Worldbuilding for Masochists

A perennial question that our listeners often have is: How do you organize your worldbuilding? Do you have templates to use? Charts to fill out? Once you start imagining all your fantastic choices, how do you keep track of them all and then weave them along with your plot? Well, the answer to all of this, as with so many writing questions, is "do what works for you" -- but how do you even figure out what that is, or if it's the same from one project to the next? In this episode, guest M.J. Kuhn joins us to share tips, tricks, and tidbits from her new worldbuilding workbook!

Whether you start world-first, character-first, plot-first, or some hybrid, it can be useful to put some structures around how you develop your worldbuilding ideas. Those structures might be particularly useful when you get stuck or lost within your project! They might help you find the world-related obstacles you want to put in your characters' paths, the trees you want to chase them up, the rocks you want to throw at them. Careful attention to how you worldbuild can also help you revise your ideas over time, from project to project. Many tools can be adapted to your individual writing style and habits!

We also want to remind you that, at the time this episode goes up, you still have two days to submit your ballot for the Hugo Awards! And we would love your consideration for Best Fancast.

Transcript for Episode 133

Our Guest: M.J. Kuhn is a fantasy writer by night and a mild-mannered marketing employee by day. She lives in the metro Detroit area with her husband Ryan, a dog named Wrex, and the very spoiled cat Thorin Oakenshield. 

A lot of the time, fantasy worldbuilding invokes huge maps, spanning civilizations and continents, with characters traversing vast distances on their epic quests. But what about the worldbuilding that happens with a tighter focus on an intimate, even insular location? Guest Cherie Priest joins us to discuss creating small towns just ripe for gothic mysteries, peculiar traditions, and weird, haunting circumstances.

What does isolation -- either naturally developing, imposed by larger-scale conditions, or willfully chosen -- do to a group of people? What sorts of lore and habits will spring up in such areas? And how do you, as a worldbuilder, think about their infrastructure -- or the lack thereof -- and how that might affect your characters and your plot?

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Our Guest: Cherie Priest is the author of two dozen books and novellas, most recently the Booking Agents mysteries Grave Reservations and Flight Risk. She also wrote gothic horror project The Toll and haunted house thriller The Family Plot – as well as the hit YA graphic novel mash-ups I Am Princess X and its follow up, The Agony House. But she is perhaps best known for the steampunk pulp adventures of the Clockwork Century, beginning with Boneshaker. She has been nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and the Locus award – which she won with Boneshaker.

Cherie has also written a number of urban fantasy titles, and composed pieces (large and small) for George R. R. Martin’s shared world universe, the Wild Cards. Her short stories and nonfiction articles have appeared in such fine publications as Weird Tales, Publishers Weekly, and numerous anthologies – and her books have been translated into nine languages in eleven countries.

Although she was born in Florida on the day Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, for the last twenty years Cherie has largely divided her time between Chattanooga, TN, and Seattle, WA – where she presently lives with her husband and a menagerie of exceedingly photogenic pets.

It's the start of our sixth season! And we've got some projects going on.

The Traveling Light anthology, which we Kickstarted -- with the help of many of you listeners! -- at the start of the fifth season, is now almost complete! We've finished the page proofs and are about to turn this into a Real Book. In this episode, you'll get to hear from the anthology authors about their amazing, exciting, super-creative contributions! And if you missed the Kickstarter, fear not! It will be available for purchase in both physical and ebook form, and you'll be able to pre-order that soon.

So what are we launching this year? A Patreon! That's right, we are finally creating a way for our magnificent, lovely listeners to support the podcast. We're hoping this will just help us cover some basic costs of podcast hosting, graphic design, maybe even putting together a Real Website! And in exchange, patrons will get some exclusive content and merch. We've got four tiers: Beetles, Crustaceans, Megafauna, and Kaiju. If you'd like to help us keep doing what we're doing (and maybe even zhuzh it up a bit more), check them out!

And of course, this podcast is its own ongoing massive project! We are so, so grateful to all of our amazing guests who have joined us to talk about so many different aspects of worldbuilding. We're thrilled to be able to have these conversations about craft and imagination, and we're delighted that so many listeners enjoy it, too. 

And hey! If you want to see us, we're gonna be some places! Hopefully the full team will be in Glasgow for WorldCon, August 8-12, and some of us will be in Austin for ArmadilloCon, September 6-8. (And if you'd like to help make sure Marshall gets to WorldCon, he's running a GoFundMe!) Voting is also still ongoing for the Hugo Awards, and we would love your consideration for Best Fancast! Because winning in Scotland would be really fun.

Thanks for all your support! Here's to another great season!

Massive worlds require massive worldbuilding -- or do they? Sometimes, a narrower, character-centric scope can create a tight and compelling narrative while still crafting an expansive world. Guest Rebecca Roanhorse joins us to discuss how knowing your characters can help you konw your world.

What does it mean to let character lead worldbuilding? How does that define your scope and how much worldbuilding you show the reader? How does this change wth a single versus a multi- POV story? When you let character lead, how do you avoid a world that feels like it was constructed solely to be an obstacle course for that one character to move through? We discuss technique for all this and more!

Sidebar: It's still Hugo voting season! You've got until Saturday, 20th July 2024, 20:17 GMT to vote -- and you can vote as long as you become a Glasgow 2024 member by then. We are again on the ballot for Best Fancast, and we would love your consideration!

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Our Guest: Rebecca Roanhorse is a New York Times bestselling and Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award-winning speculative fiction writer. She has published multiple award-winning short stories and novels, including two novels in The Sixth World Series, Star Wars: Resistance Reborn, Race to the Sun for the Rick Riordan imprint, and the epic fantasy trilogy Between Earth and Sky. She has also written for Marvel Comics and games (Echo, She-Hulk, Werewolf By Night, MoonKnight, and Chee’ilth) and for television, including FX’s A Murder at the End of the World, and the Marvel series Echo for Disney+. She has had her own work optioned by Amazon Studios, Netflix, and AMC Studios. 

Find her Fiction & Non-Fiction HERE.

She lives in Northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter, and pup. She drinks a lot of black coffee. Find more at https://rebeccaroanhorse.com/ and on Instagram at @RebeccaRoanhorse.

"Traditional" fantasy novels often hold themselves to a pre-gunpowder/pre-steampower level of tech. So, what’s fun about setting a fantasy world in an era that has anything from the printing press to cell phones? Guest Hana Lee joins us to explore incorporating the technological into the magical world!

How can the harnessing of magic be similar to or dissimilar from channeling other kinds of power, like electricity? What story-driving tensions and conflicts can arise from eras of rapid change? And what sort of unholy terror might you create if you introduce magitech-bros into a world?

As a sidebar: It's Hugo voting season! And the voting packet is absolutely stuffed with amazing reading, listening, and viewing material. All ballots must be received by Saturday, 20th July 2024, 20:17 GMT -- and you can vote as long as you become a Glasgow 2024 member by then! We are again on the ballot for Best Fancast, and we would love your consideration!

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Our Guest: Hana Lee is a biracial Korean American fantasy author. By day, she makes her living as a software engineer. She's always loved the dark, the gothic, and the occult, so there's usually a picturesque ruin of some kind lurking in the background of her novels. 

Her childhood was spent trekking across the United States, from Southern California to the Midwest and back to the West Coast again. She generally considers her hometown to be Portland, OR, mostly because it's home to her favorite bookstore (Powell's Books). 
She graduated from Stanford University with her B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science in 2018. Her family includes a partner and two ridiculously fluffy cats. They live in sunny Mountain View, CA, a stone's throw from Google HQ. 

Hana's debut novel, ROAD TO RUIN, will be published by Saga Press in spring 2024. 

Making fantasy worlds into living, growing worlds means giving them a history of change and growth and shifts in technology and culture, not to mention governments and borders.  We talk about building history, historical ages and generational shifts, as well as diving into what are the historical ages in the world of the MNG, and how has it grown?

Also! It is Hugo Award voting time! And we would love your consideration for Best Fancast.

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It's been a while since we spent some time in the world of the MNG! So in this episode, we apply some topics from recent episodes as well as some worldbuilding staples to the cultures we've been developing in our ongoing co-created world. We play with nifty biology! We consider the monstrous! We think about love and education and phases of growth!

How does Mirraden conceputalize and use the Gates? What is courtship like in Fjallanir? What legends scare a Griastan? In this episode, we do some applied worldbuiding!

Also! It is Hugo Award voting time! And we would love your consideration for Best Fancast.

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Critters, creatures, and things that crawl -- part of the fun of building a new world is getting to populate it with not just sapient characters, but all the flora and fauna. And sometimes, that means the things you find in the smallest corners and crevices. Guest Premee Mohamed joins us to talk about the role of bugs and other biology in worldbuilding!

Bugs are a critical part of our world, performing so many essential functions that we never think about and that writers often neglect -- so, why is that? Where does our tendency towards squeamishness about bugs overlap with fears of body horror -- and how have SFF stories magnified those fears to create memorable antagonists like Xenomorphs and monsters like Shelob? How can a worldbuilder think about the health of their whole ecosystem, from those itsy-bitsy bugs all the way up to the apex predators -- and if the health of the ecosystem reflects the health of the world, how can that provide some good plot hooks for characters? All this and many, many scientific factoids are packed into this episode!

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Our Guest: Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Ignyte, Locus, British Fantasy, and Crawford awards. Currently, she is the Edmonton Public Library writer-in-residence and an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod. She is the author of the 'Beneath the Rising' series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com. 

From the Minotaur to xenomorphs to the undead, monsters and their ilk have long been a staple of the sci-fi and fantasy genres. But what exactly is it that makes a monster? Guest John Wiswell joins us to discuss how monsters in fiction often reflect not only our primal fears, but also the people that society seeks to Other. When monsters reflect what a real or fictitious society values and doesn't value, what sorts of things do writers need to consider when placing monsters in their world?

In this episode, we explore how, while monsters can sometimes just be plot obstacles for Our Heroes to overcome, they can also be coded -- intentionally or as a matter of unconscious bias -- in the same ways that disability, poverty, non-heteronormative sexuality, and other marginalized populations get coded. We also pull apart the idea of recontextualizing monsters: As is often said of Frankenstein and his creation -- who's really the monster? Who's the true beast?

Transcript for Episode 125

Our Guest: John Wiswell is an American science fiction and fantasy author whose short fiction has won the Locus and Nebula Awards and been a finalist for the Hugo, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His debut fantasy novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, will be released in spring 2024 by DAW Books.

John's work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Tor.com, LeVar Burton Reads, Nature Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Weird Tales, the No Sleep podcast, Nightmare Magazine, Cast of Wonders, Podcastle, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and other fine venues. His fiction has been translated into Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Hungarian, Turkish, Hebrew, and Romanian.

He graduated Bennington College in 2005, and attended the Viable Paradise 17 workshop in 2013. He has multiple disabilities including a neuromuscular syndrome, and thinks healthy people's capacity to complain is very funny. He finds a lot of things very funny and would like to keep it that way.

He is frequently available for interview and for talks at conferences. He has done panels at places such as Worldcon, the Nebula Awards, and the World Fantasy Convention.

He posted fiction daily on this blog for six straight years, and has left every embarrassing and inspiring word of it up to read for free. If you'd like to see a writer develop style, it's all there. You can point and laugh. He probably can't hear you.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to work with worldbuilding as writers -- but how does a reviewer approach the topic when they're reading works of sci-fi and fantasy? Guest Paul Weimer joins us to share his insights as a prolific consumer and critiquer of speculative fiction! Paul talks about the details that he pays attention to, the things he looks for, and the things that draw his attention, as well as discussing the purpose of reviews and who they're for (hint: it's not the authors!).

In this episode, we spin things around to look at how we approach worldbuilding and narrative construction as readers -- since we are, of course, readers as well as writers! We explore of aspects of how a writer can set and, hopefully, meet expectations through worldbuilding -- and where that can sometimes become challenging as a series goes on. What makes a world exciting to enter in the first place? What grips a reader and keeps them with it? And how can you use worldbuilding to make your wizard chase sequence a more cohesive part of your world?

Also, here's Natania's rock, as promised:

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Our Guest: Not really a Prince of Amber, but rather, an ex-pat New Yorker living in Minnesota, Paul Weimer has been reading sci-fi and fantasy for over 40 years. An avid and enthusiastic amateur photographer, blogger and podcaster, Paul primarily contributes to the Skiffy and Fanty Show as blogger and podcaster, to Nerds of a Feather as a reviewer and interviewer, to the SFF Audio podcast, and turns up elsewhere as well. If you’ve spent any time reading about SFF online, you’ve probably read one of his reviews, comments or tweets (he’s @PrinceJvstin).

When you're creating your world and bringing it into a story, how much do you let show? Guest John Hartness joins us to discuss balancing the off-page and on-page elements, and how that balance might shift based on what kind of a world you're working in and what sort of a story you're telling. How do you ensure that the worldbuilding serves a purpose and serves the characters?

In this episode, you'll also get a peek behind the publishing curtain! John discusses running Falstaff Books, a publisher known for making space for authors at "the weird kids' table." That ethos translates into his work as an editor and publisher, and it's led him to think and talk about worldbuilding in different ways than when he's writing his own works!

Sidebar: It's Hugo Award nomination season! If you're a nominating sort of person and you enjoyed the podcast in 2023, we'd love your consideration for Best Fancast.

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Our Guest: John G. Hartness is a teller of tales, a righter of wrong, defender of ladies’ virtues, and some people call him Maurice, for he speaks of the pompatus of love. He is also the award-winning author of the urban fantasy series The Black Knight Chronicles, the Bubba the Monster Hunter comedic horror series, the Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter dark fantasy series, and many other projects. He is also a cast member of the role-playing podcast Authors & Dragons, where a group of comedy, fantasy, and horror writers play Dungeons & Dragons. Very poorly.

