I'm currently working on the first fantasy novel that I'm actually attacking strategically. Meaning my first time actual world building, among others. I've got a rough plot and story line. I've got the main characters and a little bit of background. To make things interesting, i would like to have a better picture of my world but I am struggling with a bit of inspiration block as to how to create interesting, unique cultures and peoples. I would love to hear what sort of cultures,religions or people you have created in your stories, or where you've gotten your inspiration from. Where do you go to find your inspiration to create something unique for your world?
I basically use real-world cultures but then mix-and-match elements... my "protagonist" state is a combination of Western Roman Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom and Byzantine Empire. Culturally, it is a combination of Latin/Roman and Celtic cultures - this includes languages, religion and culture in general. Other states are much straighter lifts from history (so you have basically Ottoman Empire, Kingdom of Croatia, Kingdom of Poland etc.), but they are not the focus so...
You can also start from the ground up. Culture is honed by local necessity. If I needed to create a unique culture, I would just ask a few questions and quickly hash out a rough sketch: 1. Environment. 2. Threats. 3. Surpluses. 4. Shortages. Simple, pillar stone topics like that can usually get the ball rolling. They can split into theology, technology, medicine, architecture etc. from there depending on how much time you want to put into it.
In my my WIP, there are two broad cultures that are engaged. One is the remnants of Australia occupying the western half of the continent, the other is a culture descended from North Americans (both Canadians and Usonians). There is a third culture that's still a little amorphous, but I feel them coalescing into a remnant eugenic population, part of the old world prior to the war that caused North America to seize half of Australia. This story is Science Fiction, not Fantasy, so I am reaching forward, not back in time.
If you're not a historian, it's difficult to know what it would have been like for ordinary people to live in different locations during different historical periods. When writing a story, you could think along the lines of a social system that might work well, but this I think would be missing a trick. It would be better to think of a dysfunctional system that still hangs together, not because of the benefits it brings, but because the people are persuaded to support it. It would also be a mistake to assume everyone has an accurate perception of the kind of world they're living in. They could firmly believe their neighbors are evil and intent on destruction and in a variety of superstitions, which as simply not true. If we are to learn anything from history, it's that rulers tend to behave more like organized crime bosses than anything. Knowledge of alternatives would be limited so an abusive and tyrannical ruler could be perceived as kind and just. Just think of today's world and reframe the context (and tone it down because today's reality is too ridiculous for fiction). Most aspects of life would be determined by the need to survive in particular circumstances. Are they struggling with the heat of the mid-day sun or battling the wind, rain, and cold? There is often a division between a small minority of rich ruling class people and the majority of exploited poor. Formal education would be reserved for the rich while the poor would rely on family traditions, mythology, and superstitions for what they know. Without medicine, travellers and foreigners would be treated with great suspicion because they could be carrying the plage. Those who are struggling to survive would have a great fear of misfortune as bad luck could easily be fatal. The poor would be generally risk-averse while the rich would be more risk-takers.
My worlds tend to be Chimeras-I mix and match aspects of existing cultures to create the imagery I want. Ex: Tudor style architecture with Indian caste system and Roman style military.
I tend to take building blocks from historical and fictional cultures and re-assemble them for my own cultures. I also have a branching system; I don't simply have 6 cultures rivalling each other - I've got five cultural spheres on my continent, each of which has multiple cultures underneath and there's some with further sub-cultures. All depends on how centralized/unified a sphere or culture is, and how much geographical separation they have. Furthermore, there's the "high cultures" that are not practiced by the common folk, but represent the major political factions and their cultural influence. Generally, I've got a northern sphere, a southern sphere and the Wellestrian sphere that was driven as a wedge inbetween the two. There's two further spheres to the east. The most detailed one is Wellestrian - as the story I write is from their perspective, and it is their story. They've got four major and two minor high cultures; the minor aren't usually recognised as separate or high. Mind, I'll be describing Wellestria here. There's a northern cultural sphere, but there's also a northern culture within the Wellestrian sphere (which is ethnic northerners under long-term subjugation in fact). Same with eastern and southern. Under the greater sphere, there is eight major cultures. Some of these are unified in their right (The basinfolk & the capital city's culture), some have their own subcultures with small differences. The most notable is the Montanian culture/circle, which corresponds to something like real life "Transylvanian" or "Indochinese" cultures - merely an umbrella term with a dozen smaller cultures underneath that often have little to do with each other. There's quite a few "cultural splits" in the world that divide the cultures, often creating differences between subcultures as well. Wellestrians worship a form of feudalism (all ordered underneath the creator's realm) and there's a squabble between Midlands and Eastern cultures whether the highest deity is male or female (deriving from this, Midlands cultures maintain patriarchal societies whereas Eastern cultures are matriarchal). The northern cultures in turn are atheistic (or to be precise, misotheistic) and therefore don't give a damn. Mind, matriarchy/patriarchy mean different things in Wellestria; they aren't to be confused with