Imagination - The Word Guardians

January 1, 2025January 2, 2025

How do the Word Guardians determine the truth?

Determining the truth of a situation (and what to take on trust) is a reoccurring theme in the Word Guardians series. In What are the Worlds of the Word Guardians I mentioned that the Word Guardians employ something akin to Star Trek’s Prime directive to determine how to act without influencing readers’ thoughts.

I thought I’d delve into this a little more in this week’s post.

What is truth?

Truth is a very interesting word, it turns out. According to the Mirriam Webster dictionary definition, it relates to determining the facts of a situation, what’s real. But if we think about our own lives, it’s hard to figure this out.

How do we determine the truth of a situation?

We see reports in the news, accusations from someone and then opposing stories that come out over time, courtroom coverage and more. And as bystanders, we know we’re hearing differing viewpoints but what is the objective truth here? We can only typically understand this from the bigger picture, other viewpoints and understanding something about the behavioural patterns of the persons involved. Often, we can’t see this because we’re basing what we believe on what we’ve been told or what’s been reported. We trust that those parties are acting ethically, morally and fairly in how they deliver the news. But how can we verify that too?

Why is the truth important to Word Guardians?

In the Word Guardians books, the Controllers manipulate imaginations. They sow ideas and use those who have been disadvantaged in some way. They’ll pose as someone they are not in order to gain trust and ultimately ask something in return. They’ll encourage others to action by constantly pulling at a wound of disillusionment, inciting them to action. The Word Guardians have to second guess, strive for the bigger picture and rely on their own instincts to figure out what action to take. Yas in particular is good at this (but even she can be fooled).

So… how do Word Guardians determine the truth?

The stories are in magical fantasy worlds (realms), but it’s not so different to what we experience in life. Like the Word Guardians, we should question where information has come from, why it’s been presented a particular way and who it might benefit or impact. It can be overwhelming, but we shouldn’t always just take things on trust.

This answers how the Word Guardians determine the truth but, when taking any action, how do they know that they’re not just being controlling, or manipulating, just like Controllers? Well, you’ll just have to read the Word Guardians series to find out. 🙂

The Word Guardians book series

December 16, 2024January 1, 2025

What are the Worlds of the Word Guardians?

Where the worlds came from

Where I started from with the Worlds of the Word Guardians was thinking about what I saw in my mind’s eye when I read. I picture the scenes and the story plays out as if I’m watching my own personal movie. It made me wonder… what if these places were real? How could you visit them? and the worlds (or realms) of the Word Guardians were born.

In the Word Guardians series the realms are absolutely real. Think of them as magical other worlds, accessible through doorways. Readers co-create these other worlds as they imagine the scenes and the result is stages on which different storylines play out.

How the worlds of the Word Guardians are created

With readers unwittingly creating and shaping these realms, I realised that visitors could essentially gain access to readers’ imagination and if they so desired, they could influence them, for good or bad. The antagonists, the Controllers, were born and in turn this defined the protagonists’ goals, the Word Guardians. I feel that this is very relevant to today where there are so many influences for what we think and do and we’re not fully aware of all of these biases.

So, what actually powers the realms, I hear you cry. Imagination yes, but it has to take form and become physical. In the first book, The Battle for the Peacekeepers, I describe this as Yas discovers a realm for the first time. Imagination fuels ‘magical ink’ and that creates physical structures, actors, landscapes and more. A storyline plays out and then the magical ink is fueled by the imagination of another reader, and the scene recycles to play out another storyline.

Why the realms are important in the book series

Visitors to realms can wield and interact with this magical ink, influencing and changing the scene and the storylines playing out around them (and I’ll touch on why magic is always word based in a later blog). This then has consequences as I mentioned above and is something that is played out in the series. The Word Guardians effectively need to employ something akin to Star Trek’s Prime Directive (Trekkies will know what I mean by this) to protect the freedom of the imagination of readers, and it becomes clear (as in Star Trek) that the best action to take isn’t always cut and dry.

So, that’s a summary (and introduction to potential readers of the series) of what the Worlds of the Word Guardians are, why I decided to write them this way and how it created the main dynamic between protagonists and the Controllers. To learn more about the book series, please click the button below.

The Word Guardians book series