In 2016, John teamed up with a group of other publishing industry ne’er-do-wells and founded Falstaff Books, a small press dedicated to publishing the best of genre fiction’s “misfit toys.” Falstaff Books has since published over 50 titles with authors ranging from first-timers to NY Times bestsellers, with no signs of slowing down any time soon.

In his copious free time John enjoys long walks on the beach, rescuing kittens from trees and playing Magic: the Gathering. John’s pronouns are he/him.

We've talked before about the difference between aesthetic-driven genres, like sci-fi and fantasy, and structure-driven genres, like mystery and romance. So what happens when you want to build a world just ripe for all your favorite romance tropes? How can your world create the obstacles to your characters getting their happy-ever-after? Guest Gwenda Bond joins us to talk about the love of worldbuilding and worldbuilding for love!

A lot of writing romance means dealing with reader's expectations in a slightly different way than some other story-types. How useful are the sub-genre distinctions that might shape those expectations -- fantasy romance, romantic fantasy, fantasy with romance, romantasy, paranormal romance -- from the writer's perspective? And why are some SFF readers still worried that sex and romance might get cooties on their genre? In this episode, we look at how romance can hybridize with so many different forms and flavors of fantasy writing, and what choices writers make when directing the reader's attention more towards the romance or more towards the fantasy.

Sidebar: It's Hugo Award nomination season! If you're a nominating sort of person and you enjoyed the podcast in 2023, we'd love your consideration for Best Fancast.

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Our Guest: Gwenda Bond is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the first official Stranger Things novel, Suspicious Minds, the Lois Lane YA series, and the romantic comedies Not Your Average Hot Guy, The Date from Hell, and Mr. & Mrs. Witch. She has a number of forthcoming projects, including a magical art heist book, The Frame-Up. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, Locus Magazine, Salon, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications.

She co-founded and chairs the nonprofit Lexington Writer’s Room, and lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, author Christopher Rowe, and a veritable zoo of adorable doggos and queenly cats. Visit her online at www.gwendabond.com or join her newsletter at www.gwendabond.substack.com.

When you've put your heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into building a world -- what happens when you then have to leave it behind? Most SFF authors will, at some point, close up their work in one world and start building a new one, but that comes with its own set of challenges! You know the old world so well; it's become comfy and familiar. The new world still has all its work yet to be done, and while it has the shiny lure of new discoveries, it also may seem daunting to start the process of figuring out how a world works all over again.

In this episode, Fonda Lee and Melissa Caruso re-join us to discuss shifting focus from one world to another! Where do you start? How different do you need the world to be? We also chat about not just the mental challenges of clearing out one world to make room for the new one, but the emotional challenge of pulling yourself away from a place you love and know so well!

Our Guests: 

Melissa Caruso writes books of murder, magic, and mayhem. Her published fantasy novels include the Swords & Fire trilogy (THE TETHERED MAGE, THE DEFIANT HEIR, THE UNBOUND EMPIRE) and the Rooks & Ruin trilogy (THE OBSIDIAN TOWER, THE QUICKSILVER COURT, THE IVORY TOMB), all from Orbit Books. Her debut novel was shortlisted for the Gemmell Morningstar Award in 2017, and her books have received starred reviews and made countless Best Of lists. Melissa is a tea drinker, larper, and mom, and lives in Massachusetts with her video game designer husband, two superlative daughters, and assorted pets.

Fonda Lee is the author of the epic fantasy Green Bone Saga, consisting of the novels Jade City, Jade War, and Jade Legacy, along with a prequel novella The Jade Setter of Janloon and a short story collection, Jade Shards. She is also the author of the science fiction novels Zeroboxer, Exo and Cross Fire. Her most recent work is the fantasy novella, Untethered Sky.

Fonda is a winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, and a five-time winner of the Aurora Award (Canada’s national science fiction and fantasy award), as well as a multiple finalist for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Oregon Book Award. Her novels have garnered multiple starred reviews and appeared on Best of Year lists from NPR, Barnes & Noble, Syfy Wire, and others. Jade City has been translated in a dozen languages, named to TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time, and optioned for television development.

She has also written acclaimed short fiction and been an instructor at writing workshops including Clarion West, Viable Paradise, and Aspen Words. Fonda is a former corporate strategist and black belt martial artist who loves action movies and Eggs Benedict. Born and raised in Canada, she currently resides in the Pacific Northwest.

When you're creating tomes of information about your world -- spreadsheets of demographics, maps at every level of geography, tomes of lore -- how do you keep tabs on it all? How much can you keep in your head, and how much has to be written down, codified, and carefully tracked? In this episode, we explore our tools of worldbuilding.

We use all sorts of different methods and platforms, some of them physical and tangible, others entirely digital. From nebulous notions of "the world is like this" to a fully indexed world bible, the methods vary! Like so much else in writing, this isn't a thing where there's One Right Answer that will Unlock the Mysteries of Successful Publishing: it's all about finding what works best for you, your habits, your preferences, and even for individual projects.

In other news: If you're a Hugo-nominating type person, you've got til the end of January to become a member of Glasgow 2024! (If you weren't a member of Chengdu 2023, that is; if you were, you already have nominating privileges!) We think we had a pretty great year in 2023, and if you think so, too, we'd adore it if you became a member and thought of us when nominations open.

Why do we worldbuild the way that we worldbuild? The start of a new year seems like a great time to take a zoomed-out view of how we do this thing that we do. In this episode, we consider, contemplate, and cogitate on the major concepts that guide our worldbuilding. Why is it important to us? What parts of it are important for us, and help us find our story and develop our characters?

Too, how do we worldbuild in a way that reflects the glorious weirdness of humanity? How do we ensure that our cultures don't seem like monoliths? How do we show individuality within the collective?

And since it's resolution time, we also share some of our goals, intentions, hopes, dreams, and aspirations around worldbuilding and writing!

In this final episode of 2023, we have a momentous announcement!

Rowenna Miller is stepping down as a full-time co-host of the podcast, because... well, life! It happens to us all sooner or later. But fear not! Rowenna will still be joining us from time to time, and she's still working with us on the Traveling Light anthology.

And we're welcoming an amazing, fantastic, glorious new co-host! Please give your attention and accolades to Natania Barron!

Who's Natania? Well, listeners may remember her from Episode 72: This is Cerulean, Right?: Fashion, Politics, and Power. Natania is a fantasy author, fashion historian, Arthuriana expert, and all-around awesome person!

So as we say farewell to Rowenna as a full-time host and welcome Natania, we also discuss the very concept of eras, epochs, and other meaningful periods of time. What gives an era its flavor, its vibe, its aesthetic? How much of it gets defined by a ruler, a dynasty, or celebrity figures? How much of that is real, and how much is illusion or a carefully crafted fiction? When it comes to your worldbuilding, do your characters think they're part of a defined period? Are they trying to consciously create one? Do they look back to an idealized past? And how do you communicate that to a reader?

Join us for the discussion and get to know our new cohost Natania!

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It's another listener Q&A episode! Many thanks to the folks who submitted their questions!

In this episode, we tackle some things that can block and stymie your worldbuilding, how to approach research that's not really in your preferred milieu, and some details about how we interact with our guests.

Also, learn what your hosts' favorite holiday pies are! No one asked us that, but we're telling you anyway.

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Worldbuilding is great! You get to make all the choices! On the other hand... you have to make all the choices.

"Choose, don't presume" has long been our ethos on this podcast, but does choosing always mean making the weirdest possible choice? Does every choice have to Make A Statement? Does an "anything goes" approach to worldbuilding actually make things harder than setting some boundaries for yourself?

In this episode, we talk about how we decide where to focus our worldbuilding energy, making sure the worldbuilding serves the story (even if that means flavor, not plot!), and how to untangle your worldbuilding when it's perhaps gotten away from you a bit.

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Everyone knows that writing is writing. And everyone knows that authors are super great at finding things to distract us from our writing. But under what circumstances is not-writing essential to writing? Guest Mur Lafferty joins us to explore the underpinnings of the writing process!

From research and concept-noodling to moodboards, playlists, and other creative expressions, what non-writing things feed into our writing? How do we know when we're doing something productive and when we're distracting ourselves? And how can worldbuilding, itself often a non-writing piece of writing, benefit from our other non-writing time and activities?

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Our Guest: Mur Lafferty is the author the Midsolar Murders series, Solo: A Star Wars Story, the Hugo and Nebula nominated novel Six Wakes, The Shambling Guides series, and several self pubbed novels and novellas, including the award winning Afterlife series. She is the host of the Hugo-winning podcast Ditch Diggers, and the long-running I Should Be Writing. She is the recipient of the John Campbell Award for best new writer, the Manly Wade Wellman Award, the Best Fancast Hugo Award, and joined the Podcast Hall of Fame in 2015, its inaugural year.

When the glorious hero calls for his allies to follow him into battle... why should they? And how can that hero convince them? In this extremely-niche-themed episode, guest Anna Smith Spark joins us to explore the interplay of language and leadership!

In fiction, we love a great, rousing speech -- but how realistic is that stirring moment? (And do we care if it's realistic, or do we follow the Rule of Cool?) What's left when you take out the flattering lighting and the emotionally manipulative musical score? Well, you've still got language -- and language can do a lot, not only for your character dynamics, but also to reflect the values of the society you've built. And maybe it's the place of speculative fiction to investigate the virtues and truths that just might be worth dying for.

Bonus: Because Cass did promise there would be handouts: a rhetorical analysis of the St Crispin's day speech, courtesy of Cass's mentor, Ralph Alan Cohen. And if you really want to hear Cass give the speech... you can.

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Our Guest: Anna Smith Spark lives in London, UK. She loves grimdark and epic fantasy and historical military fiction. Anna has a BA in Classics, an MA in history and a PhD in English Literature. She has previously been published in the Fortean Times and the poetry website www.greatworks.org.uk. Previous jobs include petty bureaucrat, English teacher and fetish model.

Anna's favourite authors and key influences are R. Scott Bakker, Steve Erikson, M. John Harrison, Ursula Le Guin, Mary Stewart and Mary Renault. She spent several years as an obsessive D&D player. She can often be spotted at sff conventions wearing very unusual shoes.

A lot of work and thought can go into worldbuilding, but sometimes, you just have to go with what feels right. In this episode, guest Seanan McGuire joins us to explore how writers can make the most of their worldbuilding flow and lean into their personal resonance.

How can writers develop worldbuilding instinct? Why does worldbuilding come easily to some writers but require more conscious effort for others? When should you trust it to its core, and when might you need to temper it with a bit of a double-check?

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Our Guest:

Seanan McGuire was born in Martinez, California, and raised in a wide variety of locations, most of which boasted some sort of dangerous native wildlife. Despite her almost magnetic attraction to anything venomous, she somehow managed to survive long enough to acquire a typewriter, a reasonable grasp of the English language, and the desire to combine the two. The fact that she wasn't killed for using her typewriter at three o'clock in the morning is probably more impressive than her lack of death by spider-bite.

Often described as a vortex of the surreal, many of Seanan's anecdotes end with things like "and then we got the anti-venom" or "but it's okay, because it turned out the water wasn't that deep." She has yet to be defeated in a game of "Who here was bitten by the strangest thing?," and can be amused for hours by almost anything. "Almost anything" includes swamps, long walks, long walks in swamps, things that live in swamps, horror movies, strange noises, musical theater, reality TV, comic books, finding pennies on the street, and venomous reptiles. Seanan may be the only person on the planet who admits to using Kenneth Muir's Horror Films of the 1980s as a checklist.

Seanan is the author of the October Daye urban fantasies, the InCryptid urban fantasies, and several other works both stand-alone and in trilogies or duologies. In case that wasn't enough, she also writes under the pseudonym "Mira Grant." For details on her work as Mira, check out MiraGrant.com.

In her spare time, Seanan records CDs of her original filk music (see the Albums page for details). She is also a cartoonist, and draws an irregularly posted autobiographical web comic, "With Friends Like These...", as well as generating a truly ridiculous number of art cards. Surprisingly enough, she finds time to take multi-hour walks, blog regularly, watch a sickening amount of television, maintain her website, and go to pretty much any movie with the words "blood," "night," "terror," or "attack" in the title. Most people believe she doesn't sleep.

Seanan lives in an idiosyncratically designed labyrinth in the Pacific Northwest, which she shares with her cats, Alice and Thomas, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She has strongly-held and oft-expressed beliefs about the origins of the Black Death, the X-Men, and the need for chainsaws in daily life.

Years of writing blurbs for convention program books have fixed Seanan in the habit of writing all her bios in the third person, so as to sound marginally less dorky. Stress is on the "marginally." It probably doesn't help that she has so many hobbies.

Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.

This one's for the folks who don't want to spend a few eons building their world before they can start their story. Author and game designer James L. Sutter joins us to share some quick-and-dirty methods for getting the worldbuilding going!

In this episode, we explore the question of how much worldbuilding is necessary -- and when it's necessary. If you already have your plot and want to charge right in, that can be a different beast than if you're still feeling your way around what the story's about but know that there must be one in there somewhere.

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Our Guest: 

James L. Sutter is a co-creator of the Pathfinder and Starfinder Roleplaying Games. From 2004 to 2017, he worked for Paizo Publishing, starting out as an editor on Dungeon Magazine, moving on to do foundational work for Pathfinder, and eventually becoming the Creative Director in charge of launching Starfinder, as well as the Executive Editor of the Pathfinder Tales novel line for Paizo and Tor.

James is also the author of the young adult romance novels Darkhearts and The Ghost of Us (coming June 2024), as well as the fantasy novels Death's Heretic—a finalist for the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel—and The Redemption Engine, which won the 2015 Scribe Award for Best Original Speculative Novel. His short stories have appeared in such venues as Nightmare, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Escape Pod, and the #1 Amazon best-seller Machine of Death. In addition, he's written comic books, essays in venues like Clarkesworld and Lightspeed: Queers Destroy Science Fiction, a wealth of tabletop gaming material, and video games.

When not writing, James has performed with musical acts ranging from metalcore to musical theater. He lives in Seattle.

