# creating a culture



## Queshire (Apr 29, 2012)

Quick survey; what all do you guys think I need to include if I want to build a believable, fleshed out culture for my world?


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## ThinkerX (Apr 29, 2012)

Not sure which world of yours you are talking about.

Also, what sort of society?  A magical equivilent of the contemporary US?  A fantasy kingdom?  Some sort of arcane republic?  A totalitarian state?

Each of these would require different things in order to be properly 'fleshed out'.


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## Queshire (Apr 29, 2012)

*shrug* just a culture in general, actually, I'm writing a paper for class about the process of creating a fictional culture. I just want to know what you all think goes into making a culture.


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## ThinkerX (Apr 29, 2012)

Hmm...now we don't just provide writing advice, but help with homework as well  

Ok...Religion and how people interact with it.

Government, how people interact with that, and what kind of control it has over their daily lives.

Castes /Class, formal (rigid and well defined) or informal - is it acceptable, say, for a common fisherman to become a captain of industry?  If it is, the caste/class situation is informal, if it is unthinkable and really offensive, then these divisions are pretty hard. What are the relationships between the various castes and classes?

Military - is the culture militaristic?  If so, expect lots of really bruising team sports, martial songs, and strong peer pressure to joing the army.  Otherwise, there may not even be a true professional army.

Food - what are the most common meals?  What sort of food is served on special occasions?  Are there meals that cut across caste or class lines?


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## Ghost (Apr 29, 2012)

If you're asking for general information aboutcreating cultures, you might want to take a gander at Creating Interesting Societies since it touches on this topic.


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## Ophiucha (Apr 29, 2012)

Geographic location dictates a great deal of it. If you live in lush, fertile lands with no harsh winters, you likely would care less about gods of the harvest, since you _always_ have a harvest, whether you pray or not. It determines what you wear, what you eat, and what you need in life (desert people are more concerned with water, since it is scarcer). It determines how you progress. If you don't have access to metals like iron, you simply won't progress along the same 'tech tree', to use _Civilization _terminology, as we did. You might not progress at all. Who knows. If you are walled in at all sides by mountains, you likely care less about military endeavours, since so few would be able to attack you.

Morality would be the second thing, again tied to everything else. Government, religion, equality among women, other races (if present). Animal rights: you could have a vegetarian or vegan culture if the people believe that is morally just. If you have your geographics and a basic idea of morality, the rest of the process is just giving everything a decent name.


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## Shockley (Apr 30, 2012)

Food, music, what passes as comfort and what passes as barely surviving.


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## Janga (Apr 30, 2012)

Political and religious structure.
Wealth of the people (class system? Poor? Rich? etc)
Geographic location (medieval England vs. Desert City etc etc)

I think those are the big three. Of course you can be as detailed as you want.


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## zizban (Apr 30, 2012)

Start with a single real life culture and read how it all connects. There is no formula for this. Personally I worry less about believable and more about consistency. Everything should make sense about a culture (a simple example: the wheel wasn't a high priority among the Mongolian but mastering horses was because of the vast expanses they had to travel).


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## Ankari (Apr 30, 2012)

Culture is independent of religion.  It may be influenced by it, but culture can develop without religion.  

Culture is the norm and expression of an identifiable group of people.  So culture would be clothing, spoken language or dialect, music, art, food and etiquette of a people.

Governments, religions, wealth, geography, castes and military may influence a culture, but they do not define it.  These would be aspects of a nation rather than a culture.  Take a look at any culture which spans more than one country and you'll see this to be true.  If you need an example look at the South Americans of Spanish descent.  You'll find that they share much of the same cultural aspects but have different national expressions.


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## Telcontar (Apr 30, 2012)

Culture is not the same as religion, but the two are not independent. In fact, I think that is the most important thing about creating a culture/civ/society for fiction - remember that _nothing_ is independent of anything else. Religion will affect culture will affect politics will affect morals will affect religion. 

I would say to start with history, and that in a large part starts with geography as Opiucha said. Give them an early history, ask yourself what it would mean to a primitive culture, and then start building from there, fleshing out some more history as needed. All cultures will change over time, and major events will have significant impacts (take a look at the people of Southern Spain before/during/after the period of Almohad rule).


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## Jabrosky (Apr 30, 2012)

I think Telcontar's onto something, but my current method is to take real historical cultures and mix up their characteristics to produce something new.


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## Saigonnus (Apr 30, 2012)

Go for the basic things any culture needs to survive as a building block. Food/resources they generate/trade, Basic societal structure, religions, geography (which could affect other areas), military might (or not), religions prevalent and of course transportation. Also consider what they look like while taking into account climate and possibilities of emigration (i.e. is your culture a mixing pot like modern ones or do they all have the same basic heritage?) What do they wear or build their homes from? are they sedentary (stays in one place) or are they migratory?

