I’m an avid gamer and science fiction author. I’m also an anthropologist with over a decade of teaching, fieldwork, and consulting experience. So for me, worldbuilding is everything. A bad worldbuild kills my immersion immediately. And as audiences grow more sophisticated, I hear this more and more from gamers, readers, and filmmakers too.

Which raises a question: why do so many fictional worlds still feel hollow?

Part of the answer is that most narrative design teams are missing a specific skill set, someone trained to see culture as a living, integrated system. Characters across games aren’t just copies of western identity, there are distinct ways of knowing the world that don’t always translate easily across culture. That’s missing skill set is anthropology.

Below are six reasons why bringing anthropological thinking into your narrative design process can transform the worlds you build.

1. Holism: Everything Is Connected

One of anthropology’s foundational concepts is holism. It’s the idea that culture is an integrated system. If you change one facet of culture, you change everything. Think of chaos theory’s butterfly effect: small shifts ripple outward in unexpected ways.

Applied to worldbuilding, this means your fictional economic system, your family structures, your political arrangements, your religion, your ethnic identities, your people’s relationship to death, their biology, their environment, all of these are deeply interrelated. They shape systems of power, freedom, and oppression. When you’re building a fictional world, a holistic framework helps you understand how those relationships create meaning, consequence, and true complexity.

Anthropologists are trained to hold this complexity. We work at the intersection of biology, environment, social structure, language, and culture. This big-picture thinking is exactly what most narrative design processes are missing.

2. More Immersive and Realistic Cause-and-Effect

Creating a believable fictional world means thinking carefully about the causes and consequences of every major action. This isn’t just true for individual characters, but the culture as a whole. The most compelling games and narratives are often the ones that let player choices ripple outward in culturally coherent ways.

Imagine if your protagonist made an alliance early in a game with a faction. This alliance created real, culture-wide changes throughout the narrative. This isn’t just a change in character relationships, I’m talking about changing the religion, economics, political system, or maybe even language of your world later in the game. That’s where anthropology comes in. Anthropologists have more than a century of research on how cultural change actually works and how it manifests across cultures and generations.

When I’ve consulted on these kinds of questions, including with a major tech firm on post-pandemic cultural shifts, we’ve drawn on real historical examples. The 1918 flu pandemic, for instance, fundamentally shifted American standards of beauty. It made sunbathing fashionable, and altered building architecture toward open spaces and natural light. That’s the kind of layered, counterintuitive thinking that makes fictional worlds feel real.

3. Anthropologists Are Intercultural Communicators

Our job isn’t just to study cultures, it’s to help different cultures and subcultures understand one another. We are a kind of intercultural mediator. That’s why tech companies hire UX and Design Anthropologists, and why I’ve worked with clients ranging from Native American tribal governments to Samsung UK on cross-cultural research questions.

Intercultural communication is a fundamental part of narrative design. If your world has diverse factions, ethnic groups, or political coalitions, an anthropologist can help you think through how those groups would actually perceive and misread each other. In fieldwork you learn quickly that even the most positive, and well intentioned changes you might make to a community meets resistance. That’s because, no matter how benevolent the change, someone will always lose and in ways you may never expect. Building that friction into your narrative design is what makes a world feel inhabited rather than constructed.

4. Diversity Is a Craft Skill, Not Just a Political Position

There’s a lot of conversation right now about representation and diversity in games and media. Culture wars are near constant in the social media sphere. But here’s the thing, lack of diversity isn’t just ethically problematic, it’s bad storytelling. The world is complex. Fictional worlds that flatten that complexity feel wooden and vacant.

The challenge is that writing cultures unfamiliar to you requires more than good intentions. True inclusion requires research, consultation, and ideally collaboration. Anthropologists can help mediate that process. We’re trained to identify the blind spots in our own cultural assumptions.

Have you ever considered what you think of specific accents? Why do you think that? Where do your opinions on different kinds of accents come from? These biases don’t just come from personal experiences, they’re formed over time, and through history and conflict.

Anthropologists have also spent decades thinking about analogs and representations. If your fictional culture is standing in for a real one, you need to know what you’re doing. An anthropologist who has worked directly with those communities are ideal, they can help you navigate your own assumptions and open up your fictional world in a way you never considered before, a way that makes your story vastly more interesting and immersive.

5. The World Is Full of Untapped Source Material

Every culture is a dreamscape, a world made through symbols and imagination. One of the biggest missed opportunities in speculative fiction is that it only draws on a tiny sliver of possibility. The same alien invasion stories, the same European medieval settings, the same recycled mythologies, and gods, and political archetypes, and economic systems appear over and over. To be fair, it’s not that these traditions aren’t rich and wonderful on their own, it’s just that they’ve become predictable and stale, a singular worldview that no longer makes us question our own thinking with wonder. They just don’t stand out anymore.

The world contains thousands of distinct cultural traditions, belief systems, governance structures, and cosmologies that most Western narrative designers have never even thought about. I made this exact argument in my TEDx talk, because, what we imagine matters.

Consider the game Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa), made by and for Iñupiaq people, featuring the indigenous language and unlockable interviews with Iñupiaq elders. That game didn’t just tell a unique story, it expanded the possibilities of what games can do. It’s beautiful, and complex, and driven by the culture it comes from. There’s nothing else out there quite like it. It stands out because it offers another way of knowing/being in the world.

6. Anthropology Is a Toolkit, Not Just a Perspective

Everything I’ve described above isn’t abstract, it’s practical and in the era of AI, more necessary than ever. AI is capable of generating an incredible amount of mediocre and predicable media. Anthropology is an edge in worldbuilding and storytelling. It gives you concrete tools: frameworks for analyzing kinship and power, models for understanding how religion and economics interact, methods for identifying the cultural logic behind social norms that seem arbitrary.

My colleague Kyra Wellstrom and I built some of those tools into a book titled: Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers. It distills over a century of anthropological research into an accessible guide that doesn’t require wading through academic textbooks.

On my YouTube channel I also host live Worldbuilding Q&As every month called, “Ask an Anthropologist.” I also bring on special guests. There you can also find my social science explainer series, Anthropology in 10 or Less, and soon my new series launching this spring, Anthropology Through Science Fiction. I’ve been translating these same ideas into free, accessible content for creators. And in my worldbuilding consulting practice, I bring this toolkit directly to projects.

Ready to Build a Better World?

I’ve spent 11 years teaching anthropology at the university level, published research on how worldbuilding works as a pedagogical tool, and consulted for clients ranging from indie fiction writers to major tech firms. My fiction, including the dystopian sci-fi Chronicles of the Great Migration series and my dark fantasy novel Shades & Shapes in the Dark are built on the same anthropological foundations I’m describing here.

If you or your team is serious about creating fictional cultures that feel authentic and immersive, I’d love to talk.

Book a free 10-minute consulting call →

Or explore free worldbuilding resources, essays, and video content at loridianslaboratory.com.

Michael Kilman holds an M.S. in Applied Anthropology (focus: Media) from Portland State University. He is the author of the Chronicles of the Great Migration series, Shades & Shapes in the Dark, and Build Better Worlds. He is also known for his TEDx talk “Anthropology, Our Imagination, and How to Understand Difference.”

One of my most difficult days teaching college anthropology happened in the spring of 2017. We were discussing political systems. Tensions were high. Two students, one liberal, one conservative, stood up and started screaming at one another in the middle of class. I had to take both outside, separate them, and deescalate. Classrooms were growing increasingly contentious, a reflection of the escalating political climate of the United States.

In the fall of 2019 I wrote the article, 17 Things I Have Learned Teaching Anthropology and Cultural Diversity. If you haven’t stumbled on it before, it’s about insights I gained in my early days of lecturing. In this difficult political climate, I knew that these conversations about diversity and culture were more important than ever. So, after that shouting match in 2017, I began experimenting with different methods to teach anthropology and diversity.

As I was writing that article in 2019, I discussed how contentious the classroom had become with my soon to be co-author, Kyra Wellstrom. Both of us had been teaching anthropology for more than five years at that point, and had seen firsthand the changes in our classrooms with each passing semester.

