Enjoy Your Stay

I’ve gotten quite a few requests for the qr codes of my moon and star stone paths, so I decided to post them! ☾ ★

~A series on miscellaneous world building tips~

On Creating Fictional Cultures

Culture is not shared. Nor is it meant to be.

My Catholic family had Brigid’s cross over the doorway. My Catholic neighbors did not know who Brigid was.

My family called it a clicker. Mostly everyone else in my town called it a remote.

My friend assumed from a young age that she would attend an Ivy League university because her father had “connections”. I didn’t know what the hell an Ivy League school was until I was a teenager.

Everyone drinks orange juice cold. My cousins warm theirs up in the microwave. God knows why.

Cheese curds are  found in abundance in Wisconsin and in parts of Minnesota and Illinois. Everyone else in America is deprived of cheese curds.

My friend knows a lot more about Confirmation within Catholicism than I do. We both went through it, together, but all I can tell you is that a Bishop is there and it’s like Baptism Part II.

My family’s idea of a vacation was a cabin in the woods. My friend’s idea of vacation was going to the beach for the day. My neighbor’s idea of vacation was spending a week at a resort in Mexico.

You should have variation like this when you create fictional cultures. Your characters will not be aware of everything within their culture. They will have different ideas of what something is/should be. Religion will vary by place and even by family (even if those families are from the same place). Not everyone in the same town will practice a holiday the same way. Not everyone will attach the same significance to elements of their culture, their religion, or their home/country/ancestral land.

If all of your characters (including the background characters) walk around with the same knowledge about the same topics, your culture is going to lack depth. 

One character might have been told X about a certain magical creature where another character might have been told Y. One character might have many family traditions whereas another character’s family might not have any. 

In summary:

Characters should have varying levels of knowledge of their own culture, heritage, history, nation, etc.

Variances in language, religion, tradition, etc. should exist among characters who belong to the same language/dialect, culture, religion, etc.

When creating these differences, consider how certain factors such as place of origin, age, socioeconomic class (past, present, class of parents/grandparents), religion, education, family, and language create these variances.

No, really. Open up a document, set yourself and your character down in it, and start asking questions. Ask them about their lives, their days, their opinions on current events. I suppose script format would work well for this if you just want to get down to the bare bones of things. Personally, I like writing it as a story so that I can introduce props and watch how my characters interact with them. Here’s an example of an ongoing interview I’m writing with Elizabeth, the main character of my current novel-in-progress, Songbird.

“We eat at the table together —”

“Do you talk about anything?” I interrupted.

“Huh?” Elizabeth looked up from her mug, blinking owlishly.

“At the dinner table,” I explained, “Do you talk about anything? Your days?”

“Oh.” Elizabeth took a long sip of tea, like she was giving herself permission to stop and think. “Well, I guess so? Mom’s a teacher at the elementary school, sometimes she tells stories about the kids. And dad does PR and event management stuff, so sometimes he talks about that.”

“What about you?” I asked, prodding gently. “Do you tell them about your day?”

Elizabeth gave a breathy laugh. “What’s to tell?”

This is great for a few reasons. It helps you develop your character’s voice, for one thing. But your characters will also go off on tangents. They’ll reveal parts of themselves to you that you didn’t already know. For example, I didn’t know what Elizabeth’s parents did until I wrote this. And while that information may never show up in Songbird, knowing it will make it easier for Elizabeth and the world she inhabits to feel real.

With fear.

He fucken books it out of there like a bat out of hell.