In this series on world building we’ve discussed geography, magic, and technology. The next step is to create cultures to inhabit the world, groups of people with a common heritage and way of life. This step is aided by an understanding of history and anthropology, but requires only a sense of intuition. People have always been and will always be the same. In whatever setting or story we see humanity, even among nonhuman races, we will always see the traits that typify our race because they are the traits with which the reader can empathize. We like to read stories that reveal something about ourselves, even if it something with which we are already familiar. An intuitive understanding of humanity will allow us to create realistic cultures. When thinking about cultures and people groups, we need to ask a few essential questions: how do they live, how do they view themselves, and how do they view the world?
Understanding how a people group lives is understanding the rhythms of its daily life and the seasons through which it cycles. This will first and foremost be affected by their geography. People who live in a rich, alluvial plain will probably be farmers. Farmers are sedentary people who build homes and eventually cities. Their farms bring them plenty, which needs to be protected. They may develop trade from their surplus, their lives growing in wealth and comfort as a result. All these are the building blocks of a culture, aspects which will form an essential part of the final image.
These farmers will begin to form opinions of themselves and how they relate to the world, which will be the real beginning of their culture. It’s the stories we tell each other that define us. Perhaps the farmers tell each other that humans come from stars that fell from the heavens. That story tells us that the farmers think that human life is valuable because they have a beautiful origin, and it also tells us that they have a great reverence for the heavens. If the farmers believed that humanity was created from the blood of an evil dragon, as the Babylonians believed, then we would know that they had a very low view of humanity. Creating these stories, the myths and legend of a people, will help us determine their identity.
When creating a culture’s beliefs through stories, on might be tempted to depart from that which we know humanity to be capable. One might want to create a culture in which the people entirely subscribe to modern rationality and spurn the idea of the supernatural, but no reader would ever believe it. We intuitively know that no such thing could ever exist, just as we know that there can be no wholly evil culture nor wholly perfect society. When writers try to create cultures that are completely monochromatic, they are trying to sell something. Fr the reader to empathize, the culture must be human, meaning it inherits all our virtues and vices.
Knowing the stories that a culture tells helps us determine its identity. Does this culture sing of heroes battling in thundering chariots or of an old man solving his problems with magic? One culture may celebrate feats of valor while another praises the intellect. Both routes are valid because we know that such things are praiseworthy. If one is creating a hedonistic society which is in cultural decline, that culture may praise things that our intuition says are vile, but that’s the point. The reader and writer both know that this is a bad society and they can wag their fingers together.
Understanding how a culture views others is integral for determine how it will function in the wider world. If a culture believes that they are vastly superior to their neighbors, they will either turn to isolationist policies or conquest. A culture with a more favorable opinion of its neighbors is more likely to be diplomatic. Inevitably there will be another people group that becomes the enemy of a culture and becomes hated. A society without hatred feels to sugar coated. We know people too well to think that such a thing could exist. Hatred may be born from fear, jealousy, envy, vengeance, or any number of other reasons. A society doesn’t hate randomly, at the basest motivation a society may hate something because it is other. The reason a society hates is immaterial, only that the society does hate and it does have a reason. Hatred is a realistic expectation for humanity, as is love and loyalty. Without having traits with which we are familiar, a fantasy culture will alienate the reader.
Stories affect the future of a society as well as coloring its conception of the past. It’s said the Celts did not fear death but only feared that the sky would fall on them. In a vacuum, both of those beliefs seem ridiculous. That Celtic society could operate for hundreds of years on such principles seems almost comical. We know precious little of Celtic faith, but we do know that they believed in reincarnation, which explains the bravery in the face of death. That bravery allowed the Celts to make mercenary work a huge part of their economy, which is a very striking splash of paint in their cultural mural. The fear of the sky falling is another matter. We don’t have the story behind the belief, so we don’t understand their reason for believing it. Without the story it seems ridiculous to presume that this belief featured prominently in their direction as a society, in the rise and fall of their civilization, but it may have been as influential as their bravery in the face of death. Beliefs determine action and story determines belief. Skipping a step in the progression will leave a reader scratching his head just like we do with the Celts.
Culture is a somewhat amorphous concept and is certainly existential. Instead of asking, “who am I”, we are asking, “who are we?”. The answer lies in how we live and the stories we tell each other. Using a honed sense of intuition a writer can take this information to build new cultures that are alien to us but eminently relatable. Cultures that are relatable seem authentic because the reader can understand how one might come to have those beliefs. Creating cultures is the most difficult and most rewarding part of world building for me because I find that they are what truly make the world come alive.
Thank you for following this small series on world building. I hope it has been helpful for writers and satisfying for the curious. Keep an eye out for next week’s post, which will have something to do with the art of story.
The Sensiahd word of the week is “dyn" meaning “people”. Example sentence: Nes ys dyn oin. We are one people.