What are tips on making fantasy cultures?

Figure out the economics. Seriously, what a culture values, the attitude towards money, it plays into a lot of other elements, and it is something that is often overlooked in world building.

Lady Chipmunk said:

Figure out the economics. Seriously, what a culture values, the attitude towards money, it plays into a lot of other elements, and it is something that is often overlooked in world building.

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That's a really good point. And it can justify all sorts of related worldbuilding. Frex in my SF Epic, we have the relict of an anti-smuggling tactic. So I had to figure out: Why did this exist in the first place? Why is smuggling illegal? And that led to: Because planetary governments (and for that matter, local gov'ts) depend on export tariffs, which are viewed as payment for value removed from the planet. Which in turn means poor planets with few or no exports have no government to speak of, which in turn means little or no enforcement against smuggling, which leads to a sort of permanent free-for-all zone, and that's involved in current politics... you can see how it all ties together as background for my society, all based on who gets money how and for what.

Reziac said:

That's a really good point. And it can justify all sorts of related worldbuilding. Frex in my SF Epic, we have the relict of an anti-smuggling tactic. So I had to figure out: Why did this exist in the first place? Why is smuggling illegal? And that led to: Because planetary governments (and for that matter, local gov'ts) depend on export tariffs, which are viewed as payment for value removed from the planet. Which in turn means poor planets with few or no exports have no government to speak of, which in turn means little or no enforcement against smuggling, which leads to a sort of permanent free-for-all zone, and that's involved in current politics... you can see how it all ties together as background for my society, all based on who gets money how and for what.

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I wish we saw more evidence of explicit planning such as this in modern SFF.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

I wish we saw more evidence of explicit planning such as this in modern SFF.

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Ha, planning, not hardly. More like my hypertrophied Node of Extrapolation at work. One thing follows from another, and another, and another... but what that prevents is shit dropped in at random with no connection to anything else.

Tho the aforementioned relict was a throwaway... it just needed explaining.

Play a lot of video games. My favorites are the ones with entire worlds you inhabit, that still feel like they live without you. Elder Scrolls (Skyrim especially), The Witcher, Dragon Age, and Fallout are great examples, but you could be surprised at the amount of world-building that goes into something like GTA or even Killzone. Some of that's science fiction, of course, but might still inform.

But once it's built, don't talk about it. Just show it.

It always bothers me when like every peasant in a fantasy world is pumped to share the town's history with the protagonists like that's all that people in that world think about. Leave it in the background, where it'll strengthen the plot rather than step in the way.

Oh, and I think it's been mentioned, but avoid creating cultures with a single focus. Some cultures favor war, or profit, or whatever, but most are a lot of things. Even Klingons have opera.

JoshSpaceCole said:

Oh, and I think it's been mentioned, but avoid creating cultures with a single focus. Some cultures favor war, or profit, or whatever, but most are a lot of things. Even Klingons have opera.

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A favorite tactic of mine is to have a fantasy race that is clearly based on one that is easily recognized in fantasy writing and then develop a very different culture for the race than what the norm is. Now here's the catch: even though the race is way different, the other races in the world still apply all the same clichés on them that readers would. So after chapters of talking about them one way, like you expect, you are suddenly struck with something completely different when you really get a look at the race.

Example in motion: current WIP features a race based on the Minotaur. Typically, this is a race viewed as a monster, most often as a ravenous flesh eater that guards the center of a labyrinth somewhere that is most inconvenient to the characters. A lot of times, they aren't even really sentient in the traditional sense, being more beast and than man.

Our Minotaur were certainly descended from those bull-monsters of lore, but were very different. They had a complicated social structure that revolved around their own religious philosophy (they adamantly refuse to worship the traditional gods on their world) called the Atok'baratta. Here is a clip from our WIP. It is one of the Minotaur responding a the MC's observation that it sounded like they worshiped the god of war:

"No, Human," the Minotaur said finally, "the Minotaur do not follow your war god. I am not talking about a never-ending battle. I am talking about conflict. It is what we call the Atok'baratta. To you it would mean something close to "The Two-Fold Conflict." ... There is always conflict. It is what makes us stronger and what makes us try to be stronger. Each challenge in the conflict will be harder. Eventually we are no longer strong enough. Conflict makes all things and unmakes all things.

“When there is no Atok’baratta, there is nothing. Atok’baratta made the gods to conflict with the world to form, then created conflict among them so that there would always be Atok’baratta. It is why all things, Good and Evil, have a place on Vankan. They must be there for the Atok’baratta; for the conflict. Without them, there is no conflict, no Atok’baratta, no world."

Sprinkle in complex traditions about names and titles and suddenly the monsters of before are a philosophical warrior race. Mazes still factor in to their artwork and their city designs, but mostly for defensive purposes; they never get lost in a maze, but an invading army will.

Give the cultures of your world life and the world breathes with them.

Two things to remember:

Race != culture
And neither one is a monolith

eqb said:

Two things to remember:

Race != culture
And neither one is a monolith

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This, exactly. Couldn't be said better.

And cultures are pretty complex, but most people think of themselves as simple. Any one representative of a culture is going to value different aspects of it, idolize aspects of other nearby cultures, resent some parts, embrace others. If you asked me what it meant to be American, or Pennsylvanian, or even from my town, I'd tell you something different from the guy next to me. And we'd both be right.

A culture is like huge character that can never be fully understood, and is all the more enticing for it. I know I'm always learning stuff about the worlds I write as they go on, and I'm sure you will too. So sometimes, you really don't want to wait.

Also, I don't know if this helps, but I think it's interesting: bee hives have personalities. They are neither individuals nor groups, but they have distinct enough characteristics that a beekeeper would know the difference. I know learning that shaped my methods for writing and understanding culture, but it's a kind of weird observation nonetheless.

