How to Stop Worldbuilding and Start Worldconjuring

Writers wanting to build worlds are met with difficult questions: Should I describe the city’s sewer system for ten or twenty pages? How much to explain Frontier Utah’s rural bartering system of spiderwebs? These are also the wrong questions. As writer Lincoln Michel says, “Worldbuilding imposes. Worldconjuring collaborates.” In this seminar, we’ll challenge current paradigms for worldbuilding; instead, we’ll craft settings and circumstances through the power of detail selections, rule systems, and essential mysteries. Together, we’ll ask much better questions: in your new world, what do readers need to know and what do readers want to know?