Burning Memories as Fuel for Worldbuilding (Part II)

February 10, 2025

Creative Writing lecturer and Barbican author Edmund Hurst continues his reflection on worldbuilding in fiction (read Part I). In this post, he looks back at adolescence, love and heartbreak, before inviting you to try a writing exercise.

Burning your Adolescence

‘You don’t notice a callus forming. It is protection for something you do over and over. But a scar… a scar is mortality. A reminder that just beneath the skin is raging, frothing blood.’

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that we all got our hearts broken as teenagers, right? That intensity of feeling is unlike anything else. Sure, we probably go through a lot worse as we age and experience more of reality – but we are also shielded by the scabs and scars that grow to cover those frothing, teenage wounds.

I’ve always found it interesting the way we use words and phrases of affection to describe our relationship with fictional stories, characters. I love that book. But it makes sense. Because fiction can share with us a truth that no one else can know.

One of the many, many reasons we love people is because they share some part of themselves with us. Some part that the rest of the world doesn’t get to see. Imagine you are at a work party with a significant other. And they are having such a wonderful time. Laughing at jokes, sharing anecdotes, encouraging your boss to tell yet another story. And it isn’t until you get home, take off the uncomfortable shoes, that they turn to you and say ‘God I’m glad that’s over. I fucking hate talking to people.’

It is easy to love anyone in that moment. Because they share something of their innermost selves. Something that not another soul at the party could possibly have known. It is just for you.

Exercise 2

Return to that symbol from Exercise 1 and ask – what does everyone know about it? All people in your world, what do they know for certain about this particular object? Make a list of these truths, things so obvious and so clear that there is little point even talking about them.

Then, pick one and make it a lie. A deliberate falsehood, sewn for a specific purpose. Something that everyone knows, but no-one is right about.

Except for one.

Your protagonist knows that this truth is a lie. How did they find out? What are they going to do about it? How will they prove they are right?

Let them share that with your reader. Let them be loved, despite all their flaws – for the truth.

Ed’s book Arx: City of Broken Minds is available now.

Images courtesy of Freddy Kearney, Amir Hosseini and Markus Winkler via Unsplash.