7 Steps to designing a culture
Filed under Tips & Tools on November 25, 2008
Tagged: cultures, fantasy fiction, world-building
I recently attended an employer-mandated cultural competency course, and while I don’t feel any more culturally competent than I did before the workshop, one of the exercises we participated in provided a great template for constructing a detailed culture in twenty minutes. I’ve talked before about how important it is to flesh out cultures when world-building for your fantasy fiction story. Now I’m going to give you 7 easy steps to do just that.
- Assign Physical Characteristics
- What do the members of the culture look like?
- How do they dress?
- Does the culture include men and women?
- What age groups exist within the culture?
- Define Sacred and Taboo
- What does the culture consider sacred?
- Does the culture celebrate any holidays?
- Does the culture have an organized religion or system of beliefs?
- What things are forbidden by the culture?
- Establish Boundaries
- Does the culture recognize borders or land claims?
- Is the culture limited to a certain region or is it widespread?
- Create Power Structures and Hierarchies
- How is the culture governed?
- Are all members of the culture treated equally?
- What factors determine who holds power?
- Construct Language(s)
- Is the culture mono- or multilingual?
- Does the culture emphasize verbal or non-verbal communication?
- Are there dialects within the culture?
- Formalize Greetings
- How do members of the culture greet each other?
- How do they greet outsiders?
- Name the culture
- Is the name formal or casual?
- Is the name used internally or externally?
- Did the name originate with the culture or was it assigned by outsiders?
November 25th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
yum. great post…much enjoyed.
November 28th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
You know, it’s amazing what you can get from a Employer mandated competency course…
This is a great list, thanks for sharing it
December 1st, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Very nice post, and added some things to my list I didn’t have (such as the greetings). Many years ago I ran across someone who had considered these types of things in building his gaming world – how people dressed, social taboos, how the family unit behaved. I hadn’t really thought about things like that up until then, except perhaps holidays and religions (since these could play into gaming sessions, esp. religion).
I found that by defining these things, it got me thinking about how other pieces of a society worked. I found myself asking the question as to how the culture became the way it was, which led to defining economic and political aspects of a society.
The pitfall to all of this is knowing when to stop. One can spend a lot of time fine tuning everything just to have those hours of work never amount to anything.