Architects of Our Lives: At Home with World Building
Using creative writing skills to define our reality
As content creators with healthy imaginations, we have a responsibility to help create the future for ourselves and the world.
Writing a story is much like building a house or creating a life for ourselves— you can have great ideas, materials and tools, and education but you need to build on a solid foundation. The tallest most elaborate structure in the world has no chance if it’s built on sand.
Opening on January 4, 2010, and at a soaring 828 meters (2,717 feet), the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is now considered the world’s tallest building. These statistics include the skyscraper’s enormous spire. The structural elements used and their amounts are described here:
- Concrete Used = 250,000 cubic meters
- Curtain Walls = 83,600sq.m of glass and 27,900 sq.m of metal
- Steel Rebars Used = 39,000 tones
- Man-Hours = 22million man-hours
Creating our lives is analogous to creating the where of a story. It involves more than just setting — deciding where we want to live. It is as complex as populating our stories and our lives with creatures, religions, and political climates through our imagination. We can go as big as we want — it’s our story — but we must take our role as creators seriously. What we can imagine, we can build.
As a young person, I instinctively knew that I needed to understand the “rules of the game” of life. We don’t come with manuals describing life’s rules, and I wanted to build a solid life. But how?
The creators of a book like A Game of Thrones, a movie like Star Wars, or even a video game like Final Fantasy give an appearance that they have effortlessly built a fantasy world out of nothing. These worlds may feel as real as the world we live in.
How do they do it? How can we do it?
Jerry Jenkins has written a guide to help us develop our story world-building skills. You can access it here:
A Step-by-Step Guide to Immersive World Building
In terms of building a solid life, my mentor President Ikeda has outlined a blueprint for that.
The problems confronting humankind are daunting in their depth and complexity. While it may be hard to see where to begin―or how―we must never give in to cynicism or paralysis. We must each initiate action in the direction we believe to be right. We must refuse the temptation to passively accommodate ourselves to present realities and embark upon the challenge of creating a new reality.
— Daisaku Ikeda (from Quotations by Daisaku Ikeda)
For more information on Buddhism, look here.
Let’s create worlds in which readers can lose themselves and create lives that keep us riveted to the end. You’ve got the magic in you!