Today we’d like to introduce you to Jim Plath.

Hi Jim, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’m a writer. In my particular case, that involves a couple different arenas, but the common thread that runs through all the things I do is storytelling. The Descriers, my debut novel, came out last year. It’s a contemporary fantasy that explores a world where god-like beings live among us. Promoting it has been rewarding and educational, and it’s given me an enormous amount of appreciation for all that goes into the business and logistics of publishing. I have a lifetime of stories to tell, and many more will become novels, but there are many different ways to tell stories, and another I’m pursuing is through designing tabletop roleplaying games.

Some years ago, Drew Bagley, my lifelong friend, got me interested in ttrpgs. I fell in love with the interactive nature of the hobby. Portraying a character in a session of Dungeons & Dragons felt so much like inhabiting a character’s mind in order to craft dialogue for the page. The overlap was tangible to me. It was communal storytelling. From there, they and I set to work building a science fiction setting I’d planted the seeds for years earlier. Together, we came up with a rule set and now we have a game, The Unpromised Worlds, which will be released later this year. I’ve also written a novel set in the Unpromised Worlds, which is due out in the fall.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The creative process is never very smooth, or at least it never is for me, or any other creators I know. Stories are about that, though. They’re about obstacles, and how people do or don’t overcome them, how they’re changed by the end. When it comes to writing, I often find the parts of the story I was most excited to write at the outset don’t survive the editing process. It’s usually because the heart of the story doesn’t lie with the particular character, or the moment I’d expected. When we were designing our first set of rules for The Unpromised Worlds, Drew and I realized our system was too complicated. We decided our priority was for our game to be accessible for players who were new to the hobby, so we restarted the design phase when we were more than a year into development. If you aren’t careful, it can be easy to see that as a wasted year, but in the end we’re happy with the result. If we hadn’t done it wrong at first, we’d know far less today about precisely what kind of game we wanted to make. It can be a bitter thing to cut material from our creations, but things can’t improve if they can’t change.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a genre writer with a bit of a literary style. Much of what I produce is fantasy and science fiction. The distinction is that often, in genre fiction, the emphasis lies with plot and story structure, where literary works focus more on character development. These are broad generalizations, of course, but it’s not unfair to say literary stories tend to be “quieter.” That’s something I like doing, taking narratives around world-shaping magic or galaxy-shifting empires and narrowing the focus, making it personal.

We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
I learned just how easily something strange can begin to feel normal. After a couple years of relative isolation, people got to be alone so much, a lot of us forgot there was such a thing as being lonely. Maybe so many of us didn’t notice, because we still had text messages, or phone calls, or video conferencing. We had all those things before, but pre-pandemic, we’d message each other knowing we’d be together in-person again soon enough. When we lost that assurance, I think it showed what a poor replacement electronic communication could be for real-world interaction. That’s been the lasting thing for me. I’ve thought of friends and family, and started asking myself when the last time I sat down with them in-person was. We need that, as people. At least I do.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @JimPlath

Image Credits
Drew Bagley