Web3 Wonders: Free Art Education Initiatives
Infinity Labs had the privilege of guesting one of the Star Atlas amazing Lore writers last February. The Twitter Spaces was entitled “How to Build a World from Scratch”. He started his career in Web3 writing lores for Infinity Labs Scenes from the Solverse timelines, before landing a full-time job in Star Atlas! I’ve listened to some of his Twitter talks and for me, he is one of the most passionate people I’ve heard and probably one of the most dedicated people on his craft. He is Jose, aka ZeSSK.
In this blog, I’ll be taking you back to the team’s inspirational talk with Jose and I’ll be dissecting some of the takeaways from this Twitter Space. If you are an aspiring writer, buckle up ‘cause you’re in a treat for some great reads!
His first profession was as a lawyer. Both of his parents are lawyers so it was expected from him growing up that he will also be one too. However, that doesn’t stop him from being interested in reading and studying Literature, History, and Medieval stories. He developed a deep passion for writing and enjoyed doing it even when he was still a lawyer. When he started writing lores for Infinity Labs, Star Atlas was born and they invited him to become part of their family. The rest was history. For Jose, being a lore writer is more than just a profession - it’s a calling, a burning passion that will take him to his heart’s desire.
For Jose, creation starts with establishing general principles from the universe. From my understanding of his point of view, building underlying principles from the universe that comes from experience is essential. He creates a variety of important content from broad and general principles and then narrows it down to more specific scenarios in order to create a story of reality that will definitely spark your interest. He emphasized that it's important to know when to be descriptive and when to use your imagination when writing a story. Learning how to deliver information and when to uphold information helps in the overall building process.
Whether he is writing for Infinity Labs Scenes or a species on Star Atlas for example, he makes sure that the centerpiece of the story building will be interesting, fun yet unique and relatable to a group of people to follow and see themselves in the character with a good amount of values and life deals.
He spends time learning about different cultures as a starting point and researching different societies about our world and integrating its values to embrace reality in his writing. How to deal with progression over ages, how values and cultures are changing, why nations and civilizations failed, and how we are connected to the environment are some mechanisms he would approach in order for a story to integrate reality.
Making use of Notion helps him organize the layout of a story. It includes a list of everything that is important for example a species as a story character - food, hobbies, how long they live, what’s their environment, core values, how they reproduce, etc. With Star Atlas, they have a database of concepts that they share to avoid using the same concept with different meanings.
In his opinion, this is a challenge for every writer. A unique underlying principle for lore and work will guide him to incorporate his story with day-to-day situations. He tries to introduce counterintuitive ideas and create flaws or problems to make his story interesting. He makes use of different philosophies, teachings, books, human influences, and values he learned from the past and applies them to his lore writing and stories. He also shared about his strong moral rules that when you take things to the extremes, bad things happen even if you have the purest intention - so you have to take care of the extremes when building your own story.
For Jose, this passion for writing allows communities to go to another level of Web3 and forms a deeper bond. It helps to bring aspiring lore creators to connect with projects and our worlds. For example, giving them options and creative freedom to write stories for Infinity merge scenes, Twitter spaces, and exploring every possibility to come together for lore projects in the future and the infinite power of creative communities to make a difference in story writing.
As per Jose’s advice, first, you must love what you're doing. Second, you need to love learning new things all the time. If you have the passion and desire in your heart, you need to make sure that you grab every opportunity that will come your way and that’s what he did. He was not a good writer at first but he gave a lot of effort into polishing and practicing until he developed his own style. He highlights that writing requires time, patience, and effort to learn different values, cultures, economics, politics, and arts in order to have a connection to reality.
He perceived bad feedback as an entertaining experience. When you fail at something, this is just reality explaining to you that what you did is not how reality or other people view it as the correct way of doing it. What is important is that you learn a lesson. It sets you on the right track, eliminating one of the wrong possibilities of doing things in the future. His mindset is that failure is the mother of learning. This helps to take away the burden of pain one feels after failing. Committing mistakes is okay because you are doing your best and experimenting with reality. Our universe is forever expanding so being surrounded by supportive people will help you with your journey.
Lore has always been valued by Infinity Labs and one way to prove it is our Infinity Labs Wiki which contains community lores and a separate section for “Lore of the day”. I invite everyone to visit our Wiki page and you could also share your own lore with the community.
Our very own Willmz came up with this idea since reading lore stories motivates him to generate artistic ideas and boost his creative side to build incredible work. This was something we would like to share with others too as a way to inspire.
I hope this content somehow empowered your passion for writing or whatever your heart desires to build. Every idea starts somewhere. Never let anyone steal your aspirations. Follow your heart and live in the moment.
Click the image below for the actual recording of the Twitter Space.
Show some love and give Jose a follow!
Thanks for reading, Explorers!
Note: This content is not intended for promotion nor financial advise. This is for educational purposes only.
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