Rethinking Worldbuilding

It wasn’t just the classrooms Kyra and I discussed. Both of us were frustrated with the inaccurate worldbuilding in fiction, films, and games. There were two books contributing to this problem, Sapiens and Guns, Germs, and Steel. Anthropologists have debunked both books, though they remain popular. Both sell an overly simplistic narrative about culture and history that doesn’t hold up to any real scrutiny.

Why did we care so much? Well, what we imagine matters. If your culture is constantly creating stories based on inaccurate information and stereotypes, that becomes part of the public consciousness. So, bad worldbuilding can actually reinforce biases and in some cases, bigotry. On the other end of the spectrum, good worldbuilding can help people have greater empathy, source possible solutions to real-world problems, and deconstruct stereotypes. Fictional settings are ideal for playing with ideas, especially if you’re a creative.

So, that fall, as I was writing the 17 things article, Kyra and I decided to write a book on how to use anthropology to worldbuild. That book, of course, became Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers.

As we began writing the book, we realized we could potentially help solve two problems at the same time. By writing an accessible text on anthropology for worldbuilding, we could help people write more accurate and immersive fiction. We also realized that we could use the book in our classrooms to approach contentious topics from a different direction.

Each of us took the model and experimented with it in different ways.

I tried several experiments in my classroom. The first was to have individuals build their own worlds. And while students seemed to enjoy this approach, it did nothing to address the tension in this classroom. If anything, students doubled down on their opinions. I quickly realized that having individual students do their own projects, isolated them from others. Unfortunately this further entrenched them in their own worldviews which was the opposite of my goal. It’s easy to become myopic when you’re in your own head.

What Changed Everything

After two semesters and some student surveys, I took a different approach. This time I tried group worldbuilding.

It changed everything.

Each student was assigned to a group of 3–5 people, and through three key projects throughout the term, they built fictional worlds together. Their final assignment was to present their fictional world creatively to teach the entire class. I encouraged them to use their own backgrounds, knowledge, and skills in their projects.

There were so many brilliant final projects. Some did plays (in full costumes), created videos, and built tabletop or board games. We had mock news reports and political campaigns, hilarious tourism brochures, original music, languages, recipes and so much more. Finals week became a space of play instead of stress.

While, no model is perfect, and there are some students who hate group work, it completely changed the conversations in class. Since I began the worldbuilding approach, I’ve never had another shouting match in my classroom. Instead, more students showed up to class ready to discuss. They understood that our in-class content and conversations helped them improve their fictional worlds. Instead of viewing a classmate with a different opinion as a challenge, suddenly their differences were fuel for building a more nuanced and holistic fictional world.

In these projects, they were practicing compromise and gaining experience finding common ground to work toward a mutual goal. They were rehearsing democracy, a skill we must always practice if we are to keep it.

But it wasn’t always easy. That’s kind of the point. Some groups had problems working together. One group project was derailed by a the collapse of a romantic relationship, and I had to work with the students to find a way to resolve things. Sometimes things didn’t get resolved, and a student dropped the class. Classrooms shouldn’t be uniform and tidy things. If they were, how could anyone learn? This whole human thing we do is complicated. That’s what anthropology is all about: trying to understand the complexity of the human experience.

Moving Beyond the Classroom

The success of this approach led to my 2021 Ted Talk, Anthropology, Our Imagination, and Understanding Difference. Then, after presenting at the Society for Applied Anthropology annual conference in 2022, I had several inquiries to write an academic article on the subject. Ultimately, I wrote a book chapter for an academic book detailing my model. The chapter was titled: Worldbuilding as Pedagogy: Teaching Anthropology and Diversity in Contentious Classrooms. That chapter came out in the summer of 2025.

The last 12 years, since I first began teaching, I’ve learned as much, if not more, than in all my coursework and field research in graduate school.

Watching our country lean more and more toward authoritarianism and away from democracy in the last decade, it’s been my classroom that’s given me hope. Because I saw firsthand that how you approach these contentious issues is almost as important as the topic itself. I’ve learned that no matter how difficult the discussion is, there is a way to get most people to learn to see humanity in one another.

If I were to add anything to my old 17 Things article, it would be this: You cannot find meaning out in the world, you have to create it. Sure, you can always let other people create meaning for you, but if you do that, you’ll be stuck in a life that’s not your own. If we want to build a better world for our descendants, if we want to be good ancestors to future generations, then we have to create meaning together to build a better world.

Are you experimenting with worldbuilding, pedagogy, or collaborative learning in your own work? I’m always interested in learning about different approaches or helping others to actualize theirs. Feel free to reach out with your thoughts or questions. I also occasionally host worldbuilding Q&A sessions over on YouTube for creatives.

This essay is part of an ongoing body of work on pedagogy, worldbuilding, and instructional design. Additional writing and resources are available at https://loridianslaboratory.com.

This essay went out to my substack and was originally published on my website. Considering subscribing for updates on tons of free content. And if you are curious about my work, and want to support me you can become a paid subscriber to read exclusive and early access to fiction, audiobooks and more.

Like music, good writing often has a rhythm and a flow. There are always exceptions of course, but if you want your readers to connect with your content, it can be helpful to consider the four elements below.

This essay will focus mainly on fiction. Non-fiction has a different set of elements, and maybe I will write about that soon (comment below if you’re interested in that).

Before I dive in, It’s important to note, that style is really important here too. Different writers use these elements in different ways, but, finding your way to balance them, can help your writing immensely. Often, thinking about how to balance these elements is better done in your second draft. Why? Well, often the first draft is more about discovery. What’s happening? Why is it happening? Once you have the core basics of what you want the scene to accomplish, then you can go back through and apply these elements. Of course, as you practice, you’ll get better at doing it the first time around too.

As I cover each element, I’m going to write a sample scene using the elements. Each element will build on the previous scene. The first iteration of the scene will only include dialogue. With each element, we will add another layer to the same scene.

Let’s dive in.

Element 1: Dialogue

What makes dialogue compelling? Have you ever stopped and read your favorite scenes of dialogue?

There are a few key ingredients to dialogue. But before we get into that, it’s good to note that dialogue in real life, is not the same as fiction. You can’t listen to real-world conversations to help with fictional dialogue.

When I was in graduate school a huge part of my job was transcribing interviews and roundtable discussions. I spent hundreds of hours typing up conversations. It wasn’t long before I discovered that most people don’t follow the same grammatical rules that we do when we are writing. Good dialogue has to simulate conversation but is cleaner and more to the point. No one wants to read all the ums and pauses and false starts. So a first tip is to consider studying how your favorite novels or films set up quality dialogue.

Beyond the flow of dialogue, it’s vital to consider your characters’ interests. What does your character want out of this conversation? What’s their agenda? Do they just want a cup of coffee or are they trying to persuade someone else to take action?

Every person in the dialogue should have some kind of agenda, even if the agenda is to try and remain neutral or understand what the other character is trying to say. How does that agenda tie into their larger goals? Or does it? Maybe their goal is to relax and their neighbor is pestering them. Maybe the conversation is with a powerful person whose goal is to take over the world.

Dialogues are often games of power, persuasion, and coercion. We use our words to enforce norms in society. We use them to get what we want or prevent something from happening. We use words to connect with people or share our feelings just as often as we use them to compete. Always consider how these conversations drive the plot and character development.

Each of your characters will use different kinds of words and phrases. A ten-year-old, unless they are a prodigy, is unlikely to use big words and scientific jargon. They are also less likely to be self-reflective. However, if the 10-year-old is trying to sound smart (because their agenda is to sound more grown up in a group of grown-ups) it can be fun to have the child use the words incorrectly.

You can also use a conversation between an adult and a child to reveal something about your world. The adult can explain elements of your world or story to your child that might be difficult to do in other ways. Children and newcomers to a world are often useful tool for helping your reader to understand your story more organically through dialogue than a long info dump.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of incorporating a lot of dialects into writing. In the Harry Potter series, for example, I loathe reading the Hagrid Dialogue out loud to my kids. That’s because sometimes it’s hard to understand what the character is saying. You have to read the sentence several times and that kind of dialogue can pull you out of the story and leave you feeling frustrated. Your use of accents or dialects should never pull the reader out of the story. You want to draw people in, not frustrate them and force them to read the same line several times to understand what’s happening. There are always exceptions of course, but generally, I suggest avoiding distracting dialects.

