A World Worth Visiting

Take your chances! You can pick any world you see here. Any one! And I guarantee it won’t be this old, worn-out world you’re in now. It’ll be a brand-new worn-out world! But something different, and really, different is never bad, is it?

Move along, wise acre. We don’t need your kind here.

But you! You look like a good kid. A wise kid! You know that a new world is worth it. So take your pick. What’ll it be? What world would you like to visit?

What makes a world worth visiting? What makes a fiction worth experiencing? 

No no, don’t tell me. I can tell by the tone of your rolling eyes. You don’t want one of my worlds. You think you’ve seen it all! You want to make your own!

Same question, wise guy. What makes your world worth visiting? What makes your fiction worth my time? 

Yeah, don’t care. You waited too long. Give it to me in one word or less. Yawn. Move along.

I know the secret, son. I know what makes a world worth visiting, whether it’s one of my high-class top-grade brand-new worlds, or one of your shoddy home-made jobs. And it’s a simple secret. Doesn’t matter if your world’s from a long time ago in a galaxy far away or some little romance job round the corner. It’s all the same thing.

It’s gotta be new.

Now your smart thinkers will think that they’ve thunk every combination possible. Nothing new under the stars, eh? And they’d be right! But you need to be smarter than the smarties, as that famous duck once said. It’s not about being new to everyone. It’s just about being new to your audience.

Maybe that housewife’s never seen a murder in Jamaica. So take her to that new-to-her world. Maybe that geek’s never dreamed of actually getting the girl. So show him what it’s like. Maybe that old man has forgotten what it’s like to find justice for the oppressed, so give him a lazer-sword and let him loose on your new world.

Lazer-swords and getting the girl and murder in Jamaica aren’t new. Those things are old and dried up, useless as the sawdust you’re standing on.

Unless your audience never put those things together before.

Just like my pick-your-world emporium here.

So take your pick. Visit a world that’s new to you. New in emotions or setting or characters. Let me see wonder or fear like I’ve never felt before. Turn my heart upside down and drink the marrow from my bones if I’ve never experienced it.

But make sure if you’re putting together your own world, it’s got something new.

Otherwise I wont’ take another look, and I’m guessing no one else will, either. Sorry, kid. Them’s the breaks.

Can I give you another piece of advice, free of charge?

Get yerself a tall, tall hat. It’ll make you look impressive. And who knows? Maybe you’ll be able to fake it, then.

Happy hunting for your new world!