Shiny swords, sharpshooting archers, magically-assisted martial arts: all these things are staples of fantasy literature. But how do you do fights right? Guest SL Huang joins us to discuss all the pointy bits!

In this episode, we think not just about the technology and technicalities of fighting, but also how combat fits into (or goes against the grain of) social norms. Is your world one where a citizen can routinely be challenged to a duel? Or expects to be punched in the face if they say something rude? Or is physical violence more taboo? How do societal standards and more tangible concerns shape the style of combat? How do ideas of gender and class play into who fights, where, when, and how? We explore all this and more!

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Our Guest: SL Huang is a Hugo-winning and Amazon-bestselling author who justifies an MIT degree by using it to write eccentric mathematical superhero fiction. Huang is the author of the Cas Russell novels from Tor Books, including Zero Sum Game, Null Set, and Critical Point, as well as the new fantasies Burning Roses and The Water Outlaws. In short fiction, Huang’s stories have appeared in Analog, F&SF, Nature, and more, including numerous best-of anthologies. Huang is also a Hollywood stunt performer and firearms expert, with credits including “Battlestar Galactica” and “Top Shot.” Find SL Huang online at www.slhuang.com or on Twitter as @sl_huang.

Hobbies and leisure activities aren't just neat ways to give your characters something to do in-between plot beats -- they can also communicate a lot to the reader about the world you're building! Developing hobbies and entertainment in a world also touches on what that culture thinks about work, income, community, and many other components of society. Guest Matt Wallace joins us to discuss the opportunities presented by giving your characters the chance to play, craft, and just muck about with things!

How much of a hobby is devoted to pure pleasure? What changes when it's a side hustle that you monetize, or when it becomes competitive in some fashion? What does it mean when your characters have the money to spend on a hobby -- and who's providing them the goods and services they need for it? We explore these considerations and more as we pull apart what it means to kick back and relax in a fictional world.

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Our Guest: Matt Wallace is a Hugo Award winner and the author of the Sin du Jour series, the Savage Rebellion Trilogy, and the middle grade novels BUMP, THE SUPERVILLAIN’S GUIDE TO BEING A FAT KID, and NOWHERE SPECIAL. He’s also penned over one hundred short stories in addition to writing for film, television, and video games. In his youth he traveled the world as a professional wrestler and an unarmed combat and self-defense instructor before retiring to write full-time. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Nikki.

Our discussion of integrating religion and faith into your fantastical world continues! In this episode, guest Aparna Verma joins us to examine the deep connections between religious belief and the choices your characters make. How do they negotiate their relationship with their faith and the stories that go along with it? What happens when, thanks to a prophecy, they become one of those stories?

Religion can be a powerful force moving politics and social dynamics -- especially when not everyone agrees on the interpretation of a text or a vision! Both your protagonists and antagonists can use faith to manipulate the ends they desire, although, as many historical and fictional narratives have demonstrated, that can also swiftly spiral out of control. Building a multifaceted religious landscape in your world will give you so many plot hooks and character motivations to weave together, helping to make your world feel fuller and more lived-in!

Editor's Note: In the intro, Marshall calls this episode 110, but we apparently forgot how to count. It's 109!

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Our Guest: Aparna Verma was born in India and immigrated to the United States when she was two-years-old. She graduated from Stanford University with Honors in the Arts and a B.A. in English. The Phoenix King is her first novel.

When she is not writing, Aparna likes to ride horses, dance to Bollywood music, and find old cafes to read myths about forgotten worlds. You can connect with Aparna on Twitter and Instagram at @spirited_gal.

What role do myths play in culture and tradition? Often, mythology is, itself, a form of worldbuilding, a way that people use story to make sense of the world around them. So how do we incorporate all of that into our fictional worlds? Guest Ehigbor Okosun joins us to discuss!

Myths and cultural stories can speak so much about the people they originate with: what they value, what they assume about life, what they overlook. Myths can also reinforce power structures, or challenge them -- and that's as true in the modern day as it was for the ancients! How can myths influence what people think about their place in the world -- or inspire them to change their stars?

We also want to remind you that our Kickstarter for Traveling Light, the Magical Nude Gate anthology, is ongoing! As of time of posting, we have one week left!

Editor's Note: In the intro, Cass calls this episode 109, but we apparently forgot how to count. It's 108!

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Our Guest: Ehigbor Okosun (Eh-hee-bor Oh-koh-soon), or just Ehi, is an Austin-based author who writes speculative fiction, mystery thrillers, and contemporary novels for adult and YA audiences. Raised across four continents, she hopes to do justice to the myths and traditions she grew up steeped in, and to honor her large, multiracial and multiethnic family. She is a graduate of the University of Texas with degrees in Plan II Honors, Neurolinguistics, and English, as well as Chemistry and Pre-Medical studies and is a Cynthia Leitich Smith Mentorship Award finalist. When she’s not reading, you can catch her bullet journalling, gaming, baking, and spending time with her loved ones. 

What do your characters believe? Like, really truly deeply believe? Is it part of a codified religion? Is it a faith without much external structure? Do they trust entirely in science, or in magic, or in a code of ethics?

In this episode, we explore the interplay of religion and point-of-view. The role that religion and faith play in your world can exist on a wide spectrum. In some societies, religion is so woven with life that some degree of faith is just a given, inextricable from other parts of how a character goes about their day. Other societies might be more secular on the whole, but people in them can still have deep spirituality. What your characters believe might fit them in line with their society -- or set them at odds with it. Either way, you can hang some great plot hooks on the choices that their deeply held believes cause them to make!

We also spend a bit of time building some religious beliefs for the nations of our co-built world. From the highly-disorganized but community-focused ethics of Griasta to the holy act of debate among the Fjallaniri to the personalized virtues of the Al'notliri, we apply some of our considerations to our peoples!

Additionally, our Kickstarter has 21 days to go! We're about halfway thorugh our time and not quite halfway to our goal, so please, if you want to read a collection of short stories set in the world of the Magical Nude Gates, spread the word! Convince your friends and family that they need this collection in their lives.

Editor's Note: Marshall calls this episode 108 in the intro, but... we forgot how to count. It's 107.

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In our continuing exploration of aesthetic and its interplay with worldbuilding, we're thinking about one spectrum with labels that often get applied to fantasy novels: the darkness and the light. Guest M.J. Kuhn joins us to discuss the societal components and cultural standards that can make a world feel further toward one end or the other of that continuum.

What's the difference between a dark world and a dark story? How much do the characters' attitudes and the writer's narrative voice shape the reader's experience of a book as either light or dark? Does a high body count automatically make a book dark? We explore these considerations and the craft of shaping these elements.

We also want to remind you that our Kickstarter for Traveling Light, the Magical Nude Gate anthology, is ongoing! As of time of posting, we're about one-third of the way to our goal, which is an awesome start. This anthology will only happen if we get fully funded, though, so if you want to see the amazing stories emerging, buck-nekkid, from the MNG, then become a backer and persuade your friends to do the same!

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Our Guest: M.J. Kuhn is a fantasy writer by night and a mild-mannered marketing employee by day. She lives in the metro Detroit area with her husband Ryan, a dog named Wrex, and the very spoiled cat Thorin Oakenshield. 

Welcome to the fifth season of Worldbuilding for Masochists! And we've got some big news in this episode!

After many episodes talking about the Magical Nude Gate, we are diving fully in and launching a Kickstarter anthology! We want to tell some of the stories for which the MNG provides such glorious opportunity. We’ve solicited stories from former guests (see a full list below) and will open the anthology to submissions, as well. We hope to bring you an ebook anthology in summer of 2024!

Contributing authors include: 

• Natania Barron
• Marie Brennan
• Mike Chen
• Kate Elliott
• Victor Manibo
• Kritika H. Rao
• Mike Underwood
• Valerie Valdes

But of course, that will only happen if our Kickstarter meets its goals! Because we believe in paying people for their work. (Wild idea, in publishing, we know!)

To learn more (and to see the rewards!), check out the Kickstarter! Then tell a friend! Tell all your friends!

But that's not all! In this episode, we also give thanks to all the amazing guests, and then we explore some of our personal worldbuilding highs and lows -- our surprising wins and our epic fails. We've all taken "Choose, Don't Presume" to heart over the past few years, and that has paid off in wonderful ways -- but it also sometimes leads us to painting ourselves into corners that we then have to contort out of!

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Sometimes, the world you're working in is already built... because it's the one we live in! But that doesn't mean you don't still have choices to make. Guest Kat Howard joins us to talk about what happens when you flick one of reality's dominos and see what changes.

Maybe you've added magic -- but is it a secret, hidden society, or something that's out in the open? One will lead to different worldbuilding considerations than the other! Or maybe you've added dragons, werewolves, fairies, or some other paranormal or supernatural force. How do they fit it -- or not -- to life as we know it?

And then, when you know you're changing the world, how do you prepare for -- or dismiss -- the Authenticity Police who may start to nitpick?

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Our Guest: Kat Howard is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, and horror who lives and writes in Minnesota.

Her novella, The End of the Sentence, co-written with Maria Dahvana Headley, was one of NPR's best books of 2014, and her debut novel, Roses and Rot was a finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. An Unkindness of Magicians was named a best book of 2017 by NPR, and won a 2018 Alex Award. Her short fiction collection, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone, collects work that has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, performed as part of Selected Shorts, and anthologized in year’s best and best of volumes, as well as new pieces original to the collection. She was the writer for the first 18 issues of The Books of Magic, part of DC Comics' Sandman Universe. Her next novel, A Sleight of Shadows, the sequel to An Unkindness of Magicians, is coming April 25, 2023. In the past, she’s been a competitive fencer and a college professor.

You can find her @KatwithSword on Twitter and on Instagram. She talks about books at Epigraph to Epilogue.

We sometimes see people complain, "Worldbuilding is just pointless background info; I want to know about characters!” But what are your characters without the world they exist in? Guest Kritika H. Rao joins us to examine how world shape characters and how characters can, in turn, change the shape of their worlds.

Characters are typically shaped by their environments, whether they're trying desperately to fit in or beating their wings against the bars of their cage. Maybe they're defending the status quo; maybe they want to smash it with a hammer. In this episode, we explore the interplay of these elements, as well as the difference between building a world that feels like a maze created specifically for your protagonist and building a world that has room for lots of characters in it.

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Our Guest: Kritika H. Rao is a science-fiction and fantasy writer, who has lived in India, Australia, Canada and The Sultanate of Oman. Kritika’s stories are influenced by her lived experiences, and often explore themes of consciousness, self vs. the world, and identity. When she is not writing, she is probably making lists. She drops in and out of social media; you might catch her on Twitter, Tiktok, or Instagram @KritikaHRao. Visit her online at www.kritikahrao.com. Permission is granted to use this picture for promotional or press purposes.

From sumptuous feasts to the standard stew, food plays an important role in flavoring a lot of speculative fiction. But how do the people living in your invented world think about their food? What's their relationship to eating, mealtime, and their cultural delicacies? Guest Chana Porter joins us to discuss food culture and all the wonderful things it can communicate!

In this episode, we consider elements of scarcity and abundance: How does a relationship to food change if it's always available versus if it's harder to come by? If you could take a pill to sustain your basic caloric needs, would you do that instead of eating? We also explore the intersection of food and status. Are the people who make food possible -- agricultural workers, cooks, wait staff -- honored in your society? Or do they get forgotten? Is there a sliding scale of food respectability? And what does how people eat, when they eat, with whom they eat as communicate status?

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Our Guest: Chana Porter is a novelist, playwright, teacher, MacDowell fellow, and cofounder of The Octavia Project, a STEM and writing program for girls and trans and nonbinary youth that uses speculative fiction to envision greater possibilities for our world.

Her debut novel The Seep was an ABA Indie Next Pick, Open Letters Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Book of 2020, a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and a Times (UK) Best Sci-fi Book of 2021. As a playwright, her work has been produced and developed at New Georges, Playwrights Horizons, Cherry Lane, Dixon Place, Target Margin, and many more. She was writer-in-residence at The Catastrophe Theatre in Houston, Texas from 2017-2019. Chana is currently adapting Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed into an opera with the composer Ted Hearne.

She lives in Los Angeles. Pronouns: she/they

It's time to get specific -- about magic!

When you're building a magical system for your fantasy world, there's a lot to consider. Where does it come from? Who can access it -- everyone, or just some percentage of the population? Does it come naturally, or does it have to be trained? All of these choices will affect how magic is perceived, valued, and used in society.

In this episode, we poke at all these considerations and make some choices for the expression of magic in our co-created world.

Also! If you're eligible to nominate for the 2023 Hugo Awards, then as of the time of posting, you've still got a few days to get your ballot in! We'd love your consideration for Best Fancast.

It's the 100th Episode! Because we know how many of our listeners play TTRPGs and worldbuild for those, rather than for prose fiction, we wanted to celebrate our 100th episode with a panel episode on gaming! We're delighted to welcome Cate Osborn, Andrew Nome, and Sharang Biswas to discuss worldbuilding for and in games. (We usually overload your TBRs, but our guests are guaranteed to overload your To-Be-Played list.)

In this conversation, we talk a lot about how the communal nature of ttrpgs creates a very different worldbuilding process than a writer creating a world more or less in isolation. The great joy of gaming is in the collaboration of the storytelling! We also examine how the worldbuilding can both inform and be informed by the gaming mechanics.

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Our Guests: 

Cate Osborn / Catieosaurus (she/they) is a certified ADHD sex educator, mental health advocate and full-time content creator. As a professional streamer and TTRPG influencer, she is passionate about opening conversations about neurodiversity and accessibility into the gaming community.

Andrew Nome has been running tabletop games in various systems for twenty years, and is the creator of the Cartesian TTRPG system. He lives in Denver with his terrible cat, who he loves far more than she deserves, and spends his time overthinking things on twitter as @NomeDaBarbarian.