On the other hand, if there are certain words or phrases that a character always uses, it can be a good way to build personality or remind your reader of their quirks. Just don’t overuse this. We have all encountered the annoying person who uses the same phrases over and over. Though, this too can be a tool in writing. Perhaps your main character is exhausted by their neighbor who says the same phrase six times in a single conversation. But remember, a little bit goes a long way.

Avoid adverbs. I’m not one of those writers who says never use them, adverbs have their place. But if you always have to write something like, ‘She spoke softly’ or ‘He said with certainty’ then you aren’t really balancing out the other elements. There are lots of other tools in our writing kits that help us understand tone and emotion. Dialogue can be good for showing the reader things, but avoid telling your reader about the tone or feelings of the character. Let the character share their own thoughts and feelings as much as possible.

There are definitely more things to think about with dialogue but considering these key points can significantly improve your dialogue. If you want to dive deeper into dialogue specifically, I highly recommend the book ‘How to Write Dazzling Dialogue’. It’s a pretty quick read and covers some additional key points about how to improve that particular part of your writing.

Scene Example Part 1: Just Dialogue

Stephanie said, “I’m leaving for a reason.”

Grandma said, “But we need you here on the farm.”

“Bert isn’t going to college. He’ll stay here forever.”

“One person isn’t enough to take care of all the animals.”

“So hire someone.”

“You don’t care about your family?”

“It’s not that grandma. I do care. But this place. It’s just not me. I don’t feel like I fit in here. I want to find where I belong.”

“Stephanie, of course you fit in here. I couldn’t do any of this without you. And besides, Bert isn’t going to marry anyone. He’s not going to have kids. This farm has been in the family for generations and you’re just going to abandon us?”

“It’s not abandoning you. I have to find myself. I’m an artist Grandma. I need inspiration.”

“You can paint here!”

“Paint what? Barns? Trees? Farmers? No. I want to travel the world and paint all the amazing things I see.”

Element 2: Action

Action isn’t necessarily violence. Action is also motion. It’s everyday tasks. It’s moving around in the space and inhabiting it. Action is important because you don’t want your character floating around in a void, you want them to be living breathing beings inhabiting an interesting space.

Is your character cooking dinner while talking to their grandmother?

Are they brewing a magical potion to curse their enemies while discussing their evil master plan with their assistant?

Action and Dialogue work together in beats. The dialogue in the example above is an okay start but when we only have the words, were missing so much more of the lived experience of these two characters. Dialogue and action have beats and melodies just like music.

If you have only dialogue and no action, there’s no room for the reader to pause and consider. Action can give dialogue some breathing room. It can add quirks to each character and deepen the emotions of the dialogue.

Maybe it’s just me, but I struggle to stay interested when there is too much action. A big battle scene, a one-on-one fight, a massive explosion, or a scene where someone is fleeing a monster can be a lot of fun to read and write. But if your characters never stop to catch their breath, if every chapter has a scene where someone is fleeing a monster, if your entire book is a battle… you’re going to bore the hell out of most readers. There are certainly people who will read nonstop action. Hollywood counts on some of those people to consume their endless sequels of Fast and Furious, but even those movies, have downtime.

Action should serve a purpose in the story. Yes, you can absolutely write cool action scenes and they’re definitely fun to write, but why? What does this do to drive the story?

Frank Herbert was notorious for cutting out the vast majority of the big battles in his Dune books, and Dune is hands down the best-selling sci-fi novel of all time. There’s lots of action in the books, but you don’t hear very much about the big interstellar battles as Paul Atredies conquers the galaxy. And while not everyone loves Dune, it’s one of the most important science fiction novels in history. There are lots of ways to approach action.

Why does that bomb need to go off? Why do two rivals have to fight that battle? Or rather, why do you need to show the battle? Is your main character a warrior so the audience needs to see their skills or use of magic? Is important to show them fighting for their life against an evil shapeshifting clown? If your story contains a lot of battles, it’s not necessary to show every element of every battle. Choose important moments in longer moments to highlight important actions. Don’t make the mistake of the Transformers movies and have ninety minutes of a two-hour film dedicated to fight scenes. Those movies make my eyes glaze over because it’s just action, action, action.

Be strategic with your action. Too much and you might have readers putting down your book, too little and they won’t understand the scene the way you want them to.

Scene Example Part 2: Dialogue and Action

Stephanie stirred the marinara and said, “I’m leaving for a reason.”

Grandma kneaded the dough on the adjacent countertop. She pressed her hands much harder in the dough than needed, “But we need you here on the farm.”

Adding in some more garlic, Stephanie stopped and turned facing her grandmother. “Bert isn’t going to college. He’ll stay here forever.”

Grandma sighed shook her head. “One person isn’t enough to take care of all the animals.”

“So hire someone.”

Grandma stopped kneading the dough and put her hands on her hips, scattering flower on the floor. “You don’t care about your family?”

Stephanie turned back to the pot, adding seasoning to the sauce. “It’s not that grandma. I do care. But this place? It’s just not me. I don’t feel like I fit in here. I want to find where I belong.”

Her grandmother leaned into the rolling pin and flattened the dough. “Of course you fit in here! I couldn’t do any of this without you. And besides, Bert isn’t going to marry anyone. He’s not going to have kids. This farm has been in the family for generations and you’re just going to abandon us?”

“It’s not abandoning you. I have to find myself. I’m an artist Grandma. I need inspiration.”

“You can paint here!”

“Paint what? Barns? Trees? Farmers? No. I want to travel the world and paint all the amazing things I see.” She waved her arms around spattering droplets of marinara on the countertops.

Element 3: Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is the cultural and environmental setting your characters are in. It’s the kinds of cultural elements you’ll see in the seen giving your story more context.

– What time in history does your story take place?

-What is the level of technology?

-Are the characters indoors? Outdoors?

-What kinds of things decorate their walls?

-What kind of furniture or objects fill the room?

-What does the landscape look like? Can people walk in it or do they need a space suit?

We cultivate our spaces based on cultural knowledge and personal experiences. But personal experience is also bound by culture. If you live in a different culture you will naturally have different experiences. Think about the culture and the setting of your scene. In our example, we have a family farm and a young girl dreaming of traveling the world and painting. What kind of cultural details are important to make the world feel real?

Worldbuilding should be realistic. No, I don’t mean you can’t use magic, or spaceships, or supernatural forces, I mean your world must be internally consistent and holistic. What does that mean? It means that there are manyl ways that sentient creatures (like humans) interact and adapt to the world they live in both socially and physically.

-Every culture has limitations and gaps in knowledge. What are your characters?

-What are the power dynamics between the characters? Who tries to assert power? Who tries to resist it? The rebellious teenager who wants to travel the world and paint is trying to both resist the power of the older generation and assert her own.

-Do they fit within the status quo of the culture or is one character challenging the status quo?

-How does their identity fit, or not fit, into the culture?

A few sentences here or there can add a little more context to the world in which the characters inhabit. Everyone always says to avoid info dumping. But what if you have to introduce the reader to a giant walking city, telepathy, and what it’s like to be homeless in this environment in a single scene? How can you avoid info dumping? The balance between these elements (including the next and final one) can help you to draw your readers in and make a scene more compelling, while at the same time introducing interesting concepts or ideas to your story.

If you want a full book chapter that includes worldbuilding through, dialogue, action, and the environment, you might consider listening to audio narration of the first chapter of my novel “Mimi of the Nowhere” for free over on YouTube.

If you want more on worldbuilding specifically, I’ve written several other essays on the topic and of course, my co-written book, “Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers might give you some things to think about.

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Scene Example 3: Dialogue, Action, and Worldbuilding

Under the warm light of the kitchen, Stephanie stirred the marinara and said, “I’m leaving for a reason.”

Grandma kneaded the dough on the adjacent countertop. She pressed her hands much harder in the dough than needed. “But we need you here on the farm.”

