A World Built on Stories

Just yesterday, Ayden and I had a conversation with the publisher of a newspaper about the challenges he faces telling the stories his journalists are trying to tell. Old journalism models are getting a bit rickety, and there is a need to find a way of telling stories that engage readers (listeners? audiences?) with a more experientially considered approach. We’re hoping to put the challenge to our students next year as part of the certificate program.

I am always struck with the transparency of the term story in journalism. Journalists are storytellers, ordering the events of the world around us into a coherent narrative. While reading the news can be a source of great anxiety, it also offers a rationalization of what is happening in the world that can help us make sense of things. Much of worldbuilding is about storytelling, about setting up an origin story and then establishing new narratives within a world that respond to that origin story.

In the past few days, the main story in the news has been about war. It’s a story I can’t fathom, can’t get my head around. I have the great privilege of not understanding a world in which war is comprehensible. It speaks to the power of worldbuilding: any truth is possible, any social dynamic, any moral position is possible if one’s world is designed to support it. Even war. Even apartheid. Even genocide.

In my book I write about the ways that our real worlds are worldbuilding projects just as much as Westeros or Narnia is. There were parts of this my editor convinced me to cut because they were too current, and might seem dated later. Now seems a good time to share one with you.

I think this bit of the book that was cut isn’t quite yet out of date. I had been glued to the news about the war in Ukraine as I was finishing my book. Putin’s rewriting of history fascinated me. I wrote:

Consider Russia’s unprovoked invasion, in February of 2022, of its neighbor Ukraine. The international community watched in horror as Russian forces entered the country and laid siege to cities. Vladimir Putin told westerners he was aiming to keep Ukraine from joining NATO and becoming close to Europe.

To maintain support at home, however, he told a somewhat different story: Ukraine was not really a country, he said; it had been carved out of Russia by the early Soviets for reasons of political convenience. This is to say, Ukraine’s origin story was a falsehood. Furthermore, Ukraine was run by Nazis, and Putin was sending in his armed forces to liberate the suffering populace and protect them from a genocide.

Putin’s narrative put Russians in a heroic position, one tied to its own origin story, when the Soviet empire was truly launched by its defeat of the Nazis at the end of WWII. It was a heroic victory, and one which involved a great deal of sacrifice. That Putin should align current events with the Soviet origin story rang true, as he had been the one to shepherd the country out of the doldrums of collapsed empire. To make sure no competing narratives undermined his propaganda, he shut down independent media and social media, and limited access to foreign news.

Putin’s narrative seemed incredible to outsiders – how could anyone believe that a country with a Jewish president was run by Nazis? But for many in Russia, it was consistent not only with their worldview, but with who they had become in the world Putin had built. Residents of Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, reported speaking on the phone with relatives in Russia. As bombs audibly fell around the city, the Russian relatives explained that they were, in fact, not falling, that the Russian forces were merely attacking the military bases of the Nazis.

I’d love to know your thoughts on the worldbuilding aspects of what’s been in the news lately. Send a note!

I’ve been spending the past few months talking to podcasters and journalists. I’ll share those with you as they come out. The first of those was with the incredible Rimma Boshernitsan, who is an expert on…dialogue. Our conversation about experience design was brief but wonderful. Check it out here.