Sharang Biswas: I'm a game designer, writer and artist based in New York City. I have a particular love of role-playing, interactive storytelling and immersive theater. I have a Masters from ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program) at NYU-Tisch, and a B.A. and B.E. in Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering from Dartmouth College. You can learn more about me on on my LinkedIn page, and follow me on Twitter. You can also access some of my games at itch.io.

In the midst of a season full of amazing guests, we take a little breather to reflect on some of the recent topics and to apply them to our co-built world! The world of the MNG is complex and interconnected, which makes it absolutely ripe for thinking about matrices of power and privilege.

So, we think about geography and space; we think about gender and gender roles; we think about magic; we think about the intersections of identity that might matter both in our world and in the smaller societies within the world. Then, we ask: How does the existence of the MNG complicate or simplify dynamics of power and identity?

We also would like to take a moment to remind listeners that we are again eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Fancast! Nominations are open until April 30th, so if you were a member of ChiCon 8 or if you are a member of Chengdu WorldCon, we would love your consideration!

Is your world so big because it's full of secrets? From lost civilizations to prowling cryptids, from Unidentified Aerial Phenomena to covert cabals, people love a good mystery, in real life and in fiction. So how can you build these mysteries into your world? Guest Andrea Stewart joins us to explore the possibilities!

As you create your world, you might know more of its truths and secrets than your characters. What are you withholding from them? How much of their own world is known to them, and how much is beyond the fields we know, off the edges of the map, or hidden in plain sight? If something strange happens, what tools do they have for explaining it to themselves? Science, technology, religion, magic -- all these things and more may play a role in the mysteries of your invented world!

(Also, because Cass promised: It's spelled "Coelacanth".)

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Our Guest: Andrea Stewart is the daughter of immigrants, and was raised in a number of places across the United States. Her parents always emphasized science and education, so she spent her childhood immersed in Star Trek and odd-smelling library books. When her (admittedly ambitious) dreams of becoming a dragon slayer didn't pan out, she instead turned to writing fiction. Her short stories can be found in such venues as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Daily Science Fiction, Galaxy’s Edge, and others. Her debut epic fantasy novel, The Bone Shard Daughter, was a finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel, the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the Goodreads Choice Award for Fantasy and Debut Novel, and the BookNest Award for Best Traditionally Published Novel. She now lives in sunny California, and in addition to writing, can be found herding cats, looking at birds, and falling down research rabbit holes.

When you're building a world, how do you think about all the different levers of power and privilege that your characters may encounter -- or manipulate, or be manipulated by? Guest Suyi Davies Okungbowa joins us to think about the matrix of identity and its potential in speculative storytelling.

Intersectionality gives us a framework for examining the pluralism of existence. Exploring these concepts allows writers to build more nuanced, vivid, breathing worlds out of all the layers of complexity in life -- gender, race, religion, class, and so forth. How do you show your reader what those layers are and how they interact in your world? Do you begin with a character in a situation where they're comfortable in their power? Or do you place them in a situation where they're less secure and supported? What choices will they make based on their relative positions of advantage and disadvantage in their world? These decisions not only give heft to the world, but also help writers find juicy plot hooks!

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Our Guest: Suyi Davies Okungbowa is an award-winning Nigerian author of fantasy, science fiction and general speculative fiction.He has published various novels for adults, the latest of which is Son of the Storm (Orbit, 2021), first in the epic fantasy trilogy, The Nameless Republic (the second book in the series, Warrior of the Wind, is forthcoming in 2023). His debut novel. David Mogo, Godhunter (Abaddon, 2019) won the 2020 Nommo Award for Best Speculative Novel by an African.

He has also published works for younger audiences (under Suyi Davies) such as Stranger Things: Lucas on the Line (Random House, 2022), Minecraft: The Haven Trials (Del Rey, 2021) and contributed to the instant #1 NYT bestselling anthology Black Boy Joy. His shorter works have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies, and have been nominated for various awards.

Okungbowa is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, where he currently lives. As a speaker and instructor, he has taught writing at the college level and spoken at various venues, institutionally and publicly. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.

In worldbuilding, we think a lot about the cities and towns that populate our worlds, as well as the enchanted forests, the treacherous mountain ranges, the gloomy swamps, and all those other terrains that adventurers on a quest find themselves trekking across. But what about the feature that makes up over 70% of our own planet and likely a significant percentage of the one you're creating?

Darcie Little Badger joins us to talk about worldbuilding on and under the water! From the teeming biodiversity of coral reefs to the fascinatingly weird creatures of the depths, what inspiration can writers take from the oceans and seas? How do the denizens of your world flourish with -- or in spite of -- the effects the oceans have on them?

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Our Guest: Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in Time Magazine as one of the best 100 fantasy books of all time. Elatsoe also won the Locus award for Best First Novel and is a Nebula, Ignyte, and Lodestar finalist. Her second fantasy novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received a Nebula Award, an Ignyte Award, and a Newbery Honor and is on the National Book Awards longlist. Darcie is married to a veterinarian named Taran.

When you're building a society's conceptions of gender and gender roles... where do you start? Do you want to draw from historical precedent (for good or ill), or try to create something from scratch? G.R. Macallister joins us to discuss thoughtfully incorporating ideas of gender into your world, whether or not you're making it a cornerstone of your premise.

We also discuss where gender intersects with other important worldbuilding concepts: religion, government, sexuality, family structures, and more!

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Our Guest: G.R. Macallister is the author of the Five Queendoms series, beginning with Scorpica, which Publishers Weekly called “a must-read for fans of Game of Thrones and Priory of the Orange Tree.” She also writes bestselling historical fiction under the name Greer Macallister. Her novels have been named Indie Next, LibraryReads, and Amazon Best Book of the Month picks and optioned for film and television. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Boston. Scorpica is her epic fantasy debut.

Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, volcanoes... unstable wormholes, hellmouths, murder hornets, sharknados... When you're writing speculative fiction, the scope of disaster can be wild!

Do the local wizards cause occasional hails of turnips? Does Gondor have a tornado warning system? After a thousand-year flood, does magical FEMA show up to rebuild? Decisions about how your society plans for and reacts to disaster can imply a lot else about their infrastructure, government, religion, and other societal constructs.

Then there's the question of: Is the disaster the backbone of your plot, or just one plot element among many? That decision may shape the tone and even the subgenre of a book!

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Happy new year, listeners! In this episode, we take some questions from you! But not just any questions -- questions that probe specific worldbuilding conundrums you're facing, either in your own work or in popular media.

In response to your prompts, we discuss imaginary friends, villain tropes, the deficiencies of sci-fi obstetrics, cultural shifts, and grappling with originality.

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As 2022 draws to a close, your WFM hosts take a moment to celebrate winter traditions, especially those commemorating the start of a new year! But... what is a year, even? Does your culture have that conception? Is it tied to seasons, to floods, to the stars, or something else?

And if they do recognize a regular rotation of time, how do they mark the observation? Is it a time for gift-giving and wild parties, or for somber reflection? For cleansing and spiritual purifying, or for hedonistic indulgence? The decisions may say a lot about what a particular culture values, about how they relate to their history, or about their religion!

This episode also includes a few year-in-review highlights, as well as the excitement we've got coming up in 2023!

Transcript of Episode 92 (tk)

When you've added a fantastical, super-science-y, or paranormal element to your world, how do you make that feel well-integrated, baked-in, and totally normal for that world? Guest Charlaine Harris joins us to discuss using history, society, and your imagination to fill in the corners of a world and make it feel like a place you could actually go visit.

Sometimes, that work is about making sure a world is internally consistent -- and sometimes, it's about giving your werewolves fast food restaurants. What choices will make your reader an active participant in co-creating your world?

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Our Guest: 

Charlaine Harris is an American author who specializes in mysteries. She is best known for her book series The Southern Vampire Mysteries, which was adapted as the TV series True Blood. The television show was a critical and financial success for HBO, running seven seasons, from 2008 through 2014. A number of her books have been bestsellers and this series was translated into multiple languages and published across the globe.

Harris was born and raised in a small town in the Mississippi River Delta area of the United States. She now lives in Texas with her husband; they have three grown children and grandchildren. She began writing from an early age, and changed from playwriting in college to writing and publishing mysteries, including several long series featuring recurring characters.

We're big believers in doing all the work when it comes to the worldbuilding, but when it comes to putting it in the book, how do you know how much you need to have in the text?  What do the readers need to know, and what goes in the ephemera or appendices?  Who can help you figure that out?  An editor, of course!

So we sat down with Orbit Books executive editor Brit Hvide-- who's worked with authors like N.K. Jemisin, C.L. Clark, Django Wexler, Andrea Stewart and many more-- to get her thoughts on what really works in fantasy worldbuilding.

Our Guest:

Brit E. B. Hvide is a writer and Hugo Award nominated editor. She studied creative writing and physics at Northwestern University. Originally from Singapore, she now lives in Brooklyn with her husband, their son, and their dog. Follow her on Twitter @bhvide or visit her website brithvide.wordpress.com.

Many fantasy authors draw from history to shape their worlds and inform their worldbuilding choices. Where do you draw the line between hewing to the record and just using it for inspiration? How much do accuracy and authenticity matter? And, when those research rabbit holes are so very alluring, how do you make yourself stop?

Guest Laura Anne Gilman joins us to talk about the various ways to approach historical research and integrate it into your worldbuilding, as well as what to do with the many, many tidbits of knowledge that end up in your head, taking up space. From antiquated toilets to questionably decorated tapestries, this episode explores some gloriously weird historical tidbits!

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Our Guest:

Laura Anne Gilman is the author of more than twenty novels, including the Nebula award-nominated The Vineart War trilogy and the award-winning Devil’s West series from Saga Press/ Simon & Schuster.  Her forthcoming projects include the Gilded Age historical fantasy, UNCANNY TIMES (October 2022),  and a series of paranormal romance novellas focusing on non-traditional partners, starting with SOMETHING PERFECT.

She has also dipped her pen into the mystery field, writing as L.A. Kornetsky (Collared, Fixed, Doghouse, and Clawed).

We throw the word "aesthetic" around a lot on this podcast -- but we've never really slowed down to talk about what it means. How do we define the aesthetic of a work? Is that different from the aesthetic of a world? How do subgenres and plot structures intertwine with those ideas?

Guest Mary Robinette Kowal joins us to explore the crafting of aesthetics in worldbuilding and storymaking! We discuss pacing, word choice, set dressing, the theatre of the mind, the "breath" of the written word, and so much more. We also examine how aesthetic can be a shorthand to help your reader with an on-ramp into your story -- but how you may also need to teach your reader where your particular world deviates from what aesthetic may lead them to assume.

Transcript for Episode 88 (in-progress -- email us if you're interested in joining the scribal team!)

Our Guest:

Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author, Mary Robinette Kowal is a novelist and professional puppeteer. In 2008 she won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer and her debut novel Shades of Milk and Honey (Tor 2010) was nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel. In 2019, the first book in the Lady Astronaut series The Calculating Stars (Tor 2018), won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, becoming one of only eighteen novels to do so. Her stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, and several Year’s Best anthologies, as well as in her collection Scenting the Dark and Other Stories from Subterranean Press. Her short story collection Word Puppets was published in 2015, and includes both of her Hugo Award-winning stories in addition to fifteen others, running the full range of speculative fiction. In 2016, her World War I fantasy novel Ghost Talkers was published by Tor books, followed in 2018 by her alternate history Lady Astronaut series.

From 2019-2021, Kowal was the President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

In 2011, after several appearances as a guest star on the podcast Writing Excuses, Kowal became a permanent member of the cast. In 2013, the seventh season of the podcast won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work. Her involvement in the podcast also contributed to the creation of the Shadows Beneath anthology, in which Kowal and her three co-hosts contributed short stories alongside materials charting the unique creative process of each author.

Kowal is also an award-winning puppeteer. In high school, she took up puppetry as a hobby, but as Kowal says, she “never thought of it as something you could get paid for.” Instead, she went to East Carolina University to pursue an art degree, minoring in theater and speech. While performing as Audrey II in a performance of Little Shop of Horrors, she learned that a professional puppeteer had come to the show. It was a turning point. Kowal went on to intern at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, GA. With over twenty years of experience, she has performed for LazyTown (CBS), the Center for Puppetry Arts, Jim Henson Pictures, Sesame Street, and founded Other Hand Productions. Her designs have garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve.

Her career in puppetry consumed much of Kowal’s creative energy for over ten years. Although she wrote in high school and college, it wasn’t until her brother moved his family to China that she began writing again. Like Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie, she started creating children’s fantasy as a way to stay connected to her young niece and nephew. Reminded of how much she enjoyed writing, she began submitting short stories and made her first sale in 2005, and her first professional sale to Strange Horizons in 2006.

When she isn’t writing or puppeteering, Kowal brings her speech and theater background to her work as a voice actor. She is a member of SAG/AFTRA. She has recorded audio books and short stories for authors such as Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi. She likes to describe voice acting as “puppetry, without the pain.”

Mary Robinette lives in Nashville with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Sometimes she even writes on them.

Can you see the climate fiction for the trees? In this episode, Brandon Crilly joins us to discuss solarpunk, cli-fi, hopepunk, and the places where these concepts overlap and intertwine.

How do you build a world with a deliberately optimistic outlook? How much of that is about technology, and how much is about social paradigms? What other considerations go into storytelling from this particular worldview?

Transcript for Episode 87 (in-progress)

Our Guest: An Ottawa teacher by day, Brandon Crilly has been previously published by Daily Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Fusion Fragment, PULP Literature, Flame Tree Publishing and other markets. In 2021, he co-founded Bag of Giving, a monthly Twitch series where authors play TTRPGs for charity. He’s also an Aurora Award-nominated podcaster, conference organizer for Can*Con, a reviewer, and regularly has too many D&D campaign ideas than he could ever fit into his schedule. His debut novel Catalyst will be published by Atthis Arts in Fall 2022.

This episode was recorded in a panel session at WorldCon/ChiCon 8 on September 4th, 2022. Many thanks to everyone who attended in-person! We had a blast, and it's so great to get to field your questions in real-time.