First, adding in some more garlic she had bought that morning from the farmers market, Stephanie stopped and turned facing her grandmother. “Bert isn’t going to college. He’ll stay here forever.”

Grandma sighed shook her head. “One person isn’t enough to take care of all the animals.”

Cornelius the Rooster picked that moment to jump up and peck at the kitchen window.

“So hire someone.”

Grandma stopped kneading the dough and put her hands on her hips, scattering flower on the peeling linoleum floor. “You don’t care about your family?” She grabbed the ancient rolling pin, that had probably been around as long as she was alive. Two white handprints lingered on her apron as she worked the dough.

Stephanie turned back to the pot, adding seasoning to the sauce. “It’s not that grandma. I do care. But this place? It’s just not me. I don’t feel like I fit in here. I want to find where I belong.”

Rain replaced the rooster, drumming on the window.

Her grandmother leaned into the rolling pin and flattened the dough. “Of course you fit in here! I couldn’t do any of this without you. And besides, Bert isn’t going to marry anyone. He’s not going to have kids. This farm has been in the family for generations and you’re just going to abandon us?”

“It’s not abandoning you. I have to find myself. I’m an artist Grandma. I need inspiration.”

“You can paint here. Your family loves you. We’ll miss you.” She nodded toward the family portraits on the wall, taken semi-often over the last hundred years. The older photos were black and white and gradually changed to a printed copy Grandma had reluctantly taken with her cell phone.

“Paint what? Barns? Trees? Farmers? No. I want to travel the world and paint all the amazing things I see.” She waved her arms around spattering droplets of marinara on the countertops. Similar stains speckled the walls from past disagreements, a map of misunderstandings.

Element 4: Internal Life

Internal life is what’s happening in the character’s mind. Not every scene needs a great deal of internal life, and in some situations, it might make sense to cut it entirely. But I think that internal life can be a powerful ally in writing a scene that connects the reader to the character’s emotions. It can also show how a character has changed in a longer story.

One of my favorite fantasy writers, Brent Weeks, does a fantastic job of using the internal life of his characters to show how they reflect on what’s happening to them and how they’ve changed over time. When you read either one of his famous book series, The Lightbringer, or the Night Angel series, that inner life helps you to feel that you’re growing with the character and you feel a deeper connection.

Things to consider about the element of inner life:

-What are the character’s thoughts and feelings?

-How do they think about what the other person just said?

-How do they feel about the place? The weather? The political situation?

-What do they think about themselves?

-What emotions are most potent in the scene?

-What things do they ruminate on? What can’t they stop thinking or worrying about?

-Do they have trauma? What things force them to relive that trauma?

-What motivates them?

-What are they afraid of?

-How does the internal life reflect the outer conditions?

Be careful, too much internal life can slow the scene down to the point where it’s hard for the reader to focus. If you’re always in the character’s head, the scene can feel bloated. Some books focus so much on inner life that nothing happens for most of a chapter. That may or may not be good for your story. Consider carefully.

Scene Example 4: All Four Elements

Under the warm light of the kitchen, Stephanie stirred the marinara and said, “I’m leaving for a reason.”

Grandma kneaded the dough on the adjacent countertop. She pressed her hands much harder in the dough than needed. “But we need you here on the farm.”

What did they need her for? She barely tended the animals anymore. She couldn’t understand why her grandmother was pushing so hard to keep her around.

First adding in some more garlic she had bought that morning from the farmers market, Stephanie stopped and turned facing her grandmother. “Bert isn’t going to college. He’ll stay here forever.”

Her baby brother loved this place. He was up early every single day with the animals, spent hours on the tractor, and loved the work. But Bert was a loner. He only left the farm to go on supply runs.

Grandma sighed shook her head. “One person isn’t enough to take care of all the animals.”

Cornelius the Rooster picked that moment to jump up and peck at the kitchen window. She hated that damn bird. It woke her every morning and pecked at the window all the time. She definitely wouldn’t miss him.

“So hire someone.”

Grandma stopped kneading the dough and put her hands on her hips, scattering flower on the peeling linoleum floor. “You don’t care about your family?” She grabbed the ancient rolling pin, that had probably been around as long as she was alive. Two white handprints lingered on her apron as she worked the dough.

Stephanie turned back to the pot, adding seasoning to the sauce. “It’s not that grandma. I do care. But this place? It’s just not me. I don’t feel like I fit in here. I want to find where I belong.”

The rain replaced the rooster, drumming on the window. She’d almost rather the rooster. Stephanie was so tired of the rain, of the endless months of overcast. She wanted to be somewhere warm and sunny.

Her grandmother leaned into the rolling pin and flattened the dough. “Of course you fit in here! I couldn’t do any of this without you. And besides, Bert isn’t going to marry anyone. He’s not going to have kids. This farm has been in the family for generations and you’re just going to abandon us?”

And there it was. She wanted Stephanie to become the typical barefoot and pregnant farmer’s wife. And who the hell would she stick around for? There weren’t exactly a lot of good options around here. After high school, all the fun people had gone off to college. After her parents had died, she had stayed for three years until Bert graduated. But she dreamed of New York and Paris and London. And she wanted to see those places before she even considered kids.

“It’s not abandoning you. I have to find myself. I’m an artist Grandma. I need inspiration.”

“You can paint here. Your family loves you. We’ll miss you.” She nodded toward the family portraits on the wall, taken semi-often over the last hundred years. The older photos were black and white and gradually changed to a printed copy Grandma had reluctantly taken with her cell phone.

“Paint what? Barns? Trees? Farmers? No. I want to travel the world and paint all the amazing things I see.” She waved her arms around spattering droplets of marinara on the countertops. Similar stains speckled the walls from past disagreements, a map of misunderstandings.

Concluding Thoughts

Take a look at how much more we know about the character’s motivations and the world in which they inhabit in the last example compared to the first one where we only use dialogue. How I use these elements will certainly be different than how you use them, but I hope the scene examples will help illuminate how you might approach and improve your own scenes.

Even if you choose to skip one of these elements, or if you use one far less than the others, it’s important to consider how each of these approaches is used and integrated into the scene to breathe life into your characters. These aren’t rules, these are suggestions. At the end of the day, you decide how to approach your style of writing.

I write essays like this to help readers like you understand the core foundations so that they can truly understand the nature of the art and craft of writing. After all, the world is a better place with better stories. And I believe that stories can save the world.

I hope this was helpful! Best of luck with all of your writing! Feel free to add questions or comments below.

It’s a great taboo to assert that success (defined here as recognition and financial success because there are many kinds of success) comes largely from luck. Of course, hard work plays a role in success, but luck, timing, and connections are so often an even more powerful force.

But wait, you say, I worked hard to achieve all the things I have!

Did you work harder than everyone else in your field who never achieved the recognition and success you found?

What’s more, the difficulty of work is quite relative. Who works harder each day? The construction worker who uses their body to build things? The janitor who cleans toilets and prevents the spread of disease? The coder who, versed in a computer language, reshapes technology? The doctor who saves lives? The teacher who must train the young minds of the future? The manager, who must organize the rest of the labor at a restaurant? We compare the kinds of labor and justify how much people make based on entirely relative notions, that are steeped in luck. Not everyone is born in the right circumstances to take advantage of education and technology.

So, we tell ourselves so desperately that hard work = success because the reality is, we are too embarrassed to admit when we are successful that luck played an enormous role. A person can work twelve-hour days for the entirety of their life, rarely miss a sick day, and always be on time, and can still die destitute no matter how well they manage their money.

But wait you say again, I did work hard to get where I am at!

You did. No one is seriously denying that unless perhaps you won the lottery or something, which is just another kind of luck.

Again, did you work harder than everyone else in your field who never achieved the recognition and success you found? Did they want their success less than you? Perhaps they didn’t visualize the goal as hard as you?

To assert so, would be the worst kind of arrogance. We have created a system with far more losers than winners.

So what then are we rewarding with financial success and recognition? It is not hard work. It’s luck. And mythmaking about how Europe came to power, plays a role in the modern idea of hard work equates to success.