subjugation/oppression, merely the preference in titular holders and executive leadership as well as cultural presentation. Midlands cultures maintain classic feudalism with decentralised rule; power delegated to cities and townships. Basin and Eastern cultures promote absolutism and centralisation, north-west cultures are collectivist/syndicalist whereas north-east cultures and southern cultures are mercantile. Montanian cultures gather in moots and have absolute local power & decentralization, which is the reason why they are so disunited and different. Maarland cultures have a preference for democracy solely as they were subjugated & have been under military occupation for the past century and long for freedom. That mentioned, I prefer every cultural detail to have a firm reason and explanation behind them. Northern people are atheistic as their religion was systematically erased during their subjugation and at the same time, Wellestrian religion weakened and they didn't pick it up. They are syndicalistic for the same reason; they fought a century-long guerilla war against their conquerors - slowly losing ground and retreating north and north-west, their desperation erased most concepts of hierarchy as for a long time they were organized as tribal, nomadic warbands with a single elected leader they often changed depending on what kind of leader they needed. These translated to the "modern era" (referring to Napoleonic times) even though they are self-governing now - as wokers' unions, anarchist cells supporting their downtrodden and collectives. Northern and southern cultures developed towards a mercantile oligarchy simply because they gathered & bloomed around the most prominent trade hubs of the continent. The weirdest of all cultures is "Old Wellestrian" which is an artificial culture "created" ages ago with a design compatible with most cultures on the continent; its intent was to unify people under one banner and erase cultural barriers. Its spread is still very limited and geographic barriers and separation led to the ironic splintering of this artificial culture into "Western Wellestrian", "Montanian Wellestrian", "Falmütz Wellestrian" and "Southern Wellestrian" - each of these draw heavily towards and from the local cultures. I've got religions, legends, landmarks, sports & leisure, musical styles and instruments, etiquette expectations, fashion, military and naval traditions for most of my cultures. The one thing I don't have is food. Somehow I'm ... bad at that.
The key to creating a world is to ask yourself questions. There are various things in the general you can ask: What kind of government does this culture have? Feudal, monarchy, democracy, republic, wild west every-man-is-law-for-himself? What kind of economic level are they at? Do they farm, or are they more city slickers? Suburban? Shipbuilders? A society entirely dependent on mining? Do they believe in anything? God, gods, universal force? Fairies? What do these beliefs require of them morally? Then there are questions relating to your character, assuming that you have an MC or supporting character who lives there: Does the MC get along with the people there? How much does he agree with the people? Do the people hate him or like him? If they hate him, why? If they like him, is it sincere or insincere? What does the character want from the people and is it likely he'll get it from them? Does the plot require the MC to interact with them much? If not, how much do they interfere with his actions and desires? Then, there are the twists. These generally work better in horror, sf, fantasy, and speculative genres, but softer answers to these questions can work in any genre. What is something normal to us that can be reversed and made opposite in this other culture? What is something we find normal that they might object to? What is a problem we have in our society that they might have a solution to, even if this solution (and perhaps even the problem itself) is patently absurd? Like maybe the problem is "how to unpeel a banana" and they have special laser devices to unpeel bananas. What other things could that same technology be used for? Is this culture obsessed with one particular thing to a degree they're kinda obsessed with it? Like say, a world of music? Caffeine worshippers? I wrote out all this, but I think the thing you need to try is to focus on one particular aspect that make your world unique, and then ask yourself how this aspect would run down and affect all parts of that society. Figure out what questions to ask yourself.
I am seriously impressed with your detailed explanation and i have to admit that it makes me feel even more overwhelmed by my task of worldbuilding. I used to think i was a history buff but when i read things from others here i realise i'm really only a beginner. I wouldn't be able to write a world with such detail I'm afraid: i just don't know enough about governmental systems and the way that cultures develop. I favour fantasy books from writes like Robert jordan, brandon sanderson and terry goodkind but when i read your description i become even more convinced that maybe i'm in over my head with worldbuilding. How did you come up with all this? Did you make a study of certain historic aspects or politics or something the like? Or have specific kinds of books brought you to all this?
What many people forget is that cultures are a spectrum. It's not as if you step over the border and suddenly you're in a new culture. On the border of two countries, culture will be an amalgam of both. But also, in an age where rapid transport doesn't exist, culture will also be highly localised. It will distinctly vary from city to city and region to region. High culture is usually spread by the aristocracy, who tend to travel more, and who take the culture of the court with them. Nobles will tend to try and mimic the high culture of the capital (so they don't look like country bumpkins when attending court). Sometimes, but rarely, this might filter down to the common folk. In medieval Japan, the culture of the Imperial capital Kyoto was significantly different to everywhere else. The remnants of that culture are visible in the mannerisms of traditional geisha. In post-conquest Britain, the aristocracy spoke French while the commoners spoke Saxon. But within a few decades, Saxon names had become largely extinct, with Aethelreds, Alfreds and Edmunds being largely replaced with Williams, Henrys and Edwards, even amongst commoners.
