JOe asked David Wong:

I feel like the JDATE series is one of the few fictional universes that feels open-ended, like most anything can, will, and has happened. So what is your process around world building? And do you write linearly or do you work from a broader set of ideas and form a story around those? Please and Thanks.

David Wong If I'm addressing aspiring writers here, your first obstacle to finishing a book is coming up with something you enjoy thinking about enough that you'll be motivated to finish it. So you have to build a world you'll enjoy spending time in, mentally. For me, I have a very short attention span and not much patience for the real world, so I took the same route that the writers of Rick and Morty would take a decade later, which is create the ability to travel to other universes (or have other universes intrude on ours). We both did it for the same reason, to give ourselves as much room as we wanted to mess around.

But that said, my other series (Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, the sequel to which I'm writing now) is much more constrained - it takes place in a fictional near-future with technology that isn't much crazier than you'd see in, say, a Marvel movie. There, the fun for me was in how the characters have to maneuver their way out of situations knowing that they cannot summon some magic to save themselves.

But ultimately, I'm trying to create a sandbox that I'll feel like messing around in for two years and several thousand hours, because if it's not fun and engaging for me then I know I just won't finish it. An actual serious author would probably give a completely different answer, but I would never presume to speak for them.

As for the writing process itself, I do a lot of planning/outlining in advance and then work somewhat linearly from there, though if I get bored I give myself the option to jump ahead and write some scene later that I feel more like writing (and the outline guarantees that we'll get there and that it won't be wasted). But no two authors do it the same way, there is no right and wrong way. Some write on typewriters and just go in a straight line. Some don't do any advanced outllining at all (like George RR Martin).

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