One Night – A worldbuilding exercise
A few weeks ago, our writing workshop held a worldbuilding exercise. The goal was to group “build” a world event, based on a limited amount of information. The starting bits which we started with were: An island resort; A convention; A suicide; And a resurrection.
Ideas were bandied about and “The Convention” element went from a meeting of dentists, doctors, and insurance salesmen all the way to demons and angels. We ended up with clowns.
The “Suicide” element really circled the room and, to begin with, people took it quite literally. Then the speculative nature of the workshop emerged and came up with the idea that, for clowns, their identity wasn’t their ‘normal self’, but their ‘clown persona.’ That concept allowed us to consider that the wiping or removal of the clown’s persona could actually represent a suicide of sorts. We ran with this as one of the better ideas of the night.
The “Resurrection,” by default, then became a rebirth of the clown persona. Fairly straightforward, once you’ve decided on the previous element, but nonetheless cool in itself.
In addition to clarifying the starting points, we needed to construct the world. A great deal of time was spent considering whether the clowns were, in fact, Evil Clowns. While that wasn’t fully embraced, the concept that the clowns were a part of a greater whole did emerge. Sort of a Freemasons, but with clowns. At the very least, a society of clowns.
Other elements were introduced as well, but none were as substantial as what I’ve mentioned here. The idea of the exercise was to allow as many viewpoints into the mix, create a general concept of the world, and then have each participant write a short, one thousand word story based in that world. The writer was free to draw upon any of the discussed upon ideas and allowed to ignore the ideas that didn’t fit their story.
The night held a few surprises, but overall it remained fun and lighthearted. The end results varied substantially, but were all interesting and creative.
For those interested in reading my entry, you can grab the pdf here: One Night – A short fiction by Michael J. Hercus.
