Worldbuilding
Creating coherent worlds with their own logic, culture, history, atmosphere, and identity—and developing useful world bibles that later work can reliably grow from.
Visible in: Otri · Sleepy GodsMy toolbox
The tools I bring
to imaginative work.
I work at the points where imaginative projects overlap—where a culture grows from a belief, a system carries a theme, a symbol becomes a mechanic, or a story needs a world sturdy enough to hold it.
Narrative Foundations
Establishing what a story or creative work is fundamentally about before everything else develops around it.
Visible in: Sleepy Gods · The ArcanumStory Development
Taking an initial idea and developing its characters, tensions, themes, setting, and direction.
Visible in: Sleepy GodsThematic Coherence
Keeping the parts of a work aligned with the meaning and emotional core underneath it.
Visible in: The Arcanum · Sleepy Gods · Ma’aIdentity Development
Discovering and shaping the distinct identity of a world, project, product, character, or creative persona.
Visible in: Otri · The Pagan Deck · Ma’aSystems Design
Creating rules, relationships, hierarchies, structures, and interactions that make a world or concept function coherently.
Visible in: Ma’a · The Pagan Deck · OtriSymbolic Design
Using symbols, archetypes, categories, relationships, and recurring motifs to carry meaning through the work.
Visible in: The Pagan Deck · The Arcanum · Sleepy GodsLore & Cultural History
Developing histories, traditions, factions, customs, institutions, and inherited ideas that give a world depth.
Visible in: Otri · Sleepy GodsBelief & Cultural Systems
Developing the values, philosophies, rituals, assumptions, and ways of seeing that shape a people or identity.
Visible in: The Arcanum · Otri · The Pagan DeckCanon & Internal Logic
Determining what is true within a project and keeping later development consistent with those truths.
Visible in: Otri · The Arcanum · Ma’aConcept Synthesis
Taking multiple ideas or influences and resolving them into one cohesive identity rather than a collage.
Visible in: The Arcanum · The Pagan Deck · Do You Speak Future?Atmosphere & Tone
Establishing and protecting the emotional character of a world or story across language, form, image, and interaction.
Visible in: Sleepy Gods · Otri · Ma’aArea of particular depth
Religion, spirituality, and belief
I have unusually broad and deep knowledge of religion and spirituality, supported by related study of history, culture, mythology, philosophy, symbolism, ritual, and the societies in which belief develops.
- Religions, cosmologies, and mythologies
- Rituals, sacred practices, symbols, and language
- Moral and philosophical systems
- Institutions, competing sects, and interpretations
- The relationship between belief, culture, politics, and history
- The everyday effect of belief on how people understand their world
This is a particular strength within my wider toolbox, not a limitation on the projects I can develop.
See the evidence