What Jeff Gomez Taught Me About Building Story Worlds That Actually Matter
I have a plan. It's not a good plan. Let’s goooo!
When you talk to Jeff Gomez, you notice very quickly that he is not thinking one level above most storytellers. He is thinking several levels deeper.
Jeff is the CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, a production company based in New York, and one of the best-known experts in the world when it comes to franchise design, transmedia storytelling, and narrative architecture. He has worked with some of the biggest entertainment brands on the planet and now describes his role as a franchise and narrative systems architect. In other words: he does not just think about stories. He thinks about how story worlds are built so they can survive, scale, evolve, and still remain meaningful.
That was exactly why I wanted to talk to him.
Because if the goal is not just to write a decent story, but to build something that lasts, then at some point you have to stop asking surface-level questions. You have to ask what actually makes a story world powerful enough to matter.
And Jeff’s answer, stripped down to its core, was this:
Getting in touch with Jeff Gomez
Most writers start in the wrong place
The biggest mistake is that writers often begin with the medium instead of the meaning.
They say they want to write a game. Or an interactive story. Or a film. Or a franchise. And from there they start imitating the things they already know from those media. They copy structures, tones, genres, and mechanics. They begin with format.
Jeff’s point was that this is exactly backwards.
Before thinking about interactivity, branching, platform, genre, or worldbuilding complexity, the first question has to be:
What are you actually trying to say?
That hit me immediately.
Because it is such a simple question, but it cuts through a lot of nonsense very quickly. If I cannot answer what my story is really about on a deeper level, then all the mechanics in the world will not save it. Then I am just building structure without meaning.
A strong story world needs a philosophy
One of the most valuable things I took from the conversation was that a real story world is not just a setting. It is not just lore, aesthetics, factions, or a map.
It is a philosophical framework.
That means the world has to carry an inner logic about life, conflict, morality, power, identity, or whatever the core human issue is that the story wants to explore. This deeper logic shapes what kinds of choices matter, what kinds of actions feel right inside that world, and what kind of story can emerge from it.
That is why some worlds feel rich even before much has happened, while others feel empty despite endless detail.
The first kind of world means something.
The second kind of world only contains things.
That distinction is huge.
Interactive storytelling makes this even more important
Since I am building interactive audio stories, this part was especially valuable for me.
Jeff made a very clear distinction between real interactivity and older, more mechanical forms like classic “choose your own adventure” structures. Binary choices alone are not enough anymore. Audiences want agency, but meaningful agency. They want to feel that their choices belong inside the logic of the world.
That only works if the world has a framework strong enough to hold that freedom.
Otherwise interactivity becomes arbitrary.
And that, I think, is one of the clearest explanations I have heard for why some interactive formats feel exciting and others feel shallow. If there is no deeper architecture behind the available choices, then the audience may have options, but they do not have meaning.
Freedom without framework is not elegant. It is chaos.
The best franchises are built on a mythic field
Another idea from Jeff that stayed with me was his concept of the mythic field.
What he means by that is the deeper emotional, thematic, and philosophical identity of a story world. The thing underneath the plot. The thing that makes an IP feel like itself even when it moves across generations, formats, or interpretations.
He used Star Trek as an example.
At its core, Star Trek was not just a sci-fi setting with ships, uniforms, and alien species. It was built on Gene Roddenberry’s belief in a more evolved humanity, one capable of peace, exploration, curiosity, and moral growth. Those aspirations were woven into the firmament of the mythic field. It gave the world its identity.
Once creators lose touch with that deeper field, the franchise may still look like Star Trek on the surface, but something essential is gone. And audiences feel that, even if they cannot always articulate it precisely.
I found that incredibly useful because it applies far beyond legacy IP.
Any writer building a world should ask:
What is the mythic field of my story?
What deeper truth holds this world together?
What must never get lost, even if everything else changes?
Meaning comes before mechanics
That may be the single most useful sentence I took from the call.
Meaning comes before mechanics.
Not because mechanics are unimportant. They matter a lot, especially in games and interactive formats. But mechanics are expressions. They are not the soul of the work.
The soul comes first.
That is also why the strongest story worlds tend to outlive the trends that first made them popular. Their surface can change. Their medium can change. Their audience can change. But if the inner meaning is strong enough, the world survives.
And that is the standard I want to hold my own work against.
Not just: is this interesting?
Not just: is this interactive?
Not just: is this marketable?
But: does this world actually stand for something?
Why this matters even more in the age of AI
Toward the end of the conversation, we also talked about AI, and Jeff’s perspective there was just as sharp.
His point was not that writers should simply use AI as a tool to write faster, nor that we should panic because it will replace us. His point was that storytellers now have a far more important task:
We have to help define the frameworks, values, and mythic fields that AI-based worlds will operate inside.
That idea stayed with me because it reframes the whole debate.
The question is no longer whether we write with AI or against AI. The deeper question is whether storytellers are willing to shape the worlds AI will help make possible.
And if Jeff is right, that is one of the biggest storytelling responsibilities of the next decade.
What I am taking from this
If I reduce the whole conversation to one lesson, it is this:
A lasting story world is not built from plot first.
It is built from meaning first.
The world needs a philosophy.
The choices need an architecture.
The franchise needs a mythic field.
The interactivity needs a reason.
That is what makes a world coherent.
That is what makes it memorable.
And that is what gives it a chance to last.
Jeff Gomez did not give me a shortcut to becoming a bestselling writer.
He gave me something better.
A much sharper standard for what a story world actually has to be before it deserves to exist.
About Road to Rank 1
Road to Rank 1 is my public learning series about becoming a better writer of interactive fiction and audio stories by talking to experts from games, books, audio, and narrative design.
