#02: The hidden art of world building: Visions & Citizens
This week was Session 2 of 5 in The Hidden Art of World Building – a live monthly workshop where we build our worlds in real time. These are small, intimate sessions designed for people who are actively building, you can join any time.
Everyone on the World Builder Studio plan gets access to these calls, plus an invite to the weekly Worldbuilder Show with Sharmadean Reid, where we reverse engineer her process building the world of 39:BC from the inside out - the only place on the internet where you can see a world take shape in real time.
Here's a taster of what we covered in The Hidden Art of World Building this month.
Create a vision that moves you... and others will follow
Every world builder needs to have a vision of what their citizens will experience in their world and then become fully responsible for making it happen.
A good vision isn’t a tagline or marketing copy. It's something that you are prepared to be dedicated to. A visceral picture of the future you’re walking toward together.
A vision that moved a nation... One of the most famous examples of a visceral vision is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. It wasn’t even planned, he was mid-way through a more formal address when gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, standing him him, shouted “Tell them about the dream, Martin!”.
What followed was one of the most powerful speeches of our time, not because of its logic and structure, but because of its imagery:
King didn’t deliver a concept. He delivered a vision you could see as if you were standing inside it. This is the level of clarity and emotion that makes a vision stick for your citizens and also one that you yourself can get behind and stands the test of time.
It's not “here’s what I offer in my world.” but: "here’s the world we are building together."
The anatomy of a vision that holds weight
Most business visions don't hold any weight because they're actually just abstract concepts. Neat, logical, and polished, look good as a tagline but don't move you.
And if they don’t move you, they won’t move anyone else.
A vision that holds weight doesn’t start with logic. It starts with something you care deeply about, then you back it up with logic. Your vision will likely come from one of two places:
- Your biggest complaints
The problems you see in the world that you can’t not care about. - Your biggest obsessions
The thing you keep talking about, thinking about and educating yourself on without anyone ever needing to remind you about it.
Here is a very high level of how my vision for World Building evolved over the years... it didn't start with World Building:
Questions to find your vision:
- What are 3-5 topics that dominate your thoughts? (The themes you think about constantly, without needing to be reminded.)
- What are you already showing progress in? (Your vision is often just the next evolution of what you're already doing well.)
- What do you complain about most? What is making you most unhappy that dominates your thoughts?
- What is a feeling you want to be experiencing that you would also be so inspired and excited to create for others?
Finding Your First Citizens
We also started to touch on finding citizens. Once you have a vision, you need people who want to be in it with you. That's where citizens come in... World Builders create for citizens, not consumers.
- A consumer asks: “What do I get?”... They are passive and self-interested.
- A citizen asks: “How can I belong? Do I identify with this?"... Citizens are active, and interdependent.
The people you're meant to build for already share your values. They just need confirmation, not convincing. Your job isn’t to market to everyone. It’s to build something specific enough that the right people see themselves in it.
The below questions will help you start to clarify who your citizens are:
Start with these:
Who do you come most alive around and why?
Who are you at your best, and who needs that version of you?
Then... get more in the weeds with these:
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