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Almoners: ensured the poor received alms.

Atilliator: skilled castle worker who made crossbows.

Baliff: in charge of allotting jobs to the peasants, building repair, and repair of tools used by the peasants.

Barber: someone who cut hair. Also served as dentists, surgeons and blood-letters.

Blacksmith: forged and sharpened tools and weapons, beat out dents in armor, made hinges for doors, and window grills. Also referred to as Smiths.

Bottler: in charge of the buttery or bottlery.

Butler: cared for the cellar and was in charge of large butts and little butts (bottles) of wine and beer. Under him a staff of people might consist of brewers, tapsters, cellarers, dispensers, cupbearers and dapifer.

Carder: someone who brushed cloth during its manufacture.

Carpenter: built flooring, roofing, siege engines, furniture, panelling for rooms, and scaffoling for building.

Carters: workmen who brought wood and stone to the site of a castle under construction.

Castellan: resident owner or person in charge of a castle (custodian).

Chamberlain: responsible for the great chamber and for the personal finances of the castellan.

Chaplain: provided spirtual welfare for laborers and the castle garrison. The duties might also include supervising building operations, clerk, and keeping accounts. He also tended to the chapel.

Clerk: a person who checked material costs, wages, and kept accounts.

Constable: a person who took care (the governor or warden) of a castle in the absence of the owner. This was sometimes bestowed upon a great baron as an honor and some royal castles had hereditary constables.

Cook: roasted, broiled, and baked food in the fireplaces and ovens.

Cottars: the lowest of the peasantry. Worked as swine-herds, prison guards, and did odd jobs.

Ditcher: worker who dug moats, vaults, foundations and mines.

Dyer: someone who dyed cloth in huge heated vats during its manufacture.

Ewerer: worker who brought and heated water for the nobles.

Falconer: highly skilled expert responsible for the care and training of hawks for the sport of falconry.

Fuller: worker who shrinks & thickens cloth fibers through wetting & beating the material.

Glaziers: a person who cut and shaped glass.

Gong Farmer: a latrine pit emptier.

Hayward:  someone who tended the hedges.

Herald: knights assistant and an expert advisor on heraldry.

Keeper of the Wardrobe: in charge of the tailors and laundress.

Knight: a professional soldier. This was achieved only after long and arduous training which began in infancy.

Laird: minor baron or small landlord.

Marshal: officer in charge of a household’s horses, carts, wagons, and containers. His staff included farriers, grooms, carters, smiths and clerks. He also oversaw the transporting of goods.

Master Mason: responsible for the designing and overseeing the building of a structure.

Messengers: servants of the lord who carried receipts, letters, and commodities.

Miner: skilled professional who dug tunnels for the purpose of undermining a castle.

Minstrels: part of of the castle staff who provided entertainment in the form of singing and playing musical instruments.

Porter: took care of the doors (janitor), particularly the main entrance. Responsible for the guardrooms. The person also insured that no one entered or left the castle withour permission. Also known as the door-ward.

Reeve: supervised the work on lord’s property. He checked that everyone began and stopped work on time, and insured nothing was stolen. Senior officer of a borough.

Sapper: an unskilled person who dug a mine or approach tunnel.

Scullions: responsible for washing and cleaning in the kitchen.

Shearmen: a person who trimmed the cloth during its manufacture.

Shoemaker: a craftsman who made shoes. Known also as Cordwainers.

Spinster: a name given to a woman who earned her living spinning yarn. Later this was expanded and any unmarried woman was called a spinster.

Steward: took care of the estate and domestic administration. Supervised the household and events in the great hall. Also referred to as a Seneschal.

Squire: attained at the age of 14 while training as a knight. He would be assigned to a knight to carry and care for the weapons and horse.

Watchmen: an official at the castle responsible for security. Assited by lookouts (the garrison).

Weaver: someone who cleaned and compacted cloth, in association with the Walker and Fuller.

Woodworkers: tradesmen called Board-hewers who worked in the forest, producing joists and beams.

Other medieval jobs included:

tanners, soap makers, cask makers, cloth makers, candle makers (chandlers), gold and silver smiths, laundresses, bakers, grooms, pages, huntsmen, doctors, painters, plasterers, and painters, potters, brick and tile makers, glass makers, shipwrights, sailors, butchers, fishmongers, farmers, herdsmen, millers, the clergy, parish priests, members of the monastic orders, innkeepers, roadmenders, woodwards (for the forests). slingers. Other Domestic jobs inside the castle or manor:

Personal atendants- ladies-in-waiting, chamber maids, doctor.