We discuss favorite bits of worldbuilding from our own projects -- and the things about worldbuilding that we love less! Then, we answer questions about world-generating seeds, deciding on tech levels for our worlds, intentionality in designing magical systems, and more!

Transcript for 86 (in-progress! If you'd like to join our scribal team, please send us an email to learn about the process!)

Where's the love? It makes the world(building) go 'round and 'round and 'round... At least, it does when things are going well! In this episode, guest Sara Mueller joins us to discuss how to get yourself re-engaged with your fantasy worlds when you've drifted away from them, for one reason or another.

When you've gotten jaded, what can bring you back in? Do you cling to a particular detail of life that fascinates you? Return to the map and start filling in the blank spaces? Pivot to another project, read a book outside your genre, or binge a TV show? And when might it be important to allow yourself to have a fallow period rather than trying to force productivity?

Transcript for Episode 85 (in-progress -- to join our scribing team, email us!)

Our Guest: A seamstress and horsewoman, Sara A. Mueller writes speculative fiction in the green and rainy Pacific Northwest, where she lives with her family, numerous recipe books, and a forest of fountain pens.

In a nomadic youth, she trod the earth of every state but Alaska and lived in six of them.

She’s an amateur historical costumer, gamer, and cook.

The Bone Orchard is her debut novel, from Tor Books.

The Magical Nude Gate is a what we call a tentpole idea: a concept that touches on so many other elements of a world that it can't be just a throwaway shiny idea. It has to be well-integrated. Culture, economy, language, religion, politics -- the MNG has implications so wide-reaching and fundamental that they cannot be ignored.

So what is the MNG? A network of magical portals connecting our world -- but the catch is, it only allows living creatures through, so you come out on the other side naked as the day you were born! In this episode, we finally pin down some of the Big Questions about the MNG. What counts as a "living creature"? How did the MNG come to be? Is it stagnant or mutable? Are there gate-rich and gate-poor areas? Are all connections multidirectional? We discuss all this and more as we set the parameters for this major concept of our co-built world!

Additionally, your hosts will be at WorldCon in Chicago, September 1-5th! Find Marshall, Rowenna, and Cass both together and separately. Ask us questions, come to our TableTalks, come to our live recording, buy us a drink, or come look over our shoulders as we sketch out our MNG map!

Transcript for Episode 84 (in-progress)

Here in the dwindling days of summer, we want to know: what do the people in your world do on vacation? Are they relaxing by a beach, wandering museums, hiking in the wilderness? Unpacking that idea ties into a surprising number of other worldbuilding concepts, including economy, labor, and transportation.

In this episode, we explore some of the conditions that even allow for vacation to be conceptually available, the practicalities of arranging time off, and whether or not you can board your dragons and griffins in a kennel. Then, we apply these concepts to our co-built world and decide what vacation looks like for the Fjallaniri, the Al’notliri, or Griasta Man.

Transcript for Episode 83 (Or so the intention goes. Would you like to help our scribal team? Send us an email!)

In this bonus episode, your hosts gather together in real life at ArmadilloCon 2022! We talk about why we love worldbuilding, what our strategies are, and take a bunch of really fabulous questions from the audience.

Because this episode was recorded on-site in a convention hall and because it is a bonus episode, this is essentially raw audio! So you're getting us unfiltered and unedited... and you're getting the chaos of recording in a large open room, with the various intrusions and fuzziness inherent in those conditions. We apologize for any audial oddities!

What happens when you have to build not just one world, but a whole passel of them? In this episode, guest Valerie Valdes joins us to talk about how an author can craft compelling adventures in spaaaaaaaaaaace.

The vastness and potential diversity of space makes for an appealing sandbox for writers to play in. In a genre that often depends on the element of handwavium to make its interplanetary travel, interstellar stations, and laser swords possible, how can you still build cultures and societies that feel lived-in? Do you want to lean into the idea of single-biome "trope planets" or challenge it? How internally consistent do you need to be in order to keep a reader's suspension of disbelief intact?

Transcript for Episode 82 (Our scribal team can always use assistance! If you'd like to join, email us at worldbuildcast at gmail dot com)

Our Guest:

Valerie Valdes’s work has been featured in Uncanny Magazine, Time Travel Short Stories and Nightmare Magazine. Her debut novel Chilling Effect was published by Harper Voyager in September 2019 and Orbit UK in February 2020, with starred reviews in Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and was also named one of Library Journal’s best SF/fantasy novels of 2019. The sequel, Prime Deceptions, was published in September 2020, and the third book in the trilogy, Fault Tolerance, is forthcoming in August 2022.

Valerie is co-editor of Escape Pod, and currently works as a freelance writer and copy editor. She is a graduate of the University of Miami and the Viable Paradise workshop and has taught classes and given lectures for Clarion West and Georgia State University. She has also served as a Municipal Liaison for National Novel Writing Month since 2005. She lives in Georgia with her husband, children and cats.

DUN-DUN. Law & Order. What does it mean in your world? Who makes the laws, and by what power do they do so? How easy or difficult is it to change the rules? Guest Victor Manibo, author and real-life lawyer, joins us to discuss how different structures of formal and informal policy could affect the choices your characters make.

So much of law comes down to "who is allowed to do what." But where's the line between a law and a policy? Where does power reside -- and how did it get there? All of these systems of control, influence, taxation, and representation can provide your world with endless spectacle and drama.

Transcript for Episode 81 (Our wonderful scribe team could use your help! Email us if you'd like information on joining them)

Our Guest: Victor Manibo is a Filipino speculative fiction writer living in New York. As a queer immigrant and a person of color, he writes about people who live these identities and how they navigate imaginary worlds. He is a 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, and his debut science fiction noir novel, THE SLEEPLESS, is out August 2022 from Erewhon Books. Find him online at victormanibo.com or on Twitter @victormanibo.

We've talked about big holidays and religious observations before, but what about the small, weird, highly-location-specific festivals and traditions that might dot the landscape of your world? From cheese-rollings to local saints' days to parades to "hey, all our squash came ripe at once, guess we better do something with it!", how do the people in your world make their lives a little more interesting with periodic celebrations?

We also invent some tiny, specific festival occurrences for our co-created world!

Transcript for Episode 80 (Would you like to join our scribal team and get early access to episodes? Shoot us an email at [email protected] for details!)

Hugo Voting is now open, and we'd love your consideration for Best Fancast! The Hugo packet, which you get for an Attending or Supporting membership, gets you an absolutely boggling amount of reading, viewing, and listening material. Your hosts will also be at ChiCon 8 for the Hugos, and before that we'll be at ArmadilloCon in Austin, TX -- so if you'll be at either, please come say hi!

We kick off our fourth year of the podcast with a conversation about how to fill in the rest of your world, beyond the immediate scope of your plot. What's outside the borders your characters are familiar with? What's beyond the woods we know? Is it "here there be dragons" or a highly-detailed map with every corner marked?

Your methods of showing that may vary depending on if your characters are isolated village folk, citizens of a bustling port town, or merchants moving through many cosmopolitan surroundings. Choices you make here can both create a fuller, more lived-in world and help a reader get inside a character's perspective.

Also! In this episode, we set ourselves a pretty big goal for the fourth season. Be sure to listen to the end to find out what it is!

Also also! Hugo Voting is now open, and we'd love your consideration for Best Fancast! The Hugo packet, which you get for an Attending or Supporting membership, gets you an absolutely boggling amount of reading, viewing, and listening material. Your hosts will also be at ChiCon 8 for the Hugos, and before that we'll be at ArmadilloCon in Austin, TX.

Transcript for Episode 79 (and hey! Our scribes would love some more assistance. If you're interested in joining the team, please email us!)

Your characters and the relationships they have -- romantic, sexual, friendly, familial, professional -- will drive much of what readers connect to in your stories. So what sort of relationship dynamics do you want to build into your world's cultures? Foz Meadows joins us to discuss all the things that make up the space between two or more hearts.

From power structures and politics to financial inheritance and gender roles, there's a lot to consider. What kinds of relationships are possible in your world? Is marriage even a thing? If so, how many people can be in a marriage? Is your world totally queernorm, not at all, or somewhere on the spectrum in-between? And how about sex positivity? Who embraces free love, and who prefers chastity? These considerations can help you build a world that feels emotionally real, even if it challenges a reader's preconceptions of what a "relationship" means.

Transcript for Episode 78 (with thanks to our scribes! Want to join the team? Email us at worldbuildcast at gmail dot com)

Our Guest: Foz Meadows is a genderqueer fantasy author, essayist, reviewer, blogger and poet. She has most recently published An Accident of Stars and A Tyranny of Queens with Angry Robot, and Coral Bones with Rebellion; a full list of her publications can be found here. Foz is a reviewer for Strange Horizons, and has been a contributing writer for The Book Smugglers, Black Gate and The Huffington Post, as well as a repeat contributor to the podcast Geek Girl Riot. Her essays have appeared in various venues online, including The Mary Sue, A Dribble Of Ink and Uncanny Magzine. She is a four-time Hugo Award nominee for Best Fan Writer, which she won in 2019; she also won the 2017 Ditmar Award for Best Fan Writer, for which she has been nominated three times. In 2017, An Accident of Stars was a finalist for the Bisexual Book Awards, and in 2018, ‘Coral Bones’ won the Norma K. Hemming Award in the short fiction category.

An itinerant Australian, Foz currently lives in California with not enough books, her very own philosopher and their voluble spawn. Surprisingly, this is a good thing.

When it comes to worldbuilding, what's the difference between going deep and going wide? Kritika H. Rao joins us to discuss finding the balance between the things that are tentpoles of your world and things that can be window dressing.

How do you choose what to focus on? How many worldbuilding innovations might be too many innovations? In this episode, we discuss different processes of worldbuilding and how an author's choices might cause revelations or problems down the line.

Transcript for Episode 77 (Our scribes are amazing! Would you like to join the scribal team? Email us at [email protected])

Our Guest: Kritika H. Rao is a science-fiction and fantasy writer, who has lived in India, Australia, Canada and The Sultanate of Oman. Kritika’s stories are influenced by her lived experiences, and often explore themes of consciousness, self vs. the world, and identity. The Surviving Sky, a Hindu philosophy-inspired epic science-fantasy, is her debut novel and will be out in Fall 2022 by DAW Books and Titan Books UK. When she is not writing, she is probably making lists. She drops in and out of social media; you might catch her on Twitter or Instagram @KritikaHRao. Visit her online at www.kritikahrao.com.

Everybody's got to eat. But where does the food in your world come from? Who tends livestock, who transports it, who turns it into a meal -- and how?

In this episode, guest Sarah Gailey helps us think through the practicalities of feeding your characters so that their hanger doesn't derail your plot! We also examine the intersection of food production and consumption with colonization and imperialist violence.

Please note that this episode contains some frank discussion of the butchery of livestock for human consumption. If this is a sensitive topic for you, we suggest listening with caution.

Transcript for Episode 76 (with thanks to our scribes! Interested in joining our scribe team? Send us an email at worldbuildcast at gmail dot com!)

Our Guest: Sarah Gailey is a Hugo Award Winning and Bestselling author of speculative fiction, short stories, and essays. They have been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for multiple years running. Their bestselling adult novel debut, Magic For Liars, was published by Tor Books in 2019. Their most recent novel, The Echo Wife, and first original comic book series with BOOM! Studios, Eat the Rich, are available now. Their shorter works and essays have been published in Mashable, The Boston Globe, Vice, Tor.com, and the Atlantic. Their work has been translated into seven different languages and published around the world. You can find links to their work at sarahgailey.com and on social media at @gaileyfrey.

What makes a nation? Who decides where borders are, or even what borders are? What unites a people, within a country or across those borders? What differences are there between cultural identities, ethnicities, and nationalities -- and where do those concepts overlap and intersect?

In this episode, we discuss ideas of citizenship, belonging, invasion, defense, and self-definition -- and how you can complicate or literalize all of those ideas in your fantasy worldbuilding!

Please note: This episode does include brief discussion of the Russian invasion of Ukraine toward the end. If this is a difficult topic for you, you may wish to zip through that section! It runs from about 1:00:20 to 1:01:45. Slava Ukraini.

Transcript for Episode 75 (with thanks to our scribes! And hey, would you like to join our scribal team? Email [email protected] for details!)

Worldbuilding is, often, about choices. What bits stick out at the top of the iceberg, and what stays beneath the surface? What shiny ideas can you make tentpoles of your world, what might be cool ornaments but are not essential to the book's functioning, and what can you simply not find the room or justification for? In this episode, we return to our co-built world and play a good honest game of fuck-marry-kill with some worldbuilding concepts!

Transcript for Episode 74 (Our scribes? They're awesome. Would you like to be one? Email us at [email protected]!)

Where does worldbuilding fit into your overall process of writing, rewriting, revising, writing some more, and writing again? In this episode, we welcome back Melissa Caruso to help us think about the granular details of synthesizing your worldbuilding with your drafting and editing.

Characters exist within their worldbuilding, and worldbuilding can drive plots, but how do you bring all those things together during the act of creation in a way that will feel seamless and natural to a writer? Do you thread it into your outline? Or do you cast your ideas to the winds and see where things settle?

Transcript for Episode 73 (with thanks as ever to our devoted scribes!)

Our Guest:

Melissa Caruso writes books of magic, murder, and mayhem. Her debut novel, THE TETHERED MAGE (Orbit, 2017), was shortlisted for the Gemmell Morningstar award and begins the Swords and Fire trilogy, which also includes THE DEFIANT HEIR (Orbit, 2018) and THE UNBOUND EMPIRE (Orbit, 2019). Her second fantasy trilogy, Rooks and Ruin, consists of THE OBSIDIAN TOWER (Orbit, 2020), THE QUICKSILVER COURT (Orbit, 2021), and THE IVORY TOMB (forthcoming in 2022 from Orbit Books.