Another one for economics. Work out how goods exist and be consistent.
For example, character has a lovely wrought iron gate. Fine in itself, but - does the society have:

Mining of iron ore
Charcoal production
Blacksmiths
Transport sufficient for moving wrought iron gates around

So a rich family near an iron working area may well have such a gate. A farmer further away from any mine/metal working area probably uses wood from on the farm.

Some worldbuilding is done as a beautifully painted still life - lots of gorgeous things piled up and described, but it is a bit of a random pile....

If your farms are reliant on hay, then they will be able to overwinter far less stock than after root veg like mangolds were discovered.

Salting of food vs smoking - distance from salt mines/the coast/woodland.

Buildings were generally constructed of the local material - stone, wood, brick - so varying regional appearance - unless very, very rich.

For me, a lot revolves around asking a bunch of questions (and regularly looking at real world cultures for answers). For instance, let's say you want to write about two cultures that have recently come into contact with each other. A question that immediately comes to mind is "why now?" (Generally the answer will involve a lot of different factors, from economics to technology to geopolitics to cultural mores. In general, the more of these that hit, the more realistic the culture will seem.)

Let's take Spain in the New World. "Why now?" was a conjunction of political (Spain had agreed to cede the southern hemisphere to the Portuguese + had just finished their re-conquista), technological (newish navigation technologies + boats), and probably a host of other things I'm not thinking of. But it didn't just happen because one guy said, "Hey, the world is round!" and everyone went, "Woah, I never would have thought of that!" (Especially as Renaissance Spain both knew the world was round and had a pretty good idea as to how large it was.)

I actually plan a large cultural event, plop in the middle of the book, and just see where the story takes me. No world building needed.

Tyler Silvaris said:

Sprinkle in complex traditions about names and titles and suddenly the monsters of before are a philosophical warrior race. Mazes still factor in to their artwork and their city designs, but mostly for defensive purposes; they never get lost in a maze, but an invading army will.

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I love this idea. All of it, the concept of conflict as creating life and death, philosophical minotaurs... Wow.

Playing with tropes is so much fun, and exploring history to find out real aspects - whether warriors were expected to play music or recite poetry or drinking to excess was actually considered bad manners; that in some cultures 'slaves' (or thralls or villeins or serfs or cacht, and so on) had the right to the protection and care of their owners, and could even achieve freedom; that some cultures set a price of gold on a man's life and in taking it the killer and his family would pay a fine, rather than the killer face death or imprisonment (see wergild/weregild or galanas); or that the liver was believed to be the seat of emotions, not the heart - can really make a difference to creating a new world or culture. I quite like mixing and matching - creating cultural reasons why that country uses weregild but will execute killers for killing by poison, or why that one never takes slaves, or why those two fight for seven hundred years, but band together whenever a neighbour attempts a strike again one or other of them.

In short, world-building is fun. My problem is that I use it to procrastinate on the actual writing. And that I keep starting new stories without finishing others.

On top of all things, avoid making your race just a case of cultural appropriate. Remaking the Japanese culture and just giving them a different name and different racial characteristics will capture no one's imagination, and might even offend people.

Some of my favorite examples of fantasy races are the Gyptians of His Dark Materials and the Dothraki of Game of Thrones. These races clearly took influence from existing cultures, to the point where would could still guess what culture were inspired by, but the also changed and elaborated on the details enough to make them something completely unique.

Start with the beginning. Imagine the landscape, imagine someone or some people finding the landscape and building the first house, imagine how they survived, imagine why people flocked there to build, imagine how they managed people when the population got into the 100s, imagine what people did with their time when they weren't surviving, imagine what they believed their purpose was, how was it managed with a 1,000 people, 10,000 people, 100,000, etc.

Each step is guided by those that precede it. Feel free to inject extra outside influences that came to alter the culture as you go from step to step.

If you want help, read a history book on the start of a civilisation and imagine how it would change if you altered extraneous variables that affected it as it was growing.

Read history books. Ask yourself why something happened - why a civilization flourished and then fell, why it built monument X and believed in God Y.

In particular, notice how each culture responds to its environment and its technology. Things generally happen as a response to something.

Then when you've done that, do it again from a different perspective. The viewpoint of a king is very different from that of a servant. Don't just assume that civilization A plus event B = outcome C. Lots of things will be happening at the same time.

Then build a civilization that is the way that it is for a reason. If your civilization is a nomadic warrior race, how did they manage to bypass all the technological advantages that come from not being nomadic warriors? Did they go through the agrarian revolution phase or just steal the technology from others?

And when you've assembled the back story for your civilization, please please please resist the temptation to dollop it into your story as huge indigestible lumps of info dump.

Once! said:

And when you've assembled the back story for your civilization, please please please resist the temptation to dollop it into your story as huge indigestible lumps of info dump.

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I'm going to offer a radical variation on that. Forbid yourself from explaining the culture AT ALL. Think about yourself and those around you for a minute. How often do people in general go around explaining to each other the origins and the evolution of a culture?

Let the culture reveal itself organically. Let the story flow and grow and do its thing. Culture, environment, history, evolution, physics, magica, there are all kinds of huge subjects that can tie our stories in knots and mire the plot deep in lectures on why and wherefore of the time and place of our story. If you think it would be neat to include that, think about the sentence I just wrote above.

Try denying yourself ANY text explicitly explaining the culture. See what happens. It's not like you can't change your mind, or find a happy medium.

The more you read on any aspect of society, the better informed you will be in creating your own consistent world. Economics, sociology, anthropology... it all helps us understand how and why things are they way they are. Are.

Nothing wrong with a bit of appropriation, if you ask me. But you can't just change the name of the Romans to the Dangon Empire and expect anyone to buy into your world!