A Necessary Imagination

Worldbuilding as a Form of Expansive Hope for Being Alive

“Worldbuilding” - Mixed Media Collage Digital Artwork by the author, Morgan Harper Nichols (MHN)

For over 20 years, I have started many novels that I never finished. From fantasy to mystery to sci-fi, I plotted out chapters and created characters, rarely reaching “the end.” Even in the years I successfully completed NaNoWriMo projects, I would reach the 50k word count, but the story itself was almost always left unfinished.

However, one thing I never stopped doing was building fictional worlds. I have found that creating fictional worlds is a way of using your imagination for hope of what could be, even in the real-world.

For instance, even in my work that may seem to be stand-alone illustrations, such as the one below, the entire concept is built on one of the “rules” in my imagined world, where words are treated as visually dynamic and represented as such. As someone who has communication challenges, I have so many dreams of what language could be! Creating fictional worlds helps explore those themes…for a moment, the way I see things is more than a dream:

Inspired by J.R. R. Tolkien’s worldbuilding and N.K. Jemisin’s way of teaching/talking about worldbuilding, for years, I immersed myself in building fictional universes where my dreams could live full lives. However, prior to my autism/ADHD/SPD diagnosis, I thought this was just a creative endeavor. Now, I know that building my own world wasn’t just about making a foundation for my art. Worldbuilding, for me, was a form of expansive hope—a necessary imagination for being alive.

Worldbuilding is the creative process of crafting detailed and cohesive fictional worlds, encompassing elements like geography, cultures, history, and systems that bring the setting to life. Many writers view worldbuilding as essential to storytelling for the way that it provides a rich and believable backdrop against which characters and plots unfold, immersing readers or viewers in a captivating and fully realized narrative experience.

On the surface, my current work may not look like it is part of a “world,” but in order to make my art pieces, collages, and poems, I have to think about which world they are in.

And here’s what I’ve learned about approaching world-building as a form of “necessary imagination:”

1. Using your imagination to build a world isn’t about creating perfection…it doesn’t even have to be about a final “product” all the time - I’ve been worldbuilding for over 20 years and haven’t produced a single novel. However, what has happened is that it has kept me free to dream of a future that I don’t see yet. I use world-building to imagine a world that isn’t just about escaping to an imaginary place where I make up all the rules but, instead, where I am free to enter a realm of possibility. Yes, in many ways, it’s just for fun, and it’s also a special interest of mine. However, this is also a place where I can unearth the stories within the landscape as it is still unfolding. It is a place where I can dream of what could be…not only for myself but for the collective, the real world that I’m a part of.

2. Using your imagination isn’t only about being “original”. - I’ve read many books and have listened to many podcast episodes about worldbuilding, and I have spent hours upon hours reading through tropes on TVTropes. I have discovered that nearly all of my ideas have already been done––and that’s okay! If I were only trying to sell a novel, then yes, originality is going to make a huge difference. However, right now, my goal is simply to create a space to wander around. My goal right now is the same as it’s been since I started this long ago: make a space where you feel free to breathe…a space where you can invite others to do the same. This is my approach to every single color palette I’ve ever created. Every motif I’ve ever used, from butterflies to flowers to mountainous landscapes has been about being a context creator before worrying about being a content creator. I believe originality arises from the context a lot more than we may realize. This is why I make so many collages. Sometimes, it’s fun and freeing just to make things without constantly worrying about if it’s “original” or not.

3. Using your imagination isn’t only for “artist” types - From an artistic perspective, I love worldbuilding because the possibilities are endless. And at the same time, the fact that I haven’t shared too much of it yet (other than some of my StoryJourney Maps!), is a reminder to me that taking time to use my imagination and create something fictional isn’t just for the greatest novelists out there. There isn’t only one kind of person that can imagine what a better world could look like, whether it’s fictional or not. What I hope to do in sharing this is to remind you that using your imagination to scribble a dream onto a page isn’t something that is only reserved for the most talented experts among us. Allow yourself to dream widely. Make up a fictional universe just for fun. Or. think about a fictional universe that already exists that you would have organized differently. Use your imagination as a way to practice exploring possibilities…and discover the many ways this is connected to real-world hope.

