The problem was the lifting of the invisible barrier between the story and the reader. “I have to create a fictional space,” Christian says. “Can you do that? I mean if this is just a story then anything you do in it will just be another part of it, it will follow from what came before,”

Rule-based worldbuilding can feel similar to a values discovery exercise, in that both involve digging beneath the surface to identify the underlying causes, motivations, and structures to how you work. But worldbuilding and values-setting are fundamentally different processes. Values setting is a search for the ephemeral beliefs that will hold you