Perhaps an element of the modern Western notion of hard work equates to success is an example of how the myth of exceptionalism, born in a narrative of superiority during the rise and justifications of the horrors of colonialism, is nothing more than a defense of the fact that ultimately success is overwhelmingly about luck. The West isn’t exactly unique in this belief, but it’s certainly a core justification of the structure of our world at this stage of history.

The rise of Europe, like so much of history is about luck and timing. Europe was in the right place at the right time after the collapse of the Mongol empire. Then, hit by the black death, the traditional power structures crumbled at just the right moment for change to surge forth and give rise to a new merchant class. This increased trade and brought wealth to Europe, which alongside many other cultural and social processes, brought increased power to several kingdoms. Competing for dominance, these kingdoms began their colonial project.

I am oversimplifying these incredibly complex processes of course (a few sources for further reading are listed below if you are interested), but luck and timing also lead to the rise of every empire in history. Most of the tools and technology and knowledge that Europe used to launch the colonial project came from other places around the world. Very little of the technology required for the colonial project originated in Europe itself.

True, Europe improved upon many of these ideas, but that’s not unique. This is true of every empire. One of the things that make empires powerful is their ability to take a wide variety of ideas from diverse populations and cultures and turn them to their advantage. Empires are great at synthesis. If they aren’t they either never rise, or don’t last very long. But during the late 15th century, Europe had the right conditions and was in the right place at the right time. Europeans had the opportunity to synthesize much of the available knowledge and technology of the known world at a moment and, with several other factors at play, succeeded. The greater their reach grew, the greater access they had to technology, knowledge, and resources, thus deepening their power.

The powerful always imagine the past in a way that justifies how they seized said power. We always need a justification for our less-than-favorable qualities or actions, especially when we know we are doing things that are deeply problematic.

Shifting back to the individual level. The talent of exceptional individuals largely went unnoticed throughout history because people were marginalized through an accident of birth or circumstance. What if Mozart had been born a slave? Or Rumi a serf under a feudal lord. Both were extraordinary, and both were incredibly lucky to be born in the time and circumstances in which they lived. There is no doubt the world would be poorer had these individuals never had the opportunity to explore their unique genius. And yet, we have squandered so much human potential throughout history. How much genius has been lost to terrible systems of oppression?

At the very core of our experience is luck. Ideologies around the world, both secular and religious, have tried for centuries to justify why some are born lucky, and some are not. The Hindu caste system, the divine right of kings, the concept of manifest destiny, or even hate groups that believe they are born superior to others, tout their superiority and supremacy to justify the suffering they inflict on others. The bootstraps myth of American life (the concept of which was originally a satire of what the elites said about the poor since you cannot physically lift yourself by your bootstraps), is yet another justification of oppression. The powerful justify their power through a narrative that makes them feel special, while othering the very people that they build their power from through exploitation.

Why do we fight so hard to discount luck? What is it that so many people around the world who are successful in one way or another, feel it’s almost taboo to say they were born lucky? Certainly, some of us who are unlucky, do not have such reservations. I don’t. Part of it may be our need to create meaning in a world that feels meaningless. Part of it may be the storytelling and mythmaking that are so deeply embedded in the human brain or the pattern-seeking systems in our neurology. Regardless of the why, creating political and economic systems that reward luck and discount the important contributions of everyone in a community, has disastrous consequences for a large majority of the human species both historically and presently.

Many of us are obsessed with the narrative of the great individual, the idea that some people just come along and reshape the world. This is only a partial truth. The remarkable individuals are often just great synergists. They, for all their luck, come along and take many ideas and concepts and frame them in a new way others had not considered before, adding only a little to the existent and much larger body of knowledge. The light bulb, for example, is often credited to Edison, but, not only did it take a huge existing body of research and knowledge for Edison to synthesize the idea, but he also wasn’t the only one at the time to have come up with it. There are several individuals credited (Nicola Tesla, Hiram Maxum, and Joseph Swan to name just a few) with its invention at the same time. But, because of luck, politics (in this case patent laws), and power, Edison is credited as the brilliant mind who brought the invention to light (pun intended).

Did Edison work hard to synthesize his idea? Sure. How many of us have grown up hearing about his incredible number of failures in his process, which from a scientific standpoint isn’t all that remarkable anyway. Plenty of researchers plug away at their subject for thousands and thousands of hours and run thousands of experiments before they find any kind of success. Some ultimately fail, which also advances science. No, there is nothing particularly special about Edison. So again, I ask, did Edison work harder than any of the others who succeeded as he did or the others who tried just as many times and failed? Consider the conditions of Edison’s life that he was able to simply sit around and fail hundreds or thousands of times. Edison was born to a middle-class family. What if he had been born into a family with few resources?

We are not rewarding hard work, we are rewarding luck.

As long as we hold this notion of hard work = success we will always be captives to abusive systems. Some people are just luckier than others. It’s that simple. We all know that some are born luckier. It’s not hard to see. If you were to survey a huge number of people on the streets of any major city and asked, do you think some people are born luckier than others, the majority would certainly say yes.

And luck certainly is not a reflection of character. Some of the most vile people in the history of the planet have been incredibly lucky. Conversely, some of the greatest examples of compassion, have been incredibly unlikely. Do only the good die young? I’m not so sure that’s exactly true but, life is the roll of the dice.

This is why we must end these absurd systems that reward luck. Because many amazing people starve to death every single day. Recently, a dear friend of mine, who was one of the most loving and courageous people I know, died far too young after striving endlessly to just meet her basic needs in life. Life was always hard for her, and she worked hard every single day. Yet, she never saw the rewards of this hard work. And doubtless, if you look around honestly, you will see endless examples of this. No, not everything works out for everyone. That’s simply another platitude to ignore the bad luck of others and justify burying our heads in the sand.

The UN estimates that 25,000 people, including 10,000 children die every day from starvation. Most of these people were born into bad luck or something unlucky happened to them to make them far more vulnerable to an exploitive system that rewards luck and forgets the basic decency and dignity of taking care of other people. These exploitive systems make us less human and more selfish and apathetic. We need to learn to imagine another way of moving through the world, both economically and politically. Everyone deserves dignity. We can do something about this. A failure of imagination is not evidence that the present system we have is inevitable.

So say it with me. Because if we don’t, we will continue down the dark path of indifference. We must start creating systems that maximize human potential instead of squandering it.

Success is luck.

Success is luck.

Success

is

luck.

References and Related Further Reading:
Europe and the People Without History

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

The Meritocracy Trap

Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

This precious human life we have is ever-changing.

We wish things will stay the same forever when they are wonderful, and wish they would change quickly when they aren’t. We are always wishing, always trying to keep the bad at bay or hold the good up forever. But this is an unreasonable ask. All things fall apart eventually. So we become dissatisfied because we hold ourselves to an impossible standard of perfection. All structures are inherently unstable.

We are just a boat, on the ocean, riding the waves and tides. We have so little control over the forces that surround us. Up and down we go in the waves and troughs… waves and troughs. We do not know when a storm might hit, or when the wind might die, or when the sailing is smooth, and the food is plentiful, but we do know we must press on. The journey must continue.

It’s easy to allow yourself to be possessed by your fears, your anxieties, and your frustrations. It is easy to give in to self-pity and hopelessness. It is easy to feel that no matter what you do, nothing goes right. But to quote the band, Bad Religion, “Self-pity is always a case of mistaken identity.”

No matter your outer conditions, you have a deep natural curiosity and joy that lives inside you. You have an inner child who wants to play and explore and thrive, no matter the conditions of your life. For what child, seeing a pile of rubble, doesn’t want to climb up on top and declare themselves ruler of the world?

We rule our worlds. Not in any external way. You cannot control when things collapse or when the winds of changes blow gales through your life. But you can climb on the rubble and declare victory. You can turn toward yourself with compassion. You can live in a state of self-honesty and acknowledge those heavy emotions, but without letting them possess you.

Self-honestly can feel like a dark forest, with unknown shadows lurking behind the trees, at least at first. But when we connect with that forest, when we learn to love the land, we find wonders, medicines, and peace. Be like our ancestors and listen deeply to that land. Be in communion with it. Learn the lay of your own internal landscape. Learn its wonders and beauty.