An important note here is that my world came first, and the novel I'm writing in it after. Which means when I discuss worldbuilding stuff, I'm a hobby worldbuilder first and a novelist/writer only afterwards. Another great aid for me has been roleplaying; I've been active on various platforms for many years now, some of them with original worlds & cultures. Some of these cultures I originally wrote / compiled for these worlds / roleplay. It helps a lot; portraying a character actively, day-by-day to represent a culture you "invented" lends you an insight you wouldn't normally have, not even when writing a novel featuring the culture. You don't only seat a character in it, but can gather interactions with the culture from other players and their characters. As for the how abouts; best thing you can do is read a lot; read a lot of our own history. Do so with a conscious mind, seeing the connections and filling in the blanks as you go. To explore everything, however, you'll need an open mind and to not be reluctant to look at opposites and even read stuff that you'd normally steer clear from. That is; you won't ever get the full picture if you only understand one side of an issue/topic. It's vague, I know. Sorry. An exercise you can do is choose a real life culture and dissect it. Inspect its elements and pretend it's something you've read about in a fantasy novel and you're trying to google to the bottom of it. Spoiler Take "German culture" for example, which people often pretend to exist. It does not; "German" as a unified culture was an attempt of multiple people (including one infamous Austrian painter) to create. So look deeper and now you've got a whole list. Swabian, Prussian, Hanoverian, Niedersächsisch, Sächsisch, Bavarian, Austrian, Baltic German ... From the simple "listing" of German cultures you found a few pointers for creating fictional cultures: 1. Cultural borders seldom correlate to national borders. This is extra-true for pre-modern worlds. 2. Within a simple cultural circle, you can find cultures that are very similar to a foreign circle (Elsaß German to Lorraine French), and some within the circle that differ more than two foreign cultures differ from each other (compare Prussian and Bavarian). 3. Cultures are usually separated by natural borders - rivers, seas, mountain ranges, etc. Reaching this point, you should ask a few "Why" questions. "Why" was the German diaspora present in the Baltic? Because of the northern crusades. "Why" is Bavarian so different to Prussian culture? Because of a 500 year old religious divide. "Why" are Swabian Germans marked on the map along the Danube? Because after re-conquering those lands from the Ottoman Empire, the Austrian monarchy settled almost a million Germans from overpopulated Ulm/Württemberg to re-populate those fertile lands. "Why" are you referring to Swabian culture when I see no Swabia on the map? Because Germany looked a bit different back in the days cultures developed. "Why" are Prussians called Prussian? They picked up the name of a Slavic tribe they slaughtered during the northern crusades. By all means, Prussians are descendants of the Teuton order. From these "Why" questions, you can also dig a lot deeper and discover some immensely interesting facts about /Germanic/ culture in general... - Germans are "brothers" to the French in culture; only truly split in language. Their ancestry comes from a coalition of tribes that crossed the Rhine in 406AD. - There's Germanic people living in northern Africa, Iberia, Caucasus, Ukraine and Anatolia. These aren't "Germans" per se, but have similar cultural roots. This refers to symbolism, original religion and genetics. All thanks to the fall of the Roman Empire, and for the Eastern Roman Emperor letting Goths settle in his lands. - Germanic people actually came from north of the Black Sea, in a wave of migration before the rise of the Roman Empire. - "Germany" and "France" are the artificial results of a Frankish succession law where a realm is partitioned between all eligible male heirs. The historic conquests and wars over Alsace, Lorrain and Belgium should be understood as descendants of one son fighting with another over the former lands of the third. After reading further into a culture, you can draw some conclusions for your world: - People - and thus also cultures - are not stationary. They wander over time, create a diaspora, settle, colonise, etc. - The greater an area a culture governs and the less contact its sub-groups have with each other, the more likely it will develop sub-cultures. - Fierce military conquests can spread a culture just as much as benign emigration does. - Cultures splinter over time. Splinters that happened many centuries ago may seem strong enough to "separate" the two cultures and for them to no longer consider each other brothers and sisters in ancestry. - "Culture" as it is wasn't defined much until 18th-19th century nationalism. 80% of what we consider "part" or "core" of a culture (food, fashion, drinks, symbols) was "invented" in the 18th century. And of course, the most important of all: Any culture is shaped by its history, region and neighbours. Their cuisine will be food they could cook with available ingredients. Their warfare will be defined by the single most efficient way to win battles in their local region. Their myths and religion will be defined by everything they had no control over and influenced their lives greatly (a riverside empire /will/ have a river god or goddess to pray to, and even Christians continued these traditions). Really, Bavaria turning Catholic did not stop them from making promises and sacrifices to a deity of beer-making. Sometimes you won't be able to dig deeper. Even on the internet, information is limited. A good example is Bavarian hunting culture; beautiful in its own right when witnessed in person and true inspiration if ever you write a hunt in your fantasy novel (and want something more than a character killed by a boar). However, internet resources are very limited for it. There's still a source, though. Museums. Not kidding; museums of cultures will be more than happy to see you visit them. Where I learned the most about the above topic? In the Deutsches Jagd- und Fischereimuseum in Munich. And I had the fortune to see the Wolpertingers too... ... though it likely is a bit harder from the US.
