Writing with Huna
Ike: The World is Exactly what you Think it is.
When it comes to writing, crafting the world can be just as important as the writing itself. There are many authors who don’t think about the world they are writing about, and others that spend too much time thinking about it and not so much actually writing. But when it comes to the Huna philosophy of Ike, you find there are ways to craft details of your world while using something as a large place holder.
Ike means the world is exactly what you think it is. That means, spend less time on the generals of the writing world you are crafting because that will come out in the writing itself, and focus all the more on the details, the things around your character, or the political part of your world. You don’t need to include things like how your world began or that there are birds flying in your world because you will automatically already use a template of that world. If you are making a fantasy world, you are going to be including magic as a given, though maybe magic is depleting and that would be a detail to include.
In the other vein, this isn’t just about making sure to focus on the specific instead of the general. It’s also about broadening your writing as well. Because the world is what you think it is, this leads to many white or male writers and authors to make a world that is full of white people. This isn’t necessary, and shows the scope of the world you believe every time you see another novel with all the main characters as white and maybe that one token black or Asian character. The world is what you think it is, so broaden your thinking of what the world is!
To keep this in practice, make sure you expose yourself to media that has a diverse group of people. Shows like Buffy are praised but when it comes to breaking out of the traditional white Hollywood world, it falls incredibly short. In fact, the more you look at this specifically the more you will see that Hollywood and even the novel world, whether fantasy, sci-fi, or literary fiction, is full of straight, white people.
This isn’t anyone’s fault. The problem lies with the idea that all these creators are used to a world full of straight, white people, so they think the world is this way unconsciously and that’s the world they create. It is people’s fault when they don’t bother to learn that there is so much more they can be doing with their character’s backgrounds and intersectionality.
So remember to expand your world view to further your writing by exposing yourself to media you wouldn’t normally touch. And you also shouldn’t focus on the general of your world because that will come out normally as you write because the moment you have thought of an idea for a novel or short story, you have also crafted the world it will be in.
Get out there and expand your world!