Be present with yourself, with what is, but be present with all things in all moments. In every moment, there is beauty and joy, even in the darkest times. Life does not stop being beautiful, because we have forgotten. Choose to remember.

Let that child out. Let your life be full of wonder and interest. And when times are hard, be curious instead of furious. Look at the possibilities in collapse. For in the wake of destruction, it is in our very nature, and the nature of all living things, to change and discard qualities and aspects that are not useful anymore. Even our biological evolution is a process of adaptation and removal.

When things go wrong ask yourself, what isn’t useful anymore? Look at both inner and outer elements. Do not just remove everything you don’t like, understand it first. See its wisdom. It may not need to be removed but instead, reorganized. Look inward honestly and see what habits and ideas no longer work. Admit when you were wrong.

Be wary of the advice of others. Test their ideas out for yourself carefully, else you may venture a long way down a dishonest path. We are diverse in experience and motivation. There is no one right way to love life.

When you are honest, space opens inside you. Take that new space you’ve created, and fill it with love. If you love to be in nature, do it. If you love to create, do it. If you love to connect with people, or reconnect, do it. Find ways to bring smiles to your face and the faces of others. Help people to feel authentic, while you develop your own authenticity.

Be creative in whatever form that takes. Build things, explore things, and open yourself up to the wonder of all that is. Remember how many things had to come together, for you to be here, now, at this moment. You are precious. This life is precious. Love it the best you can.

Originally posted at https://loridianslaboratory.com/2021/12/06/worldbuilding-part-6-cognitive-maps-magic-and-super-powers/

Recently, I had a discussion with a friend about what kind of biological costs superpowers or magic might have on the biology of the brain. We discussed the impact of cognitive maps based on different biological and environmental systems, and why these are things that might be useful to consider for building fictional worlds. The reality is, the one thing so often overlooked in fictional worldbuilding, is that different species, and different mutations (in regards to superpowers or magic powers) would have a profound impact on the brain structure and perception of the living person/creature. So, it’s worth at least considering a few elements in how a cognitive map, and how a special ability or power might not just impact individual characters, but also fictional cultures as a whole.

You might be asking, well, what is a cognitive map?

To quote a 2012 academic article titled, Movement: Search, Navigation, Migration, and Dispersal:

“A cognitive map is an internal neural representation of the landscape in which an animal travels. Animals that use cognitive maps can “visualize” the landscape and solve orientation problems by referring to these maps. While it is generally accepted that birds and mammals can form cognitive maps, and that the hippocampus is the most important part of the brain in their formation, considerable controversy has centered around whether other animals, such as honeybees, can form similar maps.”

Different animals have different cognitive maps. Different kinds of sensory input changes how a particular species would navigate their environment. Say for example a Mantis Shrimp, which has the most complex visual system of any creature on this planet, would have an entirely different cognitive map than a human. Why? Because humans have 3 photoreceptors in their eyes, a Mantis Shrimp has 12–16 depending on which variety of mantis shrimp you’re talking about.

Now imagine for a moment, a mantis shrimp took an evolutionarily leap and became as intelligent and as self-aware as the human species, but still had that same complex visual system. Naturally, their cognitive map would be far different than humans.

Well, one sci-fi author by the name of Adrian Tchaikovsky, played with this idea (though not specifically mantis shrimp) in his books, Children of Time, and it’s sequel Children of Ruin.

Children of Time and Children of Ruin

Without giving too much away, Tchaikovsky’s books Children of Time and Children of Ruin, ask the question, what kind of civilization would a spider, an octopus, and a kind of fungi analog build if they were genetically engineered to evolve human level, or greater intelligence. The answer? One that is a hell of a lot different than humans. But, at the same time, a creature, regardless of its cognitive map, still has to solve the problem of energy, or rather how do you build a large-scale civilization and economic system that could support a large population with different cognitive maps. So even though their maps might be different, to build civilization there would be some overlapping concerns.

For example, (and again I am not going to give away too many spoilers and ruin these amazing books for you) Tchaikovsky, at the beginning of Children of Time, introduces a jumping spider that has been accidentally introduced to a virus that will artificially accelerate its intelligence. The spiders, with completely different senses, biological imperatives, and priorities, build a civilization throughout the book. This civilization is based on a creature that not only builds a web but uses it as a primary means of communication. In this particular species, the male is much smaller and is often eaten after mating with a female, and thus, their world also includes a component of significant gender inequality, where the larger female spiders control civilization. Tchaikovsky, uses these differences to highlight how difficult communication would be with a species with a fundamentally different cognitive map than humans.

So it’s something to think about. If you have giant intelligent snake people in your fictional world, you would have different cognitive maps.

Oh and also, another bone to pick about video game worlds like the Elder Scrolls, Argonians and Kadjit would never, ever be able to mimic human speech, and certainly not English. This is also a problem with the Planet of the Apes series. Biologically speaking, the physical apparatus of a mouth, nose, throat, tongue, teeth, pharynx, larynx, and other parts create a specific kind of instrument from which certain sounds are produced by humans. It’s why some animals make noises that humans could never mimic. So an Argonian speaking English would be akin to trying to get trumpet noises out of a violin, it’s completely impossible. Of course, with your fictional world you can certainly do what you like, but understand that even other primates can’t mimic the same sounds humans make. It’s why Koko the Gorilla, and Kanzi the Chimpanzee, both used sign language and/or soundboards to communicate with humans because they physically can’t produce the sounds for human language.

Different Cultures Have Different Cognitive Maps

In the book, Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle, linguistic anthropologist Daniel Everett discusses the Piraha tribe who live on the Amazon. Though he never explicitly discusses cognitive maps, at one point in the book, he takes some of the men from the Piraha, to a Brazilian City. While there, the members of the tribe are almost hit by cars, and have, what are basically anxiety attacks about being in the city. They really hate it. Why? Well first, Everett then talks about his own experiences in the Jungle for the first few years. In one story, he talks about a python hanging from a tree that the Piraha spot without a second thought. They try to point it out to him, but he can’t see it no matter how hard he tries. He talks about several other instances when he just wasn’t able to see or experience the things the Piraha tribe were, and he had, what was basically anxiety about it similar to the men’s experiences in the city.

One of the things that cultures do, is map their environment as they learn to navigate it. So, if you’re suddenly dropped in a new environment, say, as a Piraha person in a city they have never been to, or an Anthropologist, who grew up in a suburb and suddenly finds themselves in the dense jungle, the cognitive maps you have used your whole life will no longer function properly and you will struggle to adapt until you can construct a new cognitive map (which can take years for completely foreign environments). This is in part what creates culture shock for people who travel to other countries and cultures.

Remember, a cognitive map, is a mental picture of the environment around you. Over time, these maps become a part of our subconscious assumptions of the world and structure our biases. Different cultures are the result of different environmental conditions, and thus will have a different cognitive map as a result. Now, of course, the variation in which these maps can come in, is limited by human biology, but it’s work thinking about as you are building fictional worlds, that different cultures will have different perceptions and priorities based on the physical and cultural conditions on the ground. Of course, this certainly relates to my YouTube episode on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and is worth considering, how this also impacts language.

Neurodivergence, The Brain, and Super Powers

There are more than a few problems with the way that Super Powers and Magic use are displayed in popular fiction. Now granted, these aren’t things that occur to most people (myself included until recently) and of course, part of worldbuilding is the suspension of belief. But if you are doing a hard magic system, something you might want to consider is the physical toll that superpowers or magic might have on the nervous system and the configuration of the brain.

By definition, someone with super powers or the ability to wield magic would necessarily be neurodivergent. This term means, essentially, that the person’s brain would not work the same as the average population (Of course if your goal is to make a world where the norm is magic users, they would have normal cognition for that world).