The myriad of people involved in the preparation and serving of meals- brewers, poulterer, fruiterers, slaughterers, dispensers, cooks and the cupbearers.

When we talk about world building, we usually think scifi or fantasy where we have to create languages and build magic systems that somehow explain away why gravity is upside down or why the walls chant an ancient language that you can only decipher at the witching hour. But what if you just want to create a bizarre little town to set the scene for your story? I did it for Truth Weekend!

So here are 3 Steps to creating your own town.

Step 1: Nail Down An Appropriate Name!

Are you an author aiming for premium chaos like “Riverdale” or a deceitfully happy name like “Sunnybrook” when really there’s sinister activity below the surface? Maybe that has something to do with the hero or villain that got to name the town.

For example, there’s this neighborhood in sunny sleepy Florida called Champaign Lane that consists of middle middle/ lower middle income young people who just got out of college and are buying their first homes. Though it is in a sketchy part of town, all the little houses are a gorgeous pale pink or turquoise with white roofs and immaculate yards, so while I find the name to be ironic, I also view it as a goal. The residents are hungry and ambitious youth, hustling to make their dreams come true so that they can get to the place in life where they’re popping champagne. This also poses an allegory for living behind a passible facade of having lots of money and happiness when really we don’t. The hidden juxtaposition adds an extra layer to your setting and you didn’t even have to do that much.

Step two: what are all the secrets and sins of the town?

What are the legends of the lake? What streets are for daylight only? Who is the woman in the window you’re told stay away from?

Recently I was reading an idealistic romance set in a fake town in California with a scene in a grocery store where a character looks at a missing child flyer and says “It’s a shame this family can’t catch a break. Her sister literally drowned in Lake Eerie three months ago.” A small moment like that adds so much texture and validity to the scene and suddenly the thing on the page is alive again.

So if you’re looking for a nifty little writing exercise then I’d say write up three myths or legends about the places and people of your town. Bonus points if there’s story about the crooked family on the tallest hill.

Step 3: Define the details of what makes your town so special.

What are the oddities and marvels of this place that are so distinct that you couldn’t set it in a real town or a real neighborhood? I like to separate this stage of planning into three parts: color, aesthetic, & monuments.

For me, a fun way to get the wheels turning when world building is to create a color pallet. In the opening of Truth Weekend, the colors in Skye’s world are quite muted and grungy, but when we meet Rosie there’s a lot of plums, burgundies, wine red, and amber.

As they enter this new world together, the colors change again and there’s a vibrancy to it. It’s not just blue, its cobalt and if its red, its neon. It’s like the saturation is cranked all the way to 100 to reflect the emotional intensity and how uncomfortable, but cathartic this situation is and as their relationship changes the we then get into the lavenders, the magentas, and the concept of yellow which poses a fitting dichotomy in its meaning of rebirth and cowardice. Use color theory to you advantage! The symbolism writes itself.

Next, the Aesthetic

This lets you hone in on your unique style, your voice, your vision while having a touch stone to come back to.

Are we going for a Florida gothic, where we have an orange field on one side of the road and on the other side we have a marble cherub in front of a waffle house? I once saw a motel sign where the tagline read: stay for a while… stay forever. This creep-fest feeds into that well-meaning but unhinged Midwestern gothic of cornfields, dirt roads, and rumors of three eyed blood deer.

Look up some photos and make a list. Here’s an example of if I wanted to write a fun quirktastic town: sunny side up wall paper, the Oasis motel, conspiracy theory diner, rainbow slushies, cannabis cookie shop, a yellow house shaped like a boot, an iguana eating hydrangeas in sunflower fields, crop circle picnics, and a bookstore built for an acid trip.

Don’t be afraid to include wild life, nature, and peculiar architecture within this list, but if your creative genius mind doesn’t jive with aesthetics we still have monuments, which is the best part of this whole thing.

Monuments: What are the key locations that are only in this town?

What are the hot spots of the town? Where do the old people hang out? Is the town covered in graffiti or is it very buttoned up? Maybe it is abnormally homogenous. Is there a mansion next to a trailer park or a prison next to a school?

To get you mind cooking, create 10 unique locations. Why ten? Because it’s a good number, but you can always expand it. Create 10 locations and watch your dream town that is so full of character and foreshadowing unfold in front of you.

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