Here are a few of my dreams that have come from world-building.

Dreams ooze into my artwork, my poetry, and my life, even before finishing the “story.”

1. There are no harsh lights.

In one of the “worlds” I’ve created, the land is sensitive to light, in the same way that I am sensitive to light (as a result of my sensory processing disorder). So when I illustrate artificial light, such as a light bulb, in a scene, my goal is to ensure that the light is soft. I long to be in places that don’t have harsh lights. However, in the modern world, this can be difficult to find. So instead, in my artwork, I dream of spaces where sensitivity to light is considered. Even when the lights are strong, they are rarely ever coming from overhead.

2. You don’t have to show your face.

I’ve written before about how T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock line about preparing a face and how it always gets to me because preparing a face requires so much effort in real life. One of the main “rules” in my fictional world is that I tend to always start with the idea of diversity in communication being actively encouraged. In my “world,” I don’t have to show my face or smile in order to communicate. Since the worlds I create tend to have sci-fi and fantasy elements, one thing I love to imagine in my art is to show try and show strong emotion without showing a face. I’m not opposed to using facial expressions or more figurative illustrations of people in my work, however, at the same time, I consciously choose to explore other ways of showing emotion and connection that do not involve showing a face. Being autistic, it makes all the different when I have space in my life where the face isn’t something I’m always having to think about.

3. Animals are always having the most interesting conversations.

There are many aspects of my worldbuilding process that are not “original” at all, and I’m okay with that. Even if it’s a well-established, yet often heartwarming trope, such as talking animals, I include it because this is how animals tend to appear to me in dreams. They are always talking! They always have something to say. So as a result, a lot of the pieces I create with animals include the things I overhear them “talking” about. Many of my earlier 1990s era stories included talking animals, and even though I never finished those stories, the characteristic of this world I built is still there.

4. Time is complex and means different things to different people.

At some point in the 2000s, I became hyper-focused on reading and writing time-traveling stories, and I think a lot of that could be attributed to Doctor Who. There are so many hidden clocks in my work, and a lot of this has to do with the fact that so much of what I think about in my writing is how much people (myself included) are impacted by time.

• Did I spend too much time on that?

• Am I wasting my time?

• How much time do I have left?

• I’m running out of time!

• There’s not enough time!

I feel like I have at least five time-related thoughts a day. A common theme that has shown up in both the worlds I’ve built and the artwork and poetry I create is different ways of viewing and conceptualizing time. In a world-building sense, different groups and populations will have different perspectives on how time should be represented. In the art and poetry, I make today,

These are just a few of the many characteristics of the fictional worlds I’ve created. A lot of it is scattered across my Google Drive, Notion App, and sporadically filled-out notebooks. So far, the closest thing I’ve shared in recent years of my fictional worlds is my Story Journey Maps (which is still in development!).

I know that worldbuilding might not be for everyone, but I do believe that necessary imagination could be for everyone.

If you have ever found yourself hoping for the future, yet, at times, it feels too big or too impossible; I hope you can carve out some space to dream in your own way and keep building on those dreams. Keep imagining what could be, even if you don’t know how it makes sense yet.

I’ve never had a conversation in real life with a talking animal, but the conversations I’ve had in my dreams and in my fictional universe absolutely impact the way I see animals in the real world.

I’ve never time-traveled, but through my stories, I’ve learned to look for ways to not worry about time all the time and learn how to breathe, even when I feel like I’m running out of it.

I’ve never lived in a world where there weren’t harsh lights wearing down on my senses at every corner…but I am still free to dream of the possibility. I am still free to imagine and speak about these kinds of places that exist.

Imagination is necessary for a better world, fictional or real. And we are free to explore the possibility of what could be, even while the story is still being written.

What if it was possible
to explore what it means to be alive
one dream at a time?