your culture
So, you’ve got the setting sussed out start to finish, from the location of mountains to the names of individual neighborhoods. Next stop on the fantasy worldbuilding checklist is populating all that lovely space you created with civilization. This post is devoted to your invented culture, its mores and behaviors. We’ll be touching on a lot of stuff – mostly curated under this heading because it doesn’t fit better somewhere else – so hold onto your butts!
If you want to refer back to the master list, look here.
society: the basics
A place to begin: hierarchies. People externally indistinguishable, who inhabit the same place and derive from similar ancestry, but perceive divides between themselves that will limit everything from their appropriate career to whom they might eat dinner with. Why I just explained that to you, I do not know; everyone but everyone is familiar with class systems.
The first question we arrive at as creators is, On what basis? I’m not talking about whether or not class is inherited, although you’ll want to ask yourself that one, too. You have to step back all the way to the beginning and figure out what virtue the ruling classes are believed to possess that justify them having more authority than other members their society. Different cultures have historically come up with different answers, from ambition (amassing wealth) to bravery (participation in warfare) to civic spirit (public service).
I’ll be frank with you, I find class as a concept fascinating but repellant; I will come at your story with the assumption that, whatever answer you give, it’s largely bullshit and someone had a thumb on the scale. I don’t think I’m the only one who reads that way, my generation had Sam Vimes for a babysitter. You do not have to tailor your world to my cynicism, but it’s something to be aware of. If you want your audience to believe Lord Handsome and Lady Baba are genuinely, inherently superior to the dude mucking out the stable, you face an uphill battle. You may need to get creative.
I think of this as the most rudimentary framework you’re going to drape the rest of your society across. Several other questions to address are, How many of these groups are there, our familiar three or something else? How significant, impactful, and entrenched are the assumptions others make about the personality and capability of members of each? Is class immutable, or is there mobility? If so, how is rising achieved? What might cause someone at the top to fall?
If your answer to all of the above is SCREW THIS, ANARCHY! I’m here for that as well. Just don’t forget to show me how it works.
One other issue you need to touch on before you can get to the nitty-gritty is language. It is not a nice feeling to get halfway through drafting a book and run smack bang into the fact that you don’t know how many languages there are in your world or how widespread multilingualism is. Don’t do a Burnell and write an entire subplot sending characters to a foreign country where they (you) only realize as they step onto the dock: they need a translator!
within the home
Let’s move on to what goes on inside private homes, the socially-imposed interpersonal structure of families. We’re talking gender roles, child rearing, education, and the identity of the head of household. These are homely details, and I don’t have a lot to say about them, not in a broad-brush sense. I would caution you, though, not to lose sight of the fact that these are choices and do vary. The Western paradigm of the single-family dwelling inhabited by (maximum two, heterosexual) parents and their (usually biological) offspring is only one way of doing things, and other cultures both current and historical have ordered their affairs differently.
Some really common ones we’ve tried and still use are:
- Multiple generations under one roof.
- Multiple ‘households’ sharing space.
- Communal child-rearing.
- Elders as authority figures.
Real talk, rubber-stamping your own cultural assumptions into an imagined world is lazy. And tweaking foundational issues like this is a great way to keep readers engaged. Make them do a doubletake. Boredom is your enemy. A startled reader keeps reading because they can’t just guess what it is they’re looking at and skim past.
mores
I say! We seem to have arrived at the saucy bits! I’m going to start the values talk by addressing sex because it’s my blog, I can do what I want. In the context of worldbuilding, ‘sex’ means several things: sexuality, gender roles, the dirty deed itself, and bastardy/ custody/ ffs the results. These are all topics you may choose to explore as you build your world, asking yourself how familiar you want for it to look. Again, don’t just import: the mores you grew up with are decisions our culture made, not immutable laws of nature.
Some nuances I want to put forth for your consideration, if you decide to get creative (do it!):
- your society doesn’t have a cult of virginity or restrict women’s sexuality: is there birth control? What happens to children born outside of marriage, or is that not even a meaningful distinction?
- women don’t have to fight for their rights, they just have them: how is descent determined? Is everyone simply equal, or are there different, restrictive systems?
- heterosexuality isn’t the only non-aberrant way to be: are people who can’t breed permitted/ encouraged to adopt children, or does society view them as having a different role to play? Do people divide themselves into categories (gay/ bi/ straight) or regard sexuality more fluidly?
- no genders or more than two genders: this is a bottomless sinkhole, you could do absolutely anything with it. I got nothing to add, surprise me.
- sex isn’t linked to commitment or romance and/ or isn’t presumed to be an exchange between more-or-less-static couples: another one that you could do virtually anything with.
Moving on- Yes, I know, you were having fun. We all were, but even good things must come to an end, and we need to talk about your culture’s civic values as well. We touched on this briefly above when we addressed class; the question is, in the view of your society, what makes a good person good? You can go with any virtue here, or take a dystopian route and select a quality that isn’t truly virtuous. Ambition or selflessness, ruthlessness or nonviolence, the choice is yours.
Just so long as you have an answer. This is the communal identity of your people; to me, it’s one of the most important calls you make as a storyteller. It’s how your people understand themselves, how they measure failure or success. It’s why they’ll follow a leader who personifies it to their graves or turn in violence on their neighbors. It is their soul, and it falls to you to name it.
One last tweak I need to toss in here: is religion actually significant? In my observation, there’s a spectrum on how seriously societies take their faith. Take atheism out of the equation, still there are peoples who consider strict religious observance the height, even the definition of virtue. But the Christmas/ Easter Catholics of your imagined fantasy world are just as valid. In a world where gods walk the streets, how people believe other people need to respond to that could run the gamut.
decorative flourishes
Last but not least, the tiny details. I just had a Tweet go as viral as my Tweets get, because so many people had to chime in and agree they love to see this kind of thing. You can get a lot of mileage out of little quirks because the small stuff is the most relatable. They also shift the pace and the scope, which gives readers pause and makes them sit up.
That said, there’s not a lot to add on my end. Areas where you might want to dabble are body art, food culture, your society’s perspective on the use of substances, clothing/ hairstyles, holidays or other celebrations, and popular games or hobbies. Just bear in mind this could be a rabbit hole. Before you venture far, ask yourself whether it’s wallpaper or has major plot relevance. It would be kind of cool if you wrote an entire play so that your protagonist could overhear someone quoting one line at a bar, but not necessarily the best use of your time.
That’s it for the most basic building blocks of the culture where your story’s set. Get thinking!
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