Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies

Special Issue Call for Abstracts: “Collaborative Worldbuilding”

This special issue takes interest in the ambit of collaborative worldbuilding practices from mainstream content creation to the radical creation involved in activist circles. The term worldbuilding has been used in each kind of practice, whether in media production or political intervention. Worldbuilding describes the process of imagining and describing fictional worlds or, indeed, possible worlds. Fictional worlds, also known as storyworlds, may grow out of stories or they might be described ahead of storytelling, while worldbuilding for possible worlds imagines and influences change in the real world. Whether worldbuilding for fiction’s sake or to change the world, there is always collaboration between subjects, spaces, and stories. How can storyworlds make a difference to real-world economics, politics, and social relations? Conversely, what do political endeavours stand to gain from the practices of creative imagination associated with cultural industries?

Here's some context for worldbuilding from the perspective of fictional worldbuilders. Game designer and author of Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games Kaitlin Tremblay offers this definition: “Worldbuilding is composed of all the physical parts of a place, but all the intangible aspects as well, such as culture, belief, interpersonal relationships, and so forth” (2023: 12). Trent Hergenrader's book Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers, which explores the co-creation of successful fictional worlds, outlines the need for a metanarrative lead that describes and defines a storyworld, including the people, places and things but also its intended scope, sequence, and narrative perspective (2019: 142). Worldbuilding synchronizes creative and imaginative possibilities, bringing together the characters, setting, physical laws, social rules and values, events, and attitudes that comprise an imaginary world (Ryan 2014: 34-36).

Yet, worldbuilding is far from a neutral practice. Much work remains to be done on the use of the term across economic, political, and social aims, from various left-leaning projects to the rise of new totalitarianisms. In particular, across the realms of play, practice, and politics, this call for abstracts seeks anti-racist and trans-affirming submissions. Movements such as Black Lives Matter and Trans Liberation Now respond to the current world and aim to collaboratively build a more just world. How are they, or other such movements, working within a framework of collaborative worldbuilding? Or what might such a framework make legible about justice movements?

Discussions of tabletop games, franchise storytelling, or prefigurative politics may form the basis of article-length explorations of what happens when people gather and start imagining new worlds together. This special issue of Storyworlds aims to expand the reach of narrative studies and open up new intersections for discussion and debate. We welcome theoretical elaborations of the concepts of worldbuilding in the fields of narratology, ecocriticism, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial and Black studies, literature and cinema, popular culture and reception studies, digital humanities, science fiction, game studies, and many more.

Abstracts of up to 300 words should be sent to guest editor Brent Ryan Bellamy (brent.ryan.bellamy@gmail.com) by December 31, 2024. Authors will be notified of acceptance by the end of January 2025 and full articles (6,000-8,000 words) should be submitted by July 31, 2025. 

Works Cited

Hergenrader, Trent (2019). Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers. London: Bloomsbury.

Ryan, Marie-Laure (2014). “Story/World/Media.” Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology. Eds Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan-Noël Thon. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 25-49.

Tremblay, Kaitlin (2023). Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games. Abingdon and Boca Raton: CRC Press.