A writer is a “god” to the worlds they create and the scenarios that they detail. A writer is a master of their own domain. A writer has the special power to tell the stories they want to tell using the tools at their disposal. But I think that writers sometimes fear the power they possess.
My first foray into writing happened when I was seven years old. I was reading at a much higher level than the majority of my class, in part thanks to my favorite game growing up, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, a game (and series) that contains an exorbitant amount of writing, either in the form of character dialogue, or narrative exposition. The Blazing Blade not only had me reading more advanced vocabulary, it was introducing me to more complex ideas about the world.
From Philosophy to Psychology, Grief to Gluttony, the game introduced these concepts with words, not with visuals. The words made me think, gave me pause, and inspired me to do the same. There was a connection I felt to the world. I was captivated by the amount of detail to the world and to the characters. A simple description was enough to make a character on your team feel infinitely more real.
Sidebar: My favorite character growing up was a purple-haired mage named Erk, who was described in game as “uptight.” Not knowing the word, I promptly asked my parents what it meant, and they said it meant nervous or worried things are going to go wrong. I said, “that’s me!”
All of that is to say, when I started writing, I wrote fan-fiction of The Blazing Blade. It was not particularly special, because I was still very young, and I didn’t know what I was writing for, only that I wanted to write. For a while, I was content to write my Fire Emblem fan-fiction, but then I wanted to publish it, and my brother put that notion to sleep. He told me that I couldn’t write stories that were in someone else's universe. That’s against the law. He was partly right. He was a teenager, so he had heard of intellectual property and understood part of it, but not the bigger picture. But that is okay, because it worked out.
Because of that moment, I changed course on what I was writing. This led to me slowly developing my own ideas for a world. It was slow for a few years until I had my next sledgehammer of inspiration. In season 2 of the TV show Fringe, an idea is thrown out of a civilization that existed before the dinosaurs that were far more technologically advanced than we are now. I know, it’s cliche, and has been done a million times. But something about the connection of modern day science, and the distant past connected with me, and I was filled with ideas.
The world I created, that I still work on, was found at that intersection of ideas. While the show gave that idea a twisty conclusion, the initial introduction of the concept gave me such a beautiful vision that it transformed my trajectory as a writer.
I don’t want people to see this as a denouncement of fan fiction. Writing in someone else’s world is a terrific exercise for sticking to the rules of the world, and replicating another writer’s voice which can be very handy for having distinguished character dialogue. I just advocate for more new worlds. We live in a time where the accountants that run the entertainment industry decided to recycle the same ideas over and over again, then invested in a technology that actively evaporates mass quantities of clean water so it can regurgitate the same shit we’ve seen before but absolutely bereft of soul.
We need new stories. It’s my same problem with biopics. Human beings are complicated, and their lives can’t be summed up in 120 minutes efficiently. Some things are going to be embellished; some things are going to be ignored; some things just aren’t important enough to the plot. Someone is going to be pissed about something. You don't necessarily need to create a whole world, but instead of making a biopic about a person, make up a new story that reflects the thing you like about that person.
Do you like Bob Dylan? The Coen Brothers did too. That’s why they made Inside Llewyn Davis, a film about a struggling musician who lost his spark after his partner committed suicide. Fictional. Nothing to critique but the actual film itself, which is excellent. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to make a Bob Dylan biopic when Inside Llewyn Davis exists.
Do you really like the Star Wars TIE fighters and you want to make that in a game, but every Star Wars tie in game feels like a joyless cashgrab? Let me introduce you to Star Fox. Star Fox is Nintendo’s original intellectual property that reflects many of the concepts and imagery that is present in the 1977 classic. The Arwings not only look very similar to TIE fighters, but the missions you complete look similar to moments from the movies, while being their own original concept.
If you love writing fan fiction especially in big worlds, then there is a strong chance that you have your own world inside you waiting to come out. The greatest challenge is creating a world so unique and interesting on its own, that nobody would ever suspect you took the ideas from somewhere else.