Thanks for sharing! Im not in the US so that wouldnt be a problem. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond so extensively. Very cool
Like some of the posters above, I borrowed from cultures around the globe and throughout history. You don't have to be, as you said, a history buff though. I watch documentaries. I read Wikipedia. I pick up things here and there, but I'm no historian, and that's okay. Intricate governing systems and extensive histories are only an absolute necessity if you plan to include all of that information in your book. Like a character's backstory, it can be helpful to know more than you're going to include in the pages, but it's up to the individual writer how deeply they want to delve during the planning stages. And if you know you want a society that mirrors a Meso-American empire or feudal Japan but don't know enough to feel comfortable writing it, just wiki up that knowledge gap. That stuff is fun reading, if you're into it, and you might have some story ideas emerge while you're at it.
There is one concern with borrowing straight from real life: one has to understand some fundamental mechanics of a culture and its development in order to replicate those "triggers" as well. Else there can be inconsistencies - sometimes small and only noticeable to history freaks, other times blunders that most readers will notice. Mesoamerican culture was heavily subjected to the whims of the seasons; they were highly populated realms with a fair degree of civilization unusually weak to famines. This isn't unique; Rome was in the same shoes. Aztecs sacrificed to the god of the sun & droughts, the god of destiny, the god of fire & heat, the god of rain, water and agricultural fertility and the god of agriculture/seasons. See the pattern? It is highly unlikely that a culture with abundance in resources would continue sacrifices of that magnitude. Similarly, a plains nation will not develop along Japan's route, and a mountain-island nation with dozens of isolated realms will not develop into a centralized Empire like China ... unless you explain why it did so in your world! If you're interested in government forms & politics, I suggest you steer clear from trivial listings of the so-called "government forms"; I instead suggest Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power. Gives a far better understanding of the "organized anarchy" human society has truly been since the dawn of times and the cultural traditions that underline this. Government forms are another "easy way" of doing things; slap the label on your fictional nation and all is well, people will know what's what and that's the end of it. It won't, however, sate those who want to know the "Why"s.
You get that those were supposed to be two totally random examples, right? I wasn't suggesting that anyone copy paste a civilization, or that anyone insert a system that makes no sense in the context of the world in the story. I still think it's a good idea to borrow and draw parallels. If research is required, do it. As you said, some will want to know the whys, but not all readers look for that, and not all authors offer that. In fact, sometimes the fun of a fantasy world or a sci-fi world is in not knowing exactly how the current state came about. Fahrenheit 451 is a prime example. Anyone who knows anything about history knows some of the possible events that might lead to such a world, but in the text, we're given almost no clues whatsoever. That might drive some people crazy, but it's one of my favorite books. In His Dark Materials, we're even expected to figure out the different names they use for things we have here on earth. Nothing is explained as to how or why vast differences between parallel worlds exist. The reader is left to speculate on everything from history to physical evolution. Again, not everyone loves those books, but a heck of a lot of people do.
This is of course a cheating. But I go to art sites and look at different works until I find a artwork that will make my brain work and create a whole world in my head, from one image. https://www.deviantart.com/ https://www.artstation.com/ https://www.pixiv.net/
Sure; what's the holdup though? Can comment on any random example. There is no issue when something is not explained. Issue comes when explanation goes against the detail, or when a detail does not fit into the world. EG, an island nation that's been united for a couple centuries but apparently doesn't have a navy or any naval traditions. Or a pacifistic, peace-loving culture settled directly next to an aggressive, warmongering one. A culture fabled for their horsemanship somehow developed within mountains. Neighboring cultures with drastically different technological levels fighting wars in completely different ways. A culture building Han-Chinese inspired architecture right next to a culture building mesoamerican pyramids. Or Empires in general. I know fantasy is fantasy, but consistency and logic should still apply. As you wouldn't explain a man just flying up and sprouting flowers, then exploding into a black hole. Unless your world has such a spell, ritual or monster established.
Who gave you the idea that they were suggesting anything like that? I know. Why are you telling me that? As I said:
