imaginals

Worldbuilding is the act of creating alternative worlds that set the context for stories and actions that cohere around the rules, logic, and history of the alternate world.

Imaginal worldbuilding creates worlds that are attractors that pull reality towards them. Imaginal worldbuilding is about the future, but is grounded in what has come before and what is happening now. We are already on a trajectory that leads to the futures we want. As the worldbuilding matures and the number of participants increases, so does that world’s power to emerge.

When we lay down the canon of the desired future, we note the seeds of  it that have already been sown. We are optimistic about the desired trajectories because we can see that they have already started. We have already taken the first steps toward the destination.  Ours is hopeful, optimistic worldbuilding. By placing ourselves on a trajectory, we awaken agency.

By creating a rich and immersive context  that is somewhere between alternate and aspirational, imaginal worldbuilding allows for prefigurative action. Writers can write as if that world were real, policymakers can write policies that would be in place in that world, individuals can behave as if they were already in that world. Because the world the imaginals hold is coherent – it makes internal sense from a set of  clear rules – other’s can also take agency in adding to the vision and  bringing into this world elements of the one we are moving towards.

“World building is a powerful tool for turning speculation into agency,” notes Architect Anne Julian Pendleton because – “agency is the process in which actions and choices in the present are made in relationship to how we manage the ongoing dialogue between the past, the future and situations in progress.”

I sat by the side of a beaver pond. Deep in dorset, at a location I was told to keep secret, I found myself in a land that felt more alive than any other I had been in in the UK. It was messy in the way that might annoy some of the cultured aesthetic sensibilities that prefer a manicured landscape that humans have left their fat fingered mark on, but it was alive. Movement everywhere; in the air the drone of dragonflies,  froglets teeming in the water, the water itself finding another gradient to cascade down in a mirthful whisper. Noisy and tranquil, this land was living. It had been transformed by the arrival – or rather the introduction, or rather the allowing home – of a beaver pair.

What had been a muddy pond that had previously needed dredging to clear, was now clear, flowing slowly, and over a meter deep. These european beavers build dams to bring the water to a depth that gives them protection from long gone predators. In so doing, they slow the flow of water, creating a greater surface area for life to make the most of it. The land changes around them. It supports more creatures both in number and type. Plants proliferate, and acquifers replenish better. The normal beaver, doing its own thing, improves the ecosystem for the other inhabitants. They create a contextual shift in the land, by altering the flow of the water, that invites more life to flourish.

Imaginals are ecosystem engineers of the narrative ecosystem. They slow the flow by holding a deep long-term world vision, and in the coherence of their world create a vast surface area for stories and characters and plots to spring from. Around imaginal worldbuilding stories buzz, myths moult and writers find new ways to contribute to the narrative ecosystem – and the living one it is nested in.

We clear space for daylight by felling dysfunctional institutions, shelter new life from predation by casting deep shade. We recognise the interconnectedness that makes story flourish on and beyond the page.

Our narrative pond can be still and mirror what is being made, the makers and what has already been made up stream. The story stream that moves downhill toward sea or lake or ears or mnanifesting reality all has its source in something that cam before.

Imaginals in worldbuilding mode slow the flow, make the pool deeper. They create places where stories can find other elements they need in nutrient rich waters full of nooks and crannies and niches to make their own.