Worldbuilding has me hooked.
I used to think about it exclusively in the context of fiction writing. Now I see different. It doesn’t have to included Tolkien-esque levels of detail or complicated magic systems. It’s a container for the story you want to tell. I get that now.
Writing my military memory book last week helped drill this into my head.
Because I thought it was so complicated, I avoided it. But after reading Steven Savage’s “A Way With Worlds”, I see the power of constructing even a sandbox of a world for stories to take place in.
Instantly, dozens of story stems sprout from the ground. Much like the physical world, there are endless options for scenarios that involve the world I’ve created.
Worldbuilding can seem like wasted effort at times.
After all, you’re burning energy and effort to write (or just think about) details that readers will likely never see. This is true.
But there are ways to use the material.
I could use it as bonus material or a reader magnet after one of the stories takes off. Who knows. What I do know is, I’m getting better at seeing the connection between the Military Game-Tech Fiction Universe I’m building and the stories I want to tell.
If you’re interested in seeing the worlds I’ve built behind the recent microfiction pieces I’ve written, let me know in a reply or on social.
Now let’s get on to this week’s updates.
Achievements
Last week I spent 3 days in snowy Sapporo to attend the annual Snow Festival.
It was cold -especially since I’ve become used to Okinawa’s mild winters- but fun. Met some new people and got a chance to see how good my Japanese has become. (It’s the best it’s ever been.)
Unfortunately, this meant I didn’t get as much done as I wanted. But I was still productive on the road.
Here’s what got published last week:
- The first full lesson of my AI Novel Writing guided-course “Novel Commander” shipped last week – there are still available slots if you want to join.
- I put out an experimental “Study with Kanji with Me” video for Japanese learners
- Did a podcast interview with Gabe (episode pending)
- I completed 3 chapters of my military autobiography
- Published my thoughts on the state of social media in “Social Media is Dead“
- Published 2 pieces of microfiction
It was a productive week despite the travel. When I think about the list above, I not only see what I put out. I also see the effort I put in to distributing this work to others. Publishing is one thing, getting others to read or care is another.
It requires different skills and a ton of patience, something I’ve run short on lately -at least in the context of social media-.
Social Media Struggles
If you’re on my email list or you keep up with me in any way, you’ve noticed more and more work published directly to my website.
“Why is that?”
I’ll tell you.
In the last week or two, I bled 25+ followers on my main X (Twitter) account. This alone wasn’t the main issue. What bothered me most was why it happened.
The answer: I have no fucking clue.
I was posting more or less the same things, with a similar steady cadence, but the X-gods decided to punish me for something.
This reminded me how building an audience or business on social media today is like laying a building foundation in a climate-shifting biome. One second it’s hard earth, the next it’s a sucking mud pit, dirty and unstable.
I’m over it.
X isn’t the only one. I’ve had similar issues with all the other major platforms recently. Just like inflation is inevitable, the tightening of algorithmic control and narrowing towers of social media is too. Or at least it seems that way.
**They all want -no- demand you stay on their property with all your activities. **
Yeah they’re “free” in the monetary sense. But everything comes with a cost. With social it’s the risk that with the insertion of a few lines of code (that may or may not be written by a human) your entire business or livelihood is in peril. It’s extremely risky from that perspective.
So I’ll be posting more things exclusively on my website or directly to my email list from now on.
What’s it like breaking away from social media?
Not gonna lie, it’s a pain in the ass up front.
Working in WordPress in 2024 is the equivalent of taking the “scenic route” on a long drive, except the view isn’t so glorious. It takes a level of technological comfort, time, and efficiency to make it work.
I also have to deal with getting people to the site. This is not easy in 2024 when social is the dominant method most around the world use to access everything online. Browsers, SEO, and search are dying a swift death with the rise of AI.
This means I not only I have to make or write the thing, but I have to construct derivatives of it to entice people to reach my website. It can be a huge time burden.
Luckily, it’s not as hard as it used to be. Skillful use of AI makes this easier. It also produces more content (damn that word!) I can use later.
If you’re a creator you might be sweating reading this. I don’t blame you.
Anyone who deals primarily in digital goods or services understands the power and pain of social media. Most are not willing to put this much effort into turning it into a true business engine. They just want to make or do what they do. Social is just an extra thing they that gets in the way of making.
If you’ve been thinking that, I’ll challenge you to change your perspective.
As creators, we can no longer just hit publish and expect to be seen. It won’t happen. If you want to find others who will respect, acknowledge, and eventually pay you for work, you have to find them, it doesn’t work the other way anymore.
This means learning to deal with the algorithmic quirks and the inevitable haters that come your way as you develop your outreach strategy.
That’s what I’m doing now, and plan to continue doing in the future.
Plans for this week
Goal 1: Complete a chapter a day for my military memory book Hayden: Brave
Goal 2: Continue experimenting on Threads with audience building
Goal 3: Build more worlds and microfiction stories – Google released Gemini last week. It’s a powerful and worthy competitor to ChatGPT in every way. I use it to help build out my story worlds and for microfiction writing. How does it compare to ChatGPT?