Melissa is also a tea drinker, larper, mom, and all-around geek. Despite being born on the summer solstice and going to school in an old mansion with a secret door, she has yet to develop any known superpowers. She lives in Massachusetts with her video game designer husband, two superlative daughters, and assorted pets.

Fashion: not just a frivolity, but a component of worldbuilding that can communicate so much about your world's resources, industry, and power structures, as well as characters' individual choices and personalities. Guest Natania Barron joins us to explore the potential presented by frills and furbelows of all kinds.

From bifurcated Celts to Tudor sumptuary laws to lavender pocket squares, what inspiration can you find for complicating the "standard fantasy wardrobe" into something specific to your world? How can you interrogate the intersection of clothing and gender, clothing and economy, clothing and oppression, clothing and political statements?

Transcript for Episode 72 (Thank you, scribes!)

Our Guest: 

The award-winning author of Queen of None, a feminist Arthurian retelling, Natania Barron is preoccupied with mythology, monsters, mayhem, and magic. From medieval-inspired tales to Regency fantasy romance, her often historically-inspired novels are lush with description and vibrant characters.

Natania’s shorter work has appeared in Weird Tales, EscapePod, and various anthologies and RPG settings. On Twitter, she’s known for her #ThreadTalks, which dive deep into the unseen world of fashion history–one of their favorite topics–as well as a meme or two. She identifies bisexual and demisexual, and goes by she/her/they pronouns.

In terms of academics, the author holds a BA in English/Writing from Loyola University Maryland and an MA in English with a concentration in medieval literature from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Though she left academia physically, she’s never stopped researching. Natania can regularly be found deep in the tomes of digitized illuminated manuscripts around the world.

As a mental health activist, especially regarding adolescent care, Natania has drawn nationwide attention for her writing, including mainstream news and television appearances. Additionally, she writes extensively about her own later-in-life ADHD diagnosis.

When not traveling through imagined worlds, she lives in North Carolina with her family, where she traipses through the forest on a regular basis, bakes incessantly, drinks an inordinate amount of tea, and dreams of someday owning a haunted house of her own.

This one's for the cartography geeks! We know that's a lot of our followers. Peng Shepherd joins us to think about what a map of your fantasy world can tell your readers, what the social and cultural implications of a map's presentation might be, and how much time you should spend squiggling in all those little fjords. Plus: Schrodinger’s Continents, a bowling alley on the Enterprise, and an augmentation for our Magical Nude Gate system of travel!

Transcript for Episode 71 (thank you, scribes!)

Our Guest: 

Peng was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where she rode horses and trained in classical ballet, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York, and Mexico City.

Her first novel, The Book of M, won the 2019 Neukom Institute for Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Amazon, Elle, Refinery29, and The Verge, as well as a best book of the summer by the Today Show and NPR On Point. A graduate of the NYU MFA program, Peng is the recipient of a 2020 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Elizabeth George Foundation’s emerging writers 2016 grant.

Her second novel, The Cartographers, is forthcoming from HarperCollins in March 2022.

When you've introduced elemental, supernatural, ethereal, or diabolical powers into your world, what does that do to your society? Guest Kate Heartfield joins us to discuss the rules, regulations, and roguery of magical worldbuilding!

In this episode, we explore the two levels that magical ethics can operate on: within your world, and within our world. What are you saying when you decide who has access to magic, how they control it, or how they use it to control others? Magic literalizes many issues of consent, manipulation, and power-brokering that we deal with in our daily lives -- so how can you build it into your world thoughtfully and hang interesting plot hooks on those choices?

Transcript for Episode 70 (with thanks to our scribes!)

Our Guest: Kate Heartfield is the author of The Embroidered Book, a historical fantasy novel out in February 2022, and the Alice Payne time travel novellas (2018/2019). Her debut novel Armed in Her Fashion (2018) won Canada’s Aurora Award. She also writes interactive fiction, including The Road to Canterbury, and The Magician's Workshop, published by Choice of Games. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the Nebula, Locus, Aurora, Sunburst and Crawford awards, and her journalism for a National Newspaper Award. Her short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Lackington's, Podcastle and elsewhere. A former newspaper journalist, Kate lives near Ottawa, Canada.

When your characters push boundaries, defy authority, and get down and dirty -- well, how do they do it, where do they do it, and just how much trouble are they going to get in? In this episode, guest Elsa Sjunneson joins us for an extremely naughty exploration of obscenity and transgression.

Engaging with obscenity means building complex social dynamics within your world and communicating those ideas to your reader. How can you bring all of that across? How do you show your reader what's normal and what's considered disreputable, dirty, or downright degenerate?

Transcript of Episode 69 (with both thanks and, in this case, apologies to our wonderful scribes!)

Our Guest: Hugo, Aurora and British Fantasy Award Award winner Elsa Sjunneson writes and edits speculative fiction and non-fiction. She has been a finalist for the Best Fan Writer and Best Semiprozine Hugo Awards, a winner of the D. Franklin Defying Doomsday Award, and a finalist for the Best Game Writing Nebula Award. Her debut memoir Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism was released by Tiller Press (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) October 5, 2021.

It's time for another Listener Q&A episode! Wherein we discuss fjords, metallurgy, giant Martian otters, bouncy castles, starch-based food categorization, and much more.

And, because you asked, here's how you can nominate Worldbuilding for Masochists for a 2022 Best Fancast Hugo Award:

• Eligiblity: You can nominate us (and all your other favorite works from the past year!) if you either had a qualifying membership to DisCon 3 (WorldCon 2021) or if you have a qualifying membership to ChiCon 8 (WorldCon 2022).
• What's a qualifying membership? For DisCon 3, it was a Supporting, Attending, Virtual, or Young Adult membership. For ChiCon 8, it's a Supporting or Adult, Young Adult, Teen or Child Membership.
• So: If you voted on the 2021 ballots, you're already qualified. If you didn't but would like to become qualified this year, you have until January 31, 2022, 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST) (UTC-8) to purchase a qualifying ChiCon 8 membership. It's worth noting that a qualifying membership will also get you an amazing packet of Finalist works, including novels and short fiction. Supporting memberships truly do more than pay for themselves with the amount of awesome stuff you get in the packet!
• Okay, I'm eligible. What now? You will receive an e-mail to your registered e-mail address with a customized login link. Click on the link and you will be able to begin your nominations ballot.
• You can keep adding to or changing your nominations until Tuesday, March 15, 2022, 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7).
• More questions? Check out the ChiCon 8 website!

Transcript for Episode 68, with thanks to our scribes! (And if you are interesting in joining the scribing team, please send us an email!)

Happy New Year! In this minisode, your WFM hosts take a little time to reflect on this podcast's growth, our Hugo Award nomination and the ceremonies, our experiences at WorldCon, and where we're going from here. Many, many thanks to all you listeners, to our amazing scribes, and to every guest who has joined us to discuss the wildness of worldbuilding!

Transcript for Episode 67

Join us on Discord!

So you've got lore galore, complex sociopolitical tangles, and a history that reaches back through the ages. How do you show that on the page without infodumping? Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms, who together make up M. A. Carrick, help us explore building a world with deep historical roots while communicating that history in a way that feels natural and exciting for a reader.

How do your characters think of their world's history? What different perspectives are there on historical events, and how have those perspectives shaped the present?

Transcript for Episode 66 (with thanks to our scribes!)

Our Guests: 

Alyc Helms prefers tea over all other beverages. They sometimes refer to their work as “critical theory fanfic,” which is a fancy way to say that they are obsessed with liminality, gender identity, and foxes (and tea!). They are the author of the Adventures of Mr. Mystic novels from Angry Robot and, as M.A. Carrick, the co-author (with Marie Brennan) of The Mask of Mirrors, first in the Rook & Rose trilogy from Orbit Books.

Marie Brennan is a former anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for inspiration. She recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to The Night Parade of 100 Demons and the short novel Driftwood. She is the author of the Hugo Award-nominated Victorian adventure series The Memoirs of Lady Trent along with several other series, over sixty short stories, and the New Worlds series of worldbuilding guides; as half of M.A. Carrick, she has written The Mask of Mirrors, first in the epic Rook and Rose trilogy.

On this podcast, we talk a lot about how economics play into other elements of worldbuilding, from death to politics to food -- but we've never before looked at finance and currency by themselves! In this episode, we take the plunge and explore how to build an economy into your fantasy realm.

Do the people in your world have currency, or are they bartering? Or do they even conceive of value in that way at all? Do they have a complex system that requires accountants and stock brockers? How is money tied to labor and employment? And how can you use all of those considerations as plot hooks to drive your characters into interesting choices?

Y'know, the thing about the world is... It isn't static! It changes, all the time, and if you want your invented world to feel real and full of life, a great way to do that is to make sure it also changes. But how do you build societal change into your fictional world? Guest Fonda Lee joins us to discuss cultural diaspora, temporal shifts, geopolitical cross-pollination, and other exciting ways to show the natural shifts and turns of society.

We also discuss how sci-fi seems to incorporate the idea of diaspora and change more readily than fantasy has often done, and we examine how magic might affect ideas of cultural shifts across space and time.

Transcript for Episode 64 (Thank you, scribes!)

Our Guest:

Fonda Lee is the author of the epic urban fantasy Green Bone Saga (beginning with Jade City and continuing in Jade War and the forthcoming Jade Legacy) and the science fiction novels Zeroboxer, Exo and Cross Fire.

Fonda is a winner of the World Fantasy Award, as well as a three-time winner of the Aurora Award (Canada’s national science fiction and fantasy award), and a multiple finalist for the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and the Oregon Book Award. Her novels have garnered multiple starred reviews, been included on numerous state reading lists, named Junior Library Guild selections, and appeared on Best of Year lists from NPR, Barnes & Noble, Syfy Wire, and others. Jade City has been translated in multiple languages and optioned for television development.

In addition, she has written acclaimed short fiction and comic books for Marvel. She is a frequent speaker and instructor at writing workshops including Viable Paradise and Clarion West.

Fonda is a former corporate strategist and black belt martial artist who loves action movies and  Eggs Benedict. Born and raised in Canada, she currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

Dirty clothes, grayed-out color palettes, and terrible things happening unrelentingly to everyone: that's the stereotype of grimdark. But in this episode, Anna Smith Spark joins us to explore what that term really means, from interrogating ideas of heroism and villainy to unraveling toxic masculinity and examining the consequences of supposedly noble choices.

Transcript for Episode 63 (Thank you, beloved scribes!)

Our Guest: Anna Smith Spark lives in London, UK. She loves grimdark and epic fantasy and historical military fiction. Anna has a BA in Classics, an MA in history and a PhD in English Literature. She has previously been published in the Fortean Times and the poetry website www.greatworks.org.uk. Previous jobs include petty bureaucrat, English teacher and fetish model.

Anna's favourite authors and key influences are R. Scott Bakker, Steve Erikson, M. John Harrison, Ursula Le Guin, Mary Stewart and Mary Renault. She spent several years as an obsessive D&D player. She can often be spotted at sff conventions wearing very unusual shoes.

As Halloween draws close and the veil between the realms grows thin, we wonder... how, exactly, do you build a world that, by design, touches other worlds? Seanan McGuire joins us to discuss portal realms, alternate realities, multiverses, and designing the liminal, the permeable, the spaces in-between.

Transcript for Episode 62 (thank you, beloved scribes!)

Our Guest: Seanan is the author of the October Daye urban fantasies, the InCryptid urban fantasies, and several other works both stand-alone and in trilogies or duologies. In case that wasn't enough, she also writes under the pseudonym "Mira Grant." For details on her work as Mira, check out MiraGrant.com.

Seanan lives in an idiosyncratically designed labyrinth in the Pacific Northwest, which she shares with her cats, Alice and Thomas, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She has strongly-held and oft-expressed beliefs about the origins of the Black Death, the X-Men, and the need for chainsaws in daily life.

Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.

From aliens to AI, from dragons to dwarves, from to nebulous clouds to sapient mushrooms, how do we conceive of non-human intelligence in our speculative worlds? Martha Wells joins us to discuss the various considerations in building a culture from a perspective entirely unlike our own, perhaps operating on different levels of consciousness, or through a hive mind, or dealing with entirely different biologies and ecologies.

How do you on-board a reader to something beyond the human brain? Is that culture in conflict with human culture, or in peaceful coexistence, or do humans even exist in their world? How do we apply some of our basics of worldbuilding to this kind of crafting?

Our Guest: Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, The Death of the Necromancer, the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries series, media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, and Locus Awards, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. Her books have been published in twenty-two languages.

Transcript for Episode 61 (Thank you, dear scribes!)

Worldbuilding is often considered part of the pre-writing process -- but sometimes, more worldbuilding happens mid-manuscript or even mid-series.

What do you do with those interjections? Can you graft them in, or do some of them need to be deferred? What happens when answering one worldbuilding need knocks something else askew? How much can you retcon in, and what do you do if you've written yourself into a corner? In this episode, we examine the ongoing process of worldbuilding, once the plot is already in motion.

We also look to our co-created world and consider what gaps and glaring omissions we currently have in our worldbuilding there!

Transcript for Episode 60 (with thanks, as ever, to our lovely scribes!)

Worldbuilding can lead an author to generate a lot of fun ideas. But how do you figure out which of those ideas can actually be integrated into your story? Is there an upper limit on how many shiny notions the weight of the narrative will bear? In this episode, we discuss the balance in worldbuilding, as well as discussing how that balance is different in novels vs role-playing games.

We also return to our collectively invented world and spend some time applying the concepts explored in recent episodes to our personal nations and our geopolitics!

Transcript for Episode 59 (with thanks to our glorious scribes!)

Most speculative fiction takes place in a society that has a government of some kind. But what, exactly is a state? And how does it come to be? C.L. Polk joins us to discuss the making and breaking of nations within your fantasy worlds.

From farmboy kings to scheming dukes with surprisingly benevolent control of their printing presses, from the trials and tribulations of parliaments to the somewhat horrifying implications of magical lobbyists, we hope that you'll find ideas in here to help you craft a government to your preferred level of wonkiness.