I myself have a form of neurodivergence called Prosopagnosia, also known as faceblindness. This means that I am not able to hold faces in my memory the way that most people can. It can be incredibly frustrating when dealing with large crowds, but once I discovered I had the condition, I was able to create new strategies for moving and interacting through the world. You could say, in fact, that I, had to have a different cognitive map to function. Neurodivergence comes in a lot of flavors, it’s most often associated with people with psychiatric disorders, autism, ADHD, and a host of other conditions that humans have in the modern world. Divergence doesn’t make anyone less of a person, but it does mean that their cognitive maps are different.

Take Albert Einstein for instance. There are many who suggest that he was neurodivergent. There is speculation that he might have had one or all of the following: Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, on the Autism Spectrum, and possibly ADHD. There are a number of reasons for these speculations including his difficulty with social situations and his inability to function in traditional European school systems. But here’s the point, he was a super genius and that had a cognitive cost. His cognitive map was far different from the average human and the way he navigated that environment was different from most people. This, in turn, allowed him to tackle questions that most human beings could not, and he changed the world as a result.

Again, this isn’t saying that one kind of brain is necessarily better or worse than another, but that, in fact, different brains will approach problems and solutions differently. It’s one of the reasons that, I argue in my Ted Talk, that diversity is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal as humans. But be warned, I’ve met quite a few people who believe they are better or worse than others because their brain is different, that’s simply not true. It’s like arguing which fruit is objectively the tastiest. It’s pointless. But it is empowering to understand how your own brain works isn’t it?

So, back to superpowers. One thing you might want to consider if your character has, say, telepathy or telekinesis, is that they would in fact be neurodivergent. They would have completely different senses that were required for those abilities to function.

Here’s the thing, Our brain only has so much processing power, and can only handle so many kinds of sense perceptions. Contrary to popular brief, we use all of our brain. This idea that we only use 10% of our brain is utter nonsense. So if you’re adding in other senses or abilities, realistically, it would have to be at the detriment of other senses or brainpower. Keep in mind that the human brain uses an average of 20% of our daily energy.

Also, as it turns out, Human senses are a hell of a lot more complicated than just the five we’ve been told about in elementary/primary education. Check out this NYT article for a better explanation on why we have more than five senses, and why senses are a complicated spectrum of experience.

Different sense perceptions necessitate different cognitive maps. After all, cognitive maps are built from our sense perception. You use all of your senses to build a mental model of the environment around you. So if you could fly, that would necessitate different sense perceptions and thus a different cognitive map. Consider the Marvel character, Daredevil, who has the ability to see based on what’s basically sonar, but the cost of that ability, was the standard human trichromatic visual system that we experience. That gave him some advantages, but anyone who watches the Netflix series, or reads the comics, knows that it comes with some significant disadvantages as well. Though personally, I think the advantages are a bit unrealistic even though I definitely enjoyed watching Matt Murdock kick ass in the Defenders.

So if you have a hard magic system, genetically engineered super powers, or something similar, you might want to consider what things your characters would have to sacrifice in order for those abilities to be viable. Much of the world’s fiction is filled with examples of this done horribly wrong, but then, a lot of the time, imagination is about playing with the unrealistic isn’t it? Considering the above could be a really interesting way to build a different kind of fictional world. After all, one of the problems we face in fiction is repetitive stories, so perhaps different cognitive maps could help us ask different kinds of questions about ourselves and what’s possible.

Special Thanks to my friend Lyndsie Clark for inspiring this blog. Go check out her website.

Also, you want to know more about how to build a more realistic fictional world using real Anthropology? Check out my co-authored book with Kyra Wellstrom, Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers.

And of course, if you are looking for more free worldbuilding resources, check out my webpage on writing advice.

Check it out here.

Know thyself. That’s what we are supposed to do, isn’t it? The image here, a screenshot from the 1999 film The Matrix, is, in part an exploration of knowing oneself. It’s a point when the character Neo, must confront his uncertainly, face his fears and discomfort and walk forward into difficult and seemingly impossible circumstances.

There is great power and wisdom in learning who you are, in how you move through the world. Knowing how you will react to something, can be a useful tool for a better life and for working in less than ideal circumstances. There are endless books and meditation masters who teach how to develop this kind of self-knowledge and wisdom. But it’s not easy, is it?

I’ve now been a practicing Buddhist for 6 years. But before that, I dabbled in pretty much every religion and religious teachings I could get my hands on. For me, Buddhism has turned out to be the best path for developing self-knowledge, but it’s certainly not for everyone. Different people require different tools and different methods to develop their self-awareness and no one tool is necessarily better than the other, they are just different. So, when I come across a new tool, or a series of encounters that creates some sort of alchemy in my brain and allows me to share what I think could be a useful one, I try to share it with people.

Recently my partner introduced me to the concept of Red, Yellow, and Green consent. That when you are doing things together, you can use that as a method to regulate experiences to gauge how you are feeling about things, and how to proceed. Then today, listening to Pema Chodron’s wonderful audio lectures Don’t Bite the Hook, it occurred to me that this method could be used for developing all sorts of mindfulness and personal awareness when working with your mind and emotions, especially in the realm of anger and frustration.

Red, Yellow, Green, the colors of a traffic light can tell us a lot about how we are feeling internally. So let’s break them down:

Red: I am absolutely not okay with this. It needs to stop immediately, it’s too much or too fast… or too something… and makes me deeply uncomfortable, afraid, or angry. I need to step back now and get out of this situation.

Yellow: This is pushing my boundaries and I am feeling some discomfort, but if we proceed cautiously I might be okay. However, I might need to stop and step back too. I had better check in with myself frequently as I proceed.

Green: I’m totally fine and this experience is going well. We can proceed with what we are doing or where we are going without worrying. I am feeling at peace with my outer circumstances.

This can be applied to anything. You can apply this to going out to a bar and meeting new people. You can apply it to deal with that difficult family member. How about that solo backpacking trip in another country where you don’t speak the language? I think it could also work extremely well in counseling or therapy, especially when trying to tackle painful experiences and trauma.

Knowing where you are at can be hard sometimes and sometimes you might not be sure. If you aren’t sure you are at it, you are likely in the yellow territory. It means you need to pay attention to your thoughts and your emotions as the situation develops. Honestly, a lot of life we spend in a kind of trepidatious code yellow don’t we? Some of us more than others. So much of our life is framed with expectations and assumptions and one thing you can do with the practice of looking at code yellow moments really digs into why you might be having those assumptions and expectations.

I often say, especially when discussing forthcoming books or films, expectations are the death of joy. If you are so filled up with expectations, you may miss something amazing because it didn’t go exactly how you thought it would. This is a lot of what Zen Master Suzuki Roshi was writing about all those years ago in his book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. If we go into things like an open and positive beginner, much of life will be easier. But life can wound us, and if we aren’t careful, we fall into the expectation of it always wounding us, which can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.

Why is this method useful? Well, when you are venturing into uncharted waters, no matter what that form might take, a few breaths and checking in with yourself can be a really important way to stop things from escalating to the point of allowing them to get out of control. Sometimes when we are in the middle of something we can find ourselves swept into an experience that we don’t understand, or that will later be a source of trauma, depression, shame, guilt, or anger. So, if we can check in with ourselves as things are happening, we can develop self-knowledge about how different experiences impact our mental and emotional health.

But what if I don’t have a choice?

If you go into a situation that you don’t have a choice but to be in a yellow or red situation, say dealing with a really difficult family member, you can still use this method. How? Well you know going in, it’s already a code yellow situation. You know that you are wary, and in the past, you have had lots of negative encounters with spending time with this family member. So, knowing that in advance, you can build in breaks or moments of comfort.

Perhaps you can only handle this person for an hour before you need a break. So, set an alarm, or have a friend call or text you to remind you when it’s been an hour and you need a break. You could also just set hour-long meetings with them until you’re comfortable with longer. In any case, after that hour, you can have a strategy for escaping what’s happening. Perhaps you go step outside for five minutes and center yourself. Maybe you go and take a little bit longer in the bathroom and take some deep breaths, notice where you are keeping tension, (or if your Buddhist say some mantras or practice a compassion exercise), and try to just be with it. Many religions and spiritual traditions have different methods for handling things like this. Make a plan. You’d be surprised how much it helps.