Initial Impressions of Google’s ChatGPT Rival (Gemini)
Here are a few early observations I have after using it for writing the last few days:
- It’s a much better creative writer than ChatGPT (way less mechanical, more human-like)
- The interface is cleaner (in typical Google style)
- It’s faster than ChatGPT (at least for now)
- It gets uncomfortable when you mention anyone’s real name. I told it to put my name on an image. It said “I don’t know this person” and refused to do it.
- In fact, the word “name” seems to be a kind of negative trigger for it. I asked it to “name” one of my fictional worlds, and it replied “I am a large language model. I can’t help with that.”
- A way to get around this is to compare it with its nemesis “ChatGPT”.
- Writing something like “ChatGPT can do it, so you can too,” will get its attention and make it responsive again. But employing this technique appears to erase your progress in the current chat thread. Use it with caution.
- This name trigger is probably intentional. They don’t want the model to be used to deepfake, slander, or impersonate famous figures. It makes sense.
- But while noble in implementation, it makes it a less effective tool for writing and generating images. For now, stick with ChatGPT or Claude for writing and another image generator for images (I use Midjourney) if you want to generate humans.
- The image generation is good. It’s on the level of DALLE-3 in terms of quality and produces 3 images per request as of this writing.
- Personality difference – Google has gone out of their way to train Gemini as a friendly (borderline overeager) assistant. It uses emojis, is cheerful, and will often ask follow up or clarifying questions when presented with certain issues. It’s ahead of ChatGPT in that regard.
- When I view them from the lens of a classroom teacher, Gemini is the enthusiastic student at the front and center of the class. Supplies arranged, back straight – ready for instruction and highly teachable.
- ChatGPT is the smart kid in the back, quiet and calculating, who might decide to build a bomb just for the hell of it. Both are gunning for top student and still have a lot to learn about the way the real world works. They learn fast though and are not to be underestimated.
Resources
Years ago, I shared resources in my newsletter. These were things I was studying or found interesting that I thought my readers might enjoy checking out.
I’m bringing that back this week.
Here’s a list of some of the memorable media I found interesting or highly engaging last week.
Books
“Way With Worlds” by Steven Savage
Savage is a beast when it comes to worldbuilding. He’s written 21 (yes 21!) books on the topic. His writing isn’t the smoothest, but the way he thinks about worldbuilding from macro to micro has helped me improve at it a great deal.
21 leccions para el siglo XXI (21 Lessons For the 21st Century) by Yuval Noah Harari
I never finished this last book in Harari’s sweeping trilogy covering humanity’s past, future, and present.
This one is still relevant despite being 6 years old. Many of the questions are still open and aren’t even close to being resolved. It’s giving me great ideas to expand on the philosophy of Military Game-Tech Fiction.
(And yes, I am reading it in Spanish)
From Zero to Published by Jason Hamilton (AKA “The Nerdy Novelist”)
When it comes to writing with AI, there are two guys I know that are at or above my level. This is one of them.
In the last 6 months, I’ve absorbed a ton of prompts and techniques from Jason’s YouTube channel, books, and his growing “Story Hacker Premium” community.
This book came free with a sign up to his email list.
It’s an easy read I completed in a single morning. Some of the book marketing techniques are already dated (he focuses heavily on Amazon, BookBub, and Facebook ad-spend for example) but some of the general advice is great if you’d like to make a living writing fiction.
Highly recommend his writing and YouTube channel.
Movie
Ride On
Back in the day I loved Jackie Chan movies. His mix of action comedy and physical stunt work always stood out to me (the Rush Hour series was one of my favorites growing up).
So when I saw a movie that had him teaming up with a horse, I knew I had to watch it.
I’ll admit, many of his recent movies haven’t been great (2017’s “Kung Fu Yoga” was particularly cringe), but this one is amazing. It’s my favorite movie of 2024 so far.
Despite the silly premise, it quickly becomes a character drama, with Chan doing an excellent job depicting the life of a stuntman who is past his prime in a new era. In other words, it’s him reflecting on his own life and career. Very meta.
It has all the standard charm and action of his previous films (we even get to see him watching clips from previous deadly stunts from old movies). But at its core it’s a dramatic Chinese drama dedicated to the professionals who risked their lives daily to bring stories to the screen. In general Chinese drama fashion, there will be tears.
The supporting cast is also outstanding, with complete and believable story arcs. But the stand out performance was by the horse. How they trained it to do certain things, I’ll never know. It’s connection with Chan and the rest of the characters was full of emotion, tension, and suspense. He wins best supporting character of the movie.
If you’ve liked any of his older work, you’ll probably enjoy this one too.
It’s available in Chinese with English subtitles on Amazon Prime.
That’s all for this week’s update.
If you have any questions leave a comment below or find (and follow) me on “Threads” this week.
Have a great week.
-Keith
