Writing status updates is new to me and I feel nervous doing so because sharing your progress on your projects - and especially your mistakes - requires vulnerability. Making it worse is that as I write stories quite infrequently, so this is one of my first serious attempts at writing one. But sometimes, we must do the brave thing and write anyways.

For a long time, inspired by my favorite series like the Amazing Digital Circus or Inanimate Insanity, I have been wanting to produce a web series of my own, but procrastination held me back. A few weeks ago, however, I decided to take the first step and start. My attempts were messy at first and I had to cancel most of them, but I eventually started making progress, which is very motivating. And I'd like to share it online for those who are hesitating to start their own dreams. And much of this courage is because of the social support that I got and the communities that I joined, to whom I owe much thanks.

worldbuilding

While writing my story, I found out that my world was barebones and needed to be more fleshed out. A week ago I watched Brian (from Plot Luck)'s video on the five layers that make up a setting - the core rule (the premise or feeling from which every aspect of the setting follows), the systems layer (the rules of the setting - what is and isn't possible), the social layer (how the people are in this setting), the political layer (how groups of people cooperate or clash), and the pressure layer (where things break and thus where the conflict - and story - lies). Fascinated by his framework, I decided to apply it to MY world.

First, I wrote the core rule, which is "space merchants in the 30th century Solar System with many (non-alien) species other than humanity". There are many pieces of media that inspired this - the Expanse (with its gritty political intrigue), Endless Sky (with its vast feeling universe), NAEV, and the Orion's Arm Universe Project (which inspired the element of having artificial species in the setting). From this I had to answer a few key questions: why would humanity go to space? why do artificial species exist?

Answering the first question gave me lots of insight into my world - humanity goes out into space for resources, perhaps something that is happening on Earth forces many to leave it, and advanced space travel technology (such as torch drives) makes going to space easier. Naturally, I started writing a skeleton for the history of the setting, starting with Luna and going outwards to the Belt. As for why artificial species exist, perhaps humans already started getting comfortable with genetic engineering in the early 21st century, and a logical extension of that would be interest in MAKING species.

Then I had to move on to fleshing out the societal layer of this world. I started with jobs, which I usually don't consider in worldbuilding, but as Brian covered them in HIS live demonstration of worldbuilding in his video, I decided that it would be worth a try. Engineers and farmers would be essential to all societies. But some cultures might glorify explorers as well who are seen as pioneers of the frontier.

All societies have divisions, and writing about them easily built the factions, which segues nicely into the political layer! I came up with five, and wrote their motivations and methods as well:

  • Solar Alliance

    1. what do they want? the Solar Alliance wants to advance the interests of its polities - exploration, defense, and unity
    2. how do they get it? it's not a government but rather a supranational union (like the European Union of today); it pools together resources for a common defense constellation, to send probes out there (and subluminal scientific missions OUTSIDE of the solar system as well), and keeps itself united by encouraging cultural mixing

  • Megatech

    1. what do they want? to sell products and make as much money as possible and also to keep their dominance in the solar system
    2. how do they get it? they have agents almost EVERYWHERE and so can pull strings. they also supply most of the goods to the Solar Alliance

  • The Belt Collective

    1. what do they want? the Belt collective has member polities from several religions, though almost all of them are monotheistic - only three are polytheistic and only one is nontheistic. their main interest is to keep themselves spiritually pure and ward off "outside influences"
    2. how do they get it? propoganda and lots of church. also there is a certain level of syncreticism between religions

  • Worker's Union

    1. what do they want? to make sure that workers (including engineers and farmers) have their rights
    2. how do they get it? they believe in taking rights by imposing, so they have a very militaristic culture and a strong constellation.

  • Platinum Nomads

    1. what do they want? to explore the Solar System and beyond and archive information
    2. how do they get it? by going out!

Keep in mind that this is a rough first draft! I'll clean it up and flesh it out further and I hope that in the next status update I'll be able to say that I have wrote something that feels like a living breathing universe. But I am proud of my progress so far and I look forward to thinking up conflicts and thus writing the actual story.