Transcript for Episode 58 (with thanks to our lovely scribes!)

Our Guest: C. L. Polk (they/them) is the author of the World Fantasy Award winning novel Witchmark, the first novel of the Kingston Cycle. Their newest novel, The Midnight Bargain, was a finalist in the CBC Canada Reads Competition, and was nominated for the Nebula, FIYAH Ignyte, and World Fantasy Awards.

After leaving high school early, they have worked as a film extra, sold vegetables on the street, and identified exotic insect species for a vast collection of lepidoptera before settling down to write fantasy novels.

Mx. Polk lives near the Bow River in the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, and the Métis Nation (Region 3). They keep all their stuff in a tiny apartment with too many books and a yarn stash that could last a decade. They ride a green bicycle with a basket on the front.

They drink good coffee because life is too short. They spend too much time on twitter. You can subscribe to their free newsletter on TinyLetter, or subscribe to their Patreon for content writing nerds like.

Mx. Polk is represented by Caitlin McDonald of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

How do people in your world handle death? Spiritually, financially, emotionally -- and, as may be relevant to your plot, how do they deal with actual dead bodies? Amanda Downum joins us to discuss the details of the deceased -- and she's both a writer and a licensed mortician, so she can answer some of the questions you've been afraid to Google, lest you end up on a government watchlist!

Transcript for Episode 57 (thanks to our scribes!)

Our Guest:

Amanda was born in Virginia, and has since then spent time in Indonesia, Micronesia, Missouri, and Arizona, with brief layovers in California and Colorado. In 1990 she was sucked into the gravity well of Texas, and hasn't managed to escape. Yet.

​She lives in Austin with her partner and their snake, and can be found haunting absinthe bars, goth clubs, and other liminal spaces. Her hobbies used to include cooking hearts and rock climbing, but now most of her time is devoted to studying Mortuary Science. Her day job sometimes lets her dress as a giant worm. She can be summoned at a crossroads on the new moon, or through Facebook, Twitter, or Patreon.

Let's get granular! How much can your literal language -- the individual words you use, the cadence of your sentences, a conlang, a poetic tradition -- help convey your worldbuilding? Sarah Beth Durst joins us to talk about the fine tool of wordcraft in your prose and dialogue, as well as the importance of white space on the page. She also reminds us that fantasy fiction is always better with talking cats.

Our Guest: Sarah Beth Durst is the award-winning author of over twenty fantasy books for kids, teens, and adults, including Spark, Drink Slay Love, and The Queens of Renthia series. She won an American Library Association Alex Award and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and has been a finalist for SFWA's Andre Norton Nebula Award three times.

Sarah was born in Northboro, Massachusetts, a small town that later became the setting for her debut novel. At the age of ten, she decided she wanted to be a writer. (Before that, she wanted to be Wonder Woman, except with real flying ability instead of an invisible jet. She also would have accepted a career as a unicorn princess.) And she began writing fantasy stories. She later attended Princeton University, where she spent four years studying English, writing about dragons, and wondering what the campus gargoyles would say if they could talk.

Sarah lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, her children, and her ill-mannered cat.

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Transcript for Episode 56 (thank you, dear scribes!)

The fantasy genre comes in many flavors -- but how do we tease those apart? How important are they when worldbuilding, and how much are they inventions of the demands of marketing? In this episode, we explore the structural conventions, aesthetic flourishes, and reader expectations the define the many glorious subgenres of speculative fiction.

Transcript for Episode 55 (thank you, wonderful scribes!)

When you're building for the near future, how far can you go? Is technology going to doom us, save us, or a bit of both? How does a society make that determination -- and how can your worldbuilding show those choices in action?

In this episode with guest PJ Manney, we explore cyberpunk, technothrillers, and other alternate-near-future fiction. We also spend some time teasing apart the ideas of genre, aesthetic, and plot device, and where they overlap.

Our Guest: PJ Manney is the author of the bestselling and Philip K. Dick Award nominated science fiction technothriller, (R)EVOLUTION (2015), published by 47North in the Phoenix Horizon trilogy with, (ID)ENTITY (2017), and (CON)SCIENCE, (2021). Set as alternate, future American histories, the novels chart the influence of world-changing technologies on power and nations. 

A former chairperson of Humanity Plus, she helped rebrand the organization, launch H+ Magazine and organize the first multi-org conference on futurist topics, Convergence ’08. She authored "Yucky Gets Yummy: How Speculative Fiction Creates Society"​ and "Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the Key to Empathy,"​ foundational works on the neuropsychology of empathy and media. 

Manney presented her ideas to National Geographic, the Producers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America, NASA-JPL, M.I.T., Huffington Post, The H+ Summit, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, is a frequent guest on podcasts/webshows including StarTalk, The World Transformed, Singularity 1on1 and Amazing Mind, and has published in BoingBoing, Live Science and Tor.com. She is also the first person to create and transfer a digital autograph for a novel verified by the blockchain. Manney consults for varied organizations about the future of humanity and technology, including artificial intelligence, robotics, cyborgs, nanotechnology, biotechnology, brain-computer interfaces, space, blockchains and cryptocurrencies.

Manney graduated from Wesleyan University double majoring in Film and American Studies. She worked for over 25 years in film/TV: motion picture PR at Walt Disney/Touchstone Pictures; story development for independent film production companies; and writing as Patricia Manney for the critically acclaimed hit TV shows Hercules — The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. She also co-founded Uncharted Entertainment, writing and/or creating many pilot scripts for television networks, including CBS, Fox, UPN, Discovery, ABC Family and Comedy Central.

Manney lives with her husband in Southern California and is a dual citizen of the US and New Zealand. She is a member of the WGA, SFWA, ITW and PEN America.

--

Transcript for Episode 54 (with thanks to our scribes!)

Our third season begins! We go back to the basics of worldbuilding -- and then we think about how to level up! When we're digging deep on our motto of "Choose, don't presume," what does that mean as we do more and more of it? How much work do you make for yourself as a writer? How does your worldbuilding serve your story and your characters? And, as always, we examine the craft of communicating those choices to the reader.

Transcript for Episode 53 (with great thanks to our scribes!)

To celebrate our third season starting, we're hosting a giveaway!

Enter to win a fantastic bundle of prizes from your WFM hosts, including:

• Signed copies of Rowenna Miller's Torn, Cass Morris's Give Way to Night, and Marshall Ryan Maresca's The Velocity of Revolution, A Murder of Mages, and An Import of Intrigue
• An Audible code for your choice of The Thorn of Dentonhill/The Alchemy of Chaos or A Murder of Mages/An Import of Intrigue
• An Audible code for a book of your choice (Any book at all! Excellent if you've been intending to check out some of our guests' amazing work!)
• Bookmarks handmade by Rowenna
• Aven Cycle stickers from Cass

For shipping purposes, please note that all physical prizes are available to US addresses only.

This contest is open for one week, until June 30th. We will select three winners, each of whom gets that bundle of goodies, and announce those winners in Episode 55!

We close out our second year of the podcast with another listener Q&A episode! Thanks to all of our wonderful listeners who supplied us with themes to riff on, from military ranks to looms to particular tools of worldbuilding.

Transcript for Episode 52 (Thank you, wonderful scribes!)

Gender is a construct -- so how is it built in your fantasy world? There's hardly a better place to interrogate our assumptions about societies, from ideas about marriage and family to established power structures to fashion and fripperies. E. J. Beaton joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about how we can examine, investigate, challenge, and reimagine gender and gender relations in our worldbuilding.

Our Guest: E. J. Beaton is the author of the fantasy novel The Councillor, to be published by DAW Books on March 2, 2021. She has previously published a poetry collection, Unbroken Circle (Melbourne Poets Union), and has been shortlisted for the ACU Prize for Poetry and the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize. She studied literature and writing at university, and her PhD thesis included analysis of Machiavellian politics in Shakespearean drama and fantasy literature. She lives in Melbourne, Australia. 

Transcript for Episode 51, with thanks to our scribes! If you would like to join the scribe team, send us a line at worldbuildcast (at) gmail.com and we'll get you set up! Volunteering for the team comes with perks like early access to episodes and fancy Discord swag.

For our fiftieth episode, we welcome an all-star panel of guests who write in major franchises! Delilah Dawson, Tini Howard, David Mack, and Mike Chen tell us what it's like to write for Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel comics, and other IP worlds, from having seventeen editors to bringing their own perspectives and values to established universes.

Transcript for Episode 50 (with special kudos to our scribes for taking on the challenge of differentiating seven different voices!)

Our Guests: 

Delilah Dawson: Delilah S. Dawson is the New York Times bestselling writer of Star Wars: PHASMA, plus Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire, The Secrets of Long Snoot, The Perfect Weapon, and Scorched; the Blud series, Servants of the Storm, the HIT series, Wake of Vultures and the Shadow series (as Lila Bowen), and a variety of short stories in anthologies such as Death & Honey, Robots vs. Fairies, Hellboy: an Assortment of Horrors, Violent Ends, Carniepunk, Three Slices, and Last Night a Superhero Saved My Life. With Kevin Hearne, she is the co-writer of the Tales of Pell series.

Her next projects are MINE, a middle grade horror novel with Delacorte in Fall 2021 and THE VIOLENCE, a generational trauma tale set during a pandemic of random outbreaks of violence, out with Del Rey in 2022.

Her comics credits include the creator-owned Ladycastle #1-4, Sparrowhawk #1-5, Star Pig #1-4, Firefly: The Sting, The X-Files Case Files: Florida Man #1-2, Adventure Time comics #66-69, Rick and Morty Presents: Pickle Rick, and Jim Henson's Labyrinth 2017 Special from BOOM! Studios, as well as stories in Star Wars Adventures #5, #6, #18, #25, and Star Wars: Forces of Destiny: Rose and Paige for IDW. Her most recent comics project is WELLINGTON, written with Aaron Mahnke of the Lore podcast.

Delilah is the winner of the 2015 Fantasy Book of the Year from RT Book Reviews for WAKE OF VULTURES and the 2013 Steampunk Book of the Year and May Seal of Excellence for WICKED AS SHE WANTS. Her work has earned multiple stars from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal.

She lives in Florida with her family.

Tini Howard: Tini Howard is an American writer of comic books, essays, and at least one upcoming novel. Since 2018, she has been writing comics exclusively for Marvel, including Thanos: Zero Sanctuary, Strikeforce, and Excalibur from the best-selling Dawn of X. 

Tini's other graphic novel work spans several beloved properties, including Rick and Morty, GLOW, and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. She has produced two graphic novels with IDW's Black Crown imprint — the critically-acclaimed Euthanauts with Nick Robles, and Assassinistas with Eisner Hall of Fame-inductee Gilbert Hernandez. She broke into comics in 2014 as a winner of the Top Cow Talent Hunt, which saw the publication of her first comic, Magdalena: Seventh Sacrament. 

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Blake, and their two sons Orlando and General Hugs, who are cats. 

David Mack: David Mack is the award-winning and The New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty-six novels and numerous short works of science-fiction, fantasy, and adventure, including the Star Trek Destiny and Cold Equations trilogies.

Mack’s writing credits span television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), film, and comic books. His latest novels are The Shadow Commission, the final volume of his Dark Arts trilogy published by Tor books; and his long-postponed Star Trek novel More Beautiful Than Death.

His newest projects include the short story “Fiasco” in the pulp-homage anthology Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2021, and a new novel, Star Trek: Coda, Book III: Oblivion’s Gate, coming November 30, 2021.

He currently works as a consultant on the upcoming animated television series Star Trek: Prodigy.

Mack resides in New York City with his wife, Kara.

Mike Chen: Mike Chen is the author of We Could Be Heroes, Here And Now And Then (a finalist for Goodreads Choice - Best Sci-Fi, CALIBA Golden Poppy, and the Compton Crook Award) and A Beginning At The End ("a brilliant, fragile path through the darkness" -- Library Journal). His short fiction is featured in Star Wars: From A Certain Point Of View -- The Empire Strikes Back, and he has covered geek culture for sites such as Tor.com, The Mary Sue, and StarTrek.com. In a previous life, he covered the NHL for Fox Sports, SB Nation, and other outlets. A member of SFWA, Mike lives in the Bay Area with his wife, daughter, and rescue animals.

Picture it: It's a sweltering summer day, ninety degrees in the shade, heat mirages glimmering on the horizon. Can your characters strip down to their skivvies? Roll up their sleeves? Hike up their skirts? Or might they be shamed for so much as unbuttoning their collar? What cultural factors of religion, economy, gender, and sexuality play into that decision?

In this episode, we discuss conventions of modesty, nudity, bragging, virtue-signalling, and other details of culture that you can use when building a multi-faceted and nuanced fantasy world! We also take a few moments to (immodestly) discuss our new status as Hugo Finalists for Best Fancast and to introduce ourselves to new listeners!

Transcript for Episode 49, with thanks as ever to our wonderful scribes!

If your character finds an ancient mask half-buried in a field, is that just a cool remnant of an older culture, or are they about to unleash a demonic apocalypse? This week, Marina Lostetter joins us to talk about artefacts, archaeology, and the interpretation of material culture over time!

Some of the ancient artefacts in your world might be plot-driving vessels of magic, wonder, or absolute chaos, but the everyday objects that get preserved and protected --or not! -- can communicate a lot of information about your world's history, values, and cultural shifts.

Transcript for Episode 48 (with, as ever, great thanks to our scribes!)

Our Guest: The open skies and dense forests of the Pacific Northwest are ideal for growing speculative fiction authors–or, at least, Marina would like to think so. Originally from Oregon, she now resides in Arkansas with her spouse, Alex. In her spare time she enjoys globetrotting, board games, and all things art-related. Her original short fiction has appeared in venues such as Lightspeed, Uncanny, and Shimmer Magazine.  Her debut novel, NOUMENON, and its sequels, NOUMENON INFINITY and NOUMENON ULTRA, are available from Harper Voyager.  Her first fantasy novel, THE HELM OF MIDNIGHT, is forthcoming from Tor. In addition, she has written tie-in materials for Star Citizen and the Aliens franchise. She is represented by DongWon Song of the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency, and she tweets as @MarinaLostetter.

Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? Well... Yeah! If you're building a world, the concept of the passage of time is likely to matter. How long is your year? How do you name the months and days? How small or large are your units of measuring time? And how can you convey all of that to a reader without making it feel like a freshman year language course?

In this wibbly-wobbly episode, we discuss the ever-present yet often-arbitrary division and definition of time and how it can work in your fantasy worldbuilding!

Transcript for Episode 47, thanks to amazing scribes!

From ballads to books to TikToks, how do the people in your world communicate their own stories and information? The consideration involves answering a lot of questions about literacy, technology, and your culture's values. C. L. Clark, author of The Unbroken, joins us to discuss the texts-within-texts and how to build them into your fantasy world!

Our Guest: Cherae graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA and was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, doing P90something, or reading about war and [post-]colonial history. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in FIYAH, PodCastle, Uncanny and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Now she’s one of the co-editors at PodCastle. She’s represented by Mary C. Moore of Kimberley Cameron and Associates.

Transcript for Episode 46 (with great thanks to our scribes!)

When you're trying to solve a problem with minimal stabbing, call in the diplomats! In this episode, we discuss the above-board negotiations of formal diplomats, the social maneuverings of informal national representatives, and the super-shady dealings of spies.

How interconnected or isolationist are the nations of your world? How do tech and magic affect diplomatic relations or spycraft? We explore these questions and more!

Transcript for Episode 45 (thank you, scribes!)

Info on Hugo Award Nominations and the eligibility spreadsheet!

If OldMacDonald has a dragon, how does he stable it? This episode explores domesticated animals in fantasy worldbuilding, from the useful cart-pullers to the companion animals who are purely there for scritchies. How does your world manage the animals who live alongside us? And what happens when those creatures can do things like breathe fire, open portals, or channel magical force?

Transcript for Episode 44 (Thank you, scribes!)

Journeys are a staple element of fantasy plots -- but just how do people get around in your world? Kate Elliott, author of Unconquerable Sun, joins us to discuss the feet, hooves, wings, wheels, portals, and other forms of transportation that allow your characters to go a-questing! We also consider the implications that may arise for communication, trade, and social etiquette based on how you structure those transportation systems.

Our Guest: As a child in rural Oregon, Kate Elliott made up stories because she longed to escape to a world of lurid adventure fiction. She now writes fantasy, steampunk, and science fiction, often with a romantic edge. She currently lives in Hawaii, where she paddles outrigger canoes and spoils her schnauzer.

Transcript for Episode 43, with thanks to our scribes!

So once you've done your worldbuilding, how exactly do you present it to the reader? Stina Leicht joins us to consider how much information to work in, when to do it, and other elements of the wordcraft of worldbuilding.

Transcript for Episode 42 (Thank you, Scribes!)

We humans are "meaning-making" creatures -- So what stories do your characters tell about themselves, their world, and their culture? The writing team of Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms, who together make up M. A. Carrick, join us to talk about weaving the myths, legends, and folklore that can help your imagined world feel fully textured and lived-in!

Transcript for Episode 41 (thank you, lovely scribes!)

We get asked about fantasy cussing all the time -- but before you can explore profanity, you have to decide what a culture holds sacred. What objects, rituals, or social contracts are inviolable? What bodily functions are unseemly for public discourse? What lines are there between etiquette and sacralization? Author K. B. Wagers joins us to explore building concepts of the sacred and the profane into your imagined world!

Transcript for Episode 40 (with thanks to our scribes! who had to do a lot of referential parsing in this episode, particularly)

It's another viewer Q&A episode! Your hosts answer your queries on topics such as magic and disability, art styles that suit our stories, and the bits of worldbuilding we've poured our hearts and masochistic minds into but haven't managed to fit into our books yet. Plus, cooking with angel meat.

Transcript for Episode 39 (with thanks to our amazing scribes!)

Whether you're taking down an Evil Emperor or a whole Evil Empire, how do you build antagonists into your world? Anna Stephens, author of The Stone Knife, joins us to discuss the parameters of villainous behavior.

Transcript for Episode 38, with thanks to our scribes!

In this episode, your hosts apply some of the considerations from the past several episodes to the world we're co-building! From "Griasta Man is at it again" to a community run by Virgos, we take you inside some specific "Choose; don't presume" moments.

Transcript for Episode 37 (Thank you, scribes!)

Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Well, that really depends on how your world conceives of witchcraft, doesn't it? In this episode, we discuss witches: what form their powers take, what sets them apart from other kinds of magic users, how do you know someone's a witch, and what to make of all those familiars hanging 'round the place.

(Cass apologizes for some fading audio in this episode. She's getting a better mic, she promises).

Transcript for Episode 36, with thanks to our amazing scribes!

From youth to veneration, from cradle to grave, how does your fantasy world imagine the phases of life? In this episode, we think about the factors that influence a society's concept of aging: biological, economic, and cultural. What happens when your long-lived elves and your mayfly fairies live next door to each other? Are your adolescents adults-in-training or wild-and-free teenyboppers? And who would really want to take care of Baby Yoda for over a century of toddlerhood?

(Transcript for Episode 35, with thanks to the scribe crew!)

Your WfM hosts are authors naturally-inclined to overcomplicate their writing lives -- but what if your instincts run the opposite direction? "Science fiction with feelings" author Mike Chen joins us to discuss reverse-engineering worldbuilding from plot, maintaining consistency, using POV to communicate your world, and the most complex pizza ordering of all time.

Transcript for Episode 34 (with thanks to the scribes!)

Fantasy literature hasn't always done well by people with disabilities. So how can we do better? Guest Elsa Sjunneson helps us think about possible ways to design a fantasy world with disabilities in mind: avoiding problematic tropes like magic cures, creating thaumaturgically-responsive buildings, and training service wyverns! We also explore the issues of community, economics, and technology that can inform how a society relates to disability.

NB: Some of the original audio for this episode was lost and had to be recovered from our back-up. We apologize for a touch of degraded quality that resulted from that process!

Transcript for Episode 33 (Thanks to our scribes!)

When fantasy stories are so much about adventure, what is the function of home? The amazing Zoraida Córdova joins us to discuss domestic spaces and how to fit them into your worldbuilding! Is home a place? A people? A ritual? Is it somewhere you escape from, something you defend, or your last refuge?

Transcript for Episode 32 (thank you, scribes!)

Guest Michael R. Underwood joins us to discuss military cultures in fantasy worlds! If your story has warfare, what does that mean for the structure of your society? Do you have a standing army, a militia on-call, feudal obligations? How do technology and economy play into your military configuration? And what does your all-important training montage look like?

Transcript for Episode 31 (thank you, scribes!)

K. Tempest Bradford, K. S. Villoso, and Sarah Guan join us for a panel discussing race and racism in fantasy worldbuilding. What sort of things does an author need to be mindful of when integrating real-world, real-world-inspired, or invented races into worldbuilding? How do tropes of fantasy species, like orcs and elves, or of magical races, like wizards and Valyrians, perpetuate harmful ideas? And how can we best examine our own biases and commit to digging out the bigotry that systematic racism has put in our heads?

For a deeper dive into this and related topics, please check out writingtheother.com and their many excellent resources, classes, and on-demand webinars.

Transcript for Episode 30 (Thank you, scribes!)

Whether your protagonist is a wholesome farm worker, a high-flying politico, or a bone-weary traveler, sooner or later, there's a good chance they'll end up in The City. But that city can be a character in its own right -- and that means putting some world-building work into figuring out why it exists, how it grew, what sort of people live there, and how they organize their lives! In this episode, we delve deep into the architecture and infrastructure of cities.

Transcript for Episode 29 (Thank you, scribes!)

Physical art colors the world around us -- literally! But how do we translate that into the written word? This week, we explore the difference between art and craft, art for public consumption versus private enjoyment, political messages in portraits and sculpture and graffiti, and how those details can communicate the values and trends in the world you're writing.

Transcript for Episode 28 (Thank you, scribes!)

We begin Year 2 of the podcast by answering questions from listeners and introducing our new co-host, Cass Morris! We chat about architecture, city design, profanity, and other topics that may well spin out into full episodes as the year goes on. If you're new to the podcast, welcome! This is a great place to start. If you're a devoted follower of the podcast, welcome back! We're delighted to have you tuning in.

Transcript for Episode 27 (thank you, scribes!)

Guest K.A. Doore joins us to talk about queer worldbuilding! What are ways to think about approaching queernorm in crafting second world fantasy? What ripple effects does normalizing queerness add to your world?

Transcript for this episode (Thanks again, scribes!)

Fabulous guest ANDREA STEWART joins us to talk empires and rebellions, including the worldbuilding for the empire in Bone Shard Daughter! Don't miss this episode--it's revolting. In the best way possible.

Transcript for this episode

Whether you're outfitting a fictional warrior for battle, a farmer for work, or a hapless Hobbit for a very long walk, the pragmatic and aesthetic elements of and individual's clothing and gear are an essential part of fantasy worldbuilding! Join us as we chat with Melissa Caruso (author of the Swords and Fire trilogy and, forthcoming, The Obsidian Tower).

Transcript for this episode

People can make a ceremony out of just about anything--life events, accomplishments, afternoon tea. Why, and how, and what can it convey about the world our characters live in? Featuring TOCHI ONYEBUCHI!

Transcript for this episode

We've finally done it--we're talking about food! Buffets of food description are a fantasy trope, but why is food so important to worldbuilding, anyway?

Transcript for this episode.

Bodies may not be technically required in fantasy, but most of our characters have 'em...what medicine and concept of physical health and self do they have?

Transcript for this episode

On this week's episode we're joined by the fabulous romance author Cat Sebastian while we do some SEXY worldbuilding. With, like, slow jazz and shit. Saxophones. Rose petals on the bed. The whole thing. Get cozy!

The transcript of this episode is available here!

On today's episode, we're doing a deep-dive and building up that Thirteen Families culture that we mentioned a little while back! From the ground up, here we go!

The transcript of this episode is available here.

On this week's episode, we're talking about the wonders of the world, both natural and man-made, and how they can enrich your settings!

The transcript of this episode is available here. Thank you to our wonderful scribes!!

This week, we're joined by S.A. Chakraborty, author of the Daevabad trilogy (The City of Brass, The Kingdom of Copper and, forthcoming, The Empire of Gold) while we talk about the loooooong game: Not just recent local history, but thousands or tens of thousands of years of world history. 

The transcript for this episode is available here. Throw a bouquet of roses to your local scribes!!

On this week's episode, we're talking politics. Yeah, yeah, we know, but we're gonna try to make it fun. Like, why does fantasy fixate so hard on monarchies, anyway??

The transcript of this episode is available here.

Listeners have sent us questions, and we spend the episode answering them, and each of these questions was juicy enough to make a whole episode out of alone.  So you get to hear random morsels of joy that you would only get with a Listener Questions: about travelogue plots and caraco jackets and crownball, whatever that is.  

Transcript for the episode is here.  Thank you to our wonderful scribes!

Happy Holidays, dear listeners! This week, we're talking about worldbuilding holidays, and we giggle pretty much the entire time! 

Transcript is available here. Blessings upon the heads of our wonderful scribes!

On this week's episode, we're joined by our glamorous guest, Tasha Suri, author of EMPIRE OF SAND and REALM OF ASH to talk about worldbuilding religions!

Transcript is available here

We're joined this week by glamorous guest star Cass Morris, Shakespeare scholar and author of FROM UNSEEN FIRE, to talk about art and pop-culture in fantasy worldbuilding! 

The transcript for this episode is here. Thank you to our excellent scribes!

Rowenna and Alex are going a bit feral this week to talk about fiber arts! Marshall Ryan Maresca asks some good smart questions! 

The transcript for this episode is available here. Huge thanks to our scribes!!!

On this very spooky episode of WFM, we're discussing the customs and practices surrounding death! 

The transcript of this episode is available here. (HUGE THANKS to our wonderful scribes!!!)

Author RJ Theodore joins us this week to talk about worldbuilding family structures! 

Episode transcript here.

On today's episode we're finally getting around to naming some stuff, and that means we're talking about languages! Conlangs, language and culture, lots of tasty stuff!

The transcript document is here.

If you enjoy the podcast, join in on our fan discord chat!

Today we're talking about building magic systems into the world! 

The transcript for this episode can be found here. (It's still in progress, so if you'd like to transcribe a couple minutes to help out your fellow World Builders, feel free! :D) 

We're joined today by Jenn Lyons, author of THE RUIN OF KINGS, to talk about methods of organizing your worldbuilding! We give some cool recs for programs to use, and some of us admit to using more simple and chaotic methods of keeping everything in line.

The transcript of this episode is available here. Thank you so much to our amazing scribes who have volunteered their time to assist with this: Eunice, Kate, and C, you're amazing!! 

This week we're talking big questions about people, culture, population, and technology! Let's make some civilizations!

Read the transcript here!

This week we are joined by the amazing author Fonda Lee to talk about the basics of creating civilizations for your fantasy world! 

Read the transcript here!

Check out the map here! 

We're talking about building flora and fauna for the world! Come get some biomes!

Transcript available here.

On today's episode, we're talking about drawing maps and creating solar systems, and we begin to build our very own world from the... ahem... ground up. ;)

Transcript for Episode 2

[Note, November 2022: The links mentioned in this podcast are, alas! lost to the vagaries of time. We apologize for any inconvenience.]

Welcome to the premiere of Worldbuilding for Masochists, a new podcast that is exactly what it says on the tin! Today we try valiantly to answer the question, "Gosh... when it comes to worldbuilding, where do you even start?"

Transcription: 
The transcript for this episode can be found here. Huge thanks to our scribal team!