's an interesting, I feel like that, that, that member might makes me think of adventure time. Adventure time was basically that it was just chaos. Like, And they were like, there you go. Seth: accept, except that adventure time also has absolute, um, unbreakable rules. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: Specifically the relationships between the characters, That world is less about the trappings of the world, and it is more about the microcosm of relationship. Between people. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: what I would say is, sure, you can totally have a ran, like a patchwork world can have random, but you know what? It can't have sameness, Track 1: Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. Seth: right? Track 1: say, Seth: you can't say this is a patchwork world and then have two places that are similar. Track 1: yeah, same patch . Yeah. It's. Seth: exactly. So no matter which, no matter what you do, you always come back to that same thing of what is the feeling that I'm trying to convey, right? What is the experience that I want somebody to have when they walk into my garden? really weeding is just any idea, um, artifact, any object that doesn't comply with that feeling. Track 1: Even I, I, I would even make the argument as well that like a lot of patchwork worldbuilding or worldbuilding appears to be sort of, um, have a lot of random and chaos thrown into it. Usually has a thread going through it. Like, uh, I think about Douglas Adams work, um, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would not be. Renowned for having consistent worldbuilding outside of theme. I would argue it is thematically rock solid, consistent, like it's absurdism is, is a lot of it, but like, uh, that there is an undergirding theory of the case going through the whole book. So even though the world itself, you can make the argument that a lot of random stuff is going on and, and I think this really hearkens back to initial arguments we had about worldbuilding, where we were sort of going. Is this worldbuilding or is it story? And we, we were kind of like, mm. And we kind of just like wound up being like, there's, there, there's enough influence in each that it gets, it, it gets blurry, it gets blurry. Sometimes there's, they influence one another. And I, I believe that is, that is needful. They should feed into one another as you're writing, uh, would be my, my feeling on it. Yeah. Seth: One of the interesting things about Douglas Adams, though, at least in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that the towel is always a towel. The towel changes, right. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: But it's always a towel. A sofa is always a sofa. Track 1: Yeah, Seth: in fact, even on a world where sofas grow natural, not sofas, I'm sorry, mattresses grow naturally the swamps, Track 1: yeah. Seth: still mattresses, Track 1: Yeah. Seth: right? Every, everything in the universe is given context through our lens. Track 1: And that, Seth: so it's, Track 1: that's true. Seth: that's an interesting worldbuilding case. That's a really interesting worldbuilding case. Maybe we should do an episode on Track 1: Oh, we should, if, if we can, we've got, we. Seth: to read through. Track 1: Yeah. It'd be a good excuse to throw Terry PRT in there as well because like it's full man. Rest his soul. That guy I. Seth: world. Track 1: Was a genius. That guy was a genius. An Advanced Concept --- Seth: one thing you, you'd also discussed in this, and I think this is kind of like an, an interesting point is while we were discussing this over polo, uh, you, you had talked about how in some ways this is also like a bit of an advanced, an advanced concept, right? Track 1: Would you dive into that Alith bit? Um, 'cause I think there's almost like a disclaimer or word of caution we would give with this advice as. Seth: Absolutely. So the question becomes how do I know if this is a good idea what I'm doing or not? I. Track 1: Mm. Seth: And that is a very hard question to answer. That is not something that you're going to necessarily know without a lot of practice. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: do I pick between two ideas that seem equally good? How do I determine when I've reached the limits of my world? How do I figure out what I need to pull out? In order to enhance the concept, because sometimes removing things and leaving space in a story enhances the core concept, and sometimes adding Track 1: Leaves room for wonder. Yeah. Seth: the core concept. Track 1: Mm-hmm. Seth: how do you know how to navigate that set of questions? And the answer is you fail at it a lot. And you Track 1: Practice. Seth: over time. Yeah. You practice you, you try it, and you see if it works, and if it doesn't work, you try again. Now there is a shortcut. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: This is the kind of shortcut that when I tell it to people, most creatives, grimace, Track 1: Yeah. Seth: and that shortcut is You create a feedback loop where you get it in front of other people Track 1: Yeah. Yeah, Seth: opinion, Track 1: yeah, Seth: you take the feedback and you execute on the feedback Track 1: yeah. Seth: like it or not. Track 1: Step one is having honest friends , like that's, that's the challenge. Seth: goodness. Yes. is actually the, the largest challenge for any creative is having people who will tell you, sorry, that's not actually very good. Track 1: I don't like that. Or Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't work. Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I think that is, um, another kind of plug really for writing in, in community and one where, you know, I, I would, uh, plug our discord. We have a couple of members of our Discord here today with us, Dave and, uh, and Stoic, Simeon. And, um, is really Seth: is grimacing in the chat Track 1: Yeah, Seth: now. Track 1: But it's, um, this is, this is the whole thing is like we, we've created a space where . Um, I, I think honestly the biggest benefit to the WorldCraft Club discord is that I don't believe anybody there has anything to prove. And I think that may be the biggest boon in a worldbuilding or, or really just any gathering of geeks and general nerdery that you can have is that I. There, there is a problem in the community where we compete . Like, you know, we try to think of ways to out nerd each other or make a more, you know, esoteric point. But I'm not seeing that really at all. In our, on our server. Most folks will give you just plain answers to what you're looking for without trying to one up you on what you're writing and they will give you good feedback and encouragement that is earnest as opposed to just, you know, lovey. So, um, yeah. Seth: can't, but I would say that, that if you can't get that, Track 1: Yeah. Seth: can't get that iterative feedback loop of, of putting your stuff out there, you know, in the business world they, they say build in public. Track 1: Yeah. Hmm. Seth: what you're, what you're making front of other people because they'll tell you if it's good or bad, and. being a creative, really you need to do the same thing. Track 1: Yeah. Seth: to create your stories in a place where other people can give you feedback, because otherwise the process is so long and so excruciating, but Track 1: Yeah. Seth: not, not that it's not painful to put yourself out there and ask for honest feedback. That can, that can be very painful too. Like I understand It is a sensitive soul bearing thing to create something and give it to other people and try to ask for honest feedback. But if you can't do that, you're going to just cripple yourself. You're gonna cripple your ability to weeded. You're gonna cripple your ability to learn the advanced tech techniques that are going to take your worldbuilding and your storytelling to the next level. Track 1: I, I think Stoic has a really good comment here to close on. The projects I question the most are the ones that don't have a graveyard. Don't trust towns without graveyards. Or stories, where do the bodies go? , like is the question, right? Like at the end of the day, like, Trim the fat. Like it's hard, but like was it kill your darlings? Is the, uh, is, is one of the best criticism that we can have. And we would make the same argument with worldbuilding, whether you are writing a story or running a d and d campaign, is this a distraction? Will it distract your players? Will it distract your readers, your audience and viewers? , so I think that about closes us out with regard to the watt. How and why of weeding your setting. I'll briefly recap. Uh, worldbuilding weed is anything that distracts your visitant or even yourself from the world you're trying to create. And the story you're trying to tell. We're not saying a weed is a bad idea, just that it's in the wrong place. The way you can identify your weeds is by having a strong sense of what you're creating by beginning your project, with a clear mission statement or core concept that you're working off. We talk a lot about this in prior episodes, but you can boil it down to this question. What experience do I want my audience to have as they interact with my work? And does this element fit with it? Once you've identified your weed, you can pull it. Take it from the story, you might write it down in a use to later book or just scrap it altogether. Seth tends to recommend being fairly ruthless with this focus is key when you're writing better to have it out of your way and wasted than up in your peripherals. When you're trying to finish something . Another tool that Seth identified was a speedy feedback loop. Having people you can trust around you who will read your work and give you that direct feedback quickly. Build in public is a great mantra for this. You'll want to make sure that what you make is exposed to criticism as quickly as it can be. So you can supercharge your growing skills. I definitely recommend joining the WorldCraft Club discord server, linked in the show notes via link tree to get into a community. That's a little bit like that. So there it is how you keep your world from getting lost in the weeds so you can get focused on what's really important. That'll about do it for this episode of the WorldCraft Club. Don't forget to review us on your favorite podcasting app. It really helps our visibility a ton, and we'd be super grateful for it for Seth. I'm James. And this has been another episode of the WorldCraft Club podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Okay. That's cool. Good to know. I wonder if we, if we were to pull the rug on it and we could avoid that, like Janet Jackson incident that happened at the Super Bowl like a hundred years ago. Like just in case, you know, I'm like, I don't know. Seth: taking off my shirt. Track 1: I was about to say, like, if I, if any of us start taking off our shirts, if I can just be like, no, Seth, like don't do that. Alright. Um, so this'll definitely wind up in the stinger.