In which the question was asked:
“One of the things I admire about you is obviously the business and the lifestyle you’re able to have, but also being able to write and publish that fiction series. How did you learn that? Did you talk to people? Were there books? Because the plots and everything are intense. Like God’s Blood? The way everything came together… did you have a whiteboard?”
I’ll answer this excellent question bullet-style.
Maybe this will be useful if you write fiction or want to do World-Building in your business:
* The key to World-Building is to not overthink it, not try to have it all figured out, and start trusting your brain to give you the answers you need, when needed, which it will if you allow it to.
* You start with ONE thing, then build upon that.
* Think about learning how to read and write – you lay out all the letters and explain them one by one, then start putting them into very small words, then sentences, then paragraphs, pages, books… that’s how World-Building works.
* People genuinely grow tired of my C.S. Lewis analogy for this, but that doesn’t stop me from using it: when writing the Narnia books he started with an image in his head of a satyr running through the woods, everything after that he made up as he went along, with no idea what it would be “about” at first.
* Tolkien – king of World-Building – had no idea what was happening when writing the Hobbit, used McGuffins (randomly finding a magic ring, the Necromancer sub plot, etc), had no desire to write any sequels, had no idea even what would happen after the dwarves left the Misty Mountains… he just kept building…
* I had the idea for my first novel Zombie Cop a few years before writing it, while just driving around. I had an image in my head of a cop who was a zombie who pulled people over and ate them.
* That was it, no inkling of any idea of specifics about what grew into the next 8 books after that, integrating thoughts and connections and stuff I’ve read about fallen angels siring monsters…or how Jesus’ blood would affect evil spirits… or how the Devil strikes deals with mortals… or linking the families of the scribes in the New Testament who called for Jesus Christ’s crucifixion to today’s Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking, children-defiling elites… and the list goes on.
* About all I had figured out before writing the first novel is I wanted to do 7 books (which ultimately turned into 9 books), each focusing on a different monster and my own unique “twist” on each said monster.
* But all the actual World-Building came later, during the process of building the structure, and not fully formed in my head or whatever.
And yes, in business it works practically the same way.
The Email Players newsletter, for example, was just something I thought would be fun & interesting to sell 14 years ago. I did not intend for it to be anything than an “offer.” In fact, I already had a print newsletter at the time (The Crypto Marketing Newsletter) I was selling, and Email Players was just a companion publication I never thought would get more than 15, maybe 20, subscribers at launch much less the 80+ that weekend, and that then grew into a “world” unto itself, offers that never would have been created without it, etc/
I just started putting words together, ideas together, offers together.
One lead into another, or several others, people responded, and it self-perpetuated. But none of it was some grand plan I had mapped out from the start. If anything, I made a lot of bad mistakes, had to self-correct, adjust, regroup, try things again, and so on, and so forth.
The “map” formed, created, grew on its own, with every new block built, during that process.
All right, all this is probably a bit subjective.
And I have multiple books, Email Players issues, and writings about it.
I’ve been writing about World-Building for business and teaching it for well over a decade – and long before anyone else I know of up in this business has. And I’ve been doing it much longer than that – going back to the early 2000’s and late 90’s.
I also talk about it sometimes in the paid Email Players newsletter.
More on that here:
Ben Settle