The point is if you know you are going into a situation that is yellow you can prepare. If you find yourself in the Red, it can be more difficult. You may have to physically leave. If you have no choice but to go into a Code Red situation, maybe consider bringing an ally that will help keep you grounded, or at least set clear boundaries for how things will proceed. Perhaps on the way there you listen to something calming and walk into the situation centered. We can’t always avoid these kinds of situations, but we can prepare ourselves and shift the way we think about them. As Pema Chodron says, (paraphrased) you can’t really avoid pain, but what you do with it, is what matters. Pain can be a powerful ally for personal growth and transformation if we let it be.

And of course, this tool may not work for you. It may work for very few people in general. But the point is, to work on learning about yourself. Practicing remembering where you are at, what you are doing, and what habits are further creating conflict in your life. Sometimes just noticing those things that upset you can be a doorway to something so much better.

I have always gazed at the stars, longing with the beating of my heart for some greater connection to our cosmos. My childhood was filled with science fiction, astronomy, and glow in the dark stickers of constellations on my bedroom ceiling that I spent hours arranging. Even as an adult, I yearn to see our planet from above.

Space is potential and possibility, a garden of infinity. It is a great treasure of wonder and knowledge. The Universe is mostly space, and yet at our scale, it appears to be so crammed with life, and stuff, and objects that we can often feel claustrophobic, especially in our cities. Everywhere you go, there you are, bumping into things and people. Then, you scale up, and even the distances from here to the next nearest star system, are vast and unimaginable. And what’s in that space between the Stars?

Nothing?

No, not nothing. Potential.

In the last several years, I’ve been asking myself. Why do I desire the stars so desperately? Is it my curiosity of the unknown? Am I hungry to see with my own eyes, the grandeur shown to us by instruments like the Hubble telescope? Maybe it’s just too many hours consuming Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, the Expanse and countless other favorite sci-if films, shows, and books.

Is it that final frontier I crave? Is it an escape from the present and difficult state of humanity? Am I running away? Am I a coward?

What is it?

And then, I remember this quote from one of my favorite books, The Tao Te Ching,

“Do you want to improve the world?

I don’t think it can be done.

The world is sacred.

It can’t be improved.

If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.

If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.”

I always pushed back against that quote, especially during my time as an activist, but what I have come to understand is that quote is about space. It is about potential and possibility, about the desperate need to turn inward and consider the space between thoughts and emotions. We run around trying to fix things in our lives for the wrong reasons. Our rush to change things, is a kind of running away, a distraction from what we really need.

Many of us run our lives ragged. This culture, this American drive for more, tells us that if we work hard, that if we grind and grind and grind, somehow we will come out on top. But it’s not true. Most people will stay in the same position they are born in and in fact, according to the research of American Economist Raj Chetty, social mobility is far more limited in this country than we think.

It is so easy to get lost in the hustle, the desire to improve our space in this place. We are gig workers chasing a way to eek out a living on top of our full time jobs. Though we may do everything right, we still fail. It feels, overwhelming and sometimes pointless. We drown in our desire, filled to the brim with a hunger that can never be satisfied.

Why can’t we just breathe and be?

Why do we chase the American dream? Why do we idolize those who have so much? Why do so many of us play the lottery and fantasize about what we would do with all that money? How do millions of people get sucked into Multi-Level Marketing schemes? Why do books like The Secret or Think and Grow Rich sell so well to those dispossessed in this capitalist system?

The answer is, that what we really crave is freedom and potential.

We feel that if we had the economic resources, the space, and time, we could become our best selves. But we don’t have to go anywhere to be our best selves. If we want to change the world, the best place to begin is within. We only become our best selves by making space in our minds and hearts, by contemplation and learning from our mistakes.

What comes from working on ourselves, from engaging in that final frontier within? If we look at history, at the great periods of science and learning, we see that diversity, contemplation, exploring our humanity, and questioning everything, lead to the illumination of the human experience. We made progress when we were allowed to play with knowledge and people who were different than us.

When I read about the International Space Station, and the cooperation between many countries that it requires, all in the name of something bigger, I feel hope for our species. Here, in space, is another place for great human questions and the power of diverse thinking. Space within, and space out there, are both necessary for humanity to grow beyond the shackles of materialism and empty promises in ad campaigns.

What I really want from this world most is the opportunity to explore beyond the bounds of greed and the lust for more. Space to me, represents everything wonderful about what it means to be human. Exploration, discovery, research and the pursuit of knowledge are, in my mind, the greatest of goals.

On our planet, and in particular in the United States, there is so little space for poetry, sculpture, theater, and other wondrous explorations of our inner lives. If it cannot easily be commodified and turn a tidy profit, it’s considered to have little importance. We see the demoralization of artists, writers, poets, and scientists. People who dedicate their lives to trying to understand the big questions, rather than the pursuit of a stock portfolio, are dismissed as idealists at best, and unproductive leaches on society at worst. We have become the dispossessed of our humanity. What happened to the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake?

Yet, what did you consume during quarantine? What treasures did you find in isolation? All were the spark of space and being, the talent of so many creators and the fruit of the research of scientists.

We, as a civilization have lost ourselves in the pursuit of the temporary high, the cult of happiness, instant gratification, gifted to us by the propaganda on endless commercial breaks and targeted algorithmic ads. Where do we have space to be human? I believe it’s out in the Stars but also within. After all, we are made of star stuff. We are a mirror to the wider universe, a fractal of knowing.

We need room for our imaginations and wonder in order to grow again. We need to value those who help us create the space for curiosity and creativity. There is so much space in the nature of our own existence, so much to the nature of our own magnificent mind. Space is everywhere.

I don’t know if sending more people into space will solve these issues, but I do know that exploration drives human ingenuity. We must however be careful of the mistakes of the past, and remember the horrors and wrongs we committed when exploring our own world, and the endless suffering that we caused to indigenous people. If we let greed be our guide again, we will continue the cycle among the stars.

I believe we can do better. We are worlds, within worlds, within worlds. Not only is our planet full of life, death, growth, and change, so too are our bodies, our minds, our hearts and even our perception. We ourselves are an epic tale of triumph and failure. I believe that we are at a turning point in our species. We can choose to continue down the path of greed and selfishness, or we can turn in, recognize the meaningless that we have created though our missteps, shift our goals, and then explore the final frontier within and without.

I recently started a TikTok Page where I talk about anthropology, history, worldbuilding, poetry and a few other elements of my life and experiences. But today I posted a brand new piece of Spoken Word there called, I’m Sorry to Interrupt.

Here’s a link to the Video if you want to hear how it sounds.

https://www.tiktok.com/@authormichaelkilman/video/6992781257058913541?lang=en&is_copy_url=0&is_from_webapp=v1&sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=6907446921687303685

Here’s the text for those who just wish to read it.

I’m Sorry to Interrupt

I took a breath

I’m sorry to interrupt

Cause it’s time for me to deconstruct

What you just said

I have to make space

I have to write new words in this place

See

I took a breath

My heart was throbbing

And the pain was bobbing

Up and down my throat

It’s like, a perfect melody I wrote

And you just can’t play the right notes

And you struggle so hard to stay afloat

And you can hear them gloat about rigging the vote

But you just can’t devote the time and energy to spread an antidote

But you do it anyway

So I took a breath

And I breathed some more

And you draw on every ounce of compassion out of your very core

Because before you open the sore

Before you start that war

Before you look for

A safe harbor to explore

Some common ground to open a door

You take a breath

And create some space

So that you face the anger and chase to replace

The commonplace assumptions from that deep dark place

Where we ignore that we treat people different because of race

And that history that we try to erase?

You take a breath

And then the question

You don’t know if that student will have any reception

To these new truths that will push up against their perception

There’s such a disconnection here,

So much fear of the things that they hear might be true

But what I am supposed to do?

Part of me wants to turn the screw

Part of me wants to make them rue the day they pushed through and cut off their classmates words intertwined in a shrew view that’s all askew that prevents them from ever having a breakthrough

Because they’re scared

So I take a breath

And I breathe some more

Because I know what I’m here for

And I have to push just a little more

Because I’m not sorry to interrupt