All of these questions/concepts could help to create a believable and fairly realistic culture.


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## Devor (Apr 30, 2012)

Telcontar said:


> I would say to start with history, and that in a large part starts with geography as Opiucha said. Give them an early history, ask yourself what it would mean to a primitive culture, and then start building from there, fleshing out some more history as needed. All cultures will change over time, and major events will have significant impacts (take a look at the people of Southern Spain before/during/after the period of Almohad rule).



That's cool, but to help narrow it down a little, I find it useful for me to focus on a specific event or two which most defines their history, and then figure out what built up or resulted from the event.  Kind of like starting with WWI and WII, and then figuring out the before-and-after-and-inbetween.


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## Ankari (Apr 30, 2012)

Telcontar said:


> Culture is not the same as religion, but the two are not independent. In fact, I think that is the most important thing about creating a culture/civ/society for fiction - remember that _nothing_ is independent of anything else. Religion will affect culture will affect politics will affect morals will affect religion.
> 
> I would say to start with history, and that in a large part starts with geography as Opiucha said. Give them an early history, ask yourself what it would mean to a primitive culture, and then start building from there, fleshing out some more history as needed. All cultures will change over time, and major events will have significant impacts (take a look at the people of Southern Spain before/during/after the period of Almohad rule).



I have lived in places where culture are not influenced by the religion of the people.  The Middle East is a great example of this.  One would think that Muslims, Christians and Atheists would have very different cultures, but this is farthest from the truth.  Each religious community (or non religious) follow their faiths passionately, but the clothing, foods, music, etiquette and language are all the same.  

Again, I don't refute that religion has a strong influence on cultures, all I am saying is that cultures can and do exist without, or independently of, religion.


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## Anders Ã„mting (May 1, 2012)

Queshire said:


> Quick survey; what all do you guys think I need to include if I want to build a believable, fleshed out culture for my world?



I tend to approach this by asking two questions:

1) Which other culture (or cultures, if I am doing a combination) do they most resemble when it comes to the bells and whistles?

2) What is their collective "cultural personality"? What is their outlook on life, what do they believe in, and what quirks do they have as a people?

The answers to those questions will be the foundation I build the culture on. Note that question 2 doesn't necessarily have to be related to question 1. In fact, it often works better when it doesn't.


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## Shockley (May 1, 2012)

I got to agree with the guys who are saying that religion is independent of culture. 

 The majority of the world's believers follow religions that came from one of two places: Israel or India. Most of these believers (with the exception of Hindus) do not live in the country where their religion originated. 

 The largest Muslim country is Indonesia. It's culture is far more Polynesian than anything we'd recognize as Arabic. China is more 'Chinese' than Buddhist, as can be seen by the major cultural differences between them and say, Japan and Burma (both of which are also Buddhist or super Buddhist influenced). 

 Heck, look at converts. Clovis and Guttorm the Old were both converts to Christianity late in life. They both stuck to their previous culture, though.


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## Telcontar (May 1, 2012)

Independent is still the wrong way to think of it. "Not dependent on," certainly - but the society as a whole is impacted by the major religions within it. Religion affects culture. As it affects everything else, and vice versa. 

Saying that a person 'stuck' to his previous culture is problematic. Culture is a society and group trait, not the trait of any single person. Furthermore, it is the sum of an extremely diverse set of things - including religion itself. It all adds up to my original stance: no part of a society/civilization is truly independent from the whole. You cannot remove any single aspect without affecting all of the rest.



> my current method is to take real historical cultures and mix up their characteristics to produce something new.



@Jabrosky: I often do this as well, but I - and I imagine you as well - have to refine those parts to make them fit with each other.


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## Shockley (May 1, 2012)

> Saying that a person 'stuck' to his previous culture is problematic. Culture is a society and group trait, not the trait of any single person. Furthermore, it is the sum of an extremely diverse set of things - including religion itself. It all adds up to my original stance: no part of a society/civilization is truly independent from the whole. You cannot remove any single aspect without affecting all of the rest.



 That's why I picked Guttorm and Clovis. They both Christianized their respective groups: Clovis the Franks, Guttorm the Vikings living in Anglo-Saxon England.


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## ascanius (May 2, 2012)

One thing I did was write a travel guide through that realm where the culture lives, important people, places, customs, everything.  It's a great place to start because you can go into further detail with the smaller aspects.  Also it will tell you a little bit about the why and significance, how it is different.


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## Aravelle (May 15, 2012)

What of values and taboos? Each culture has their set of unwritten rules, as to what's okay, what's great, and what's horrible.

Also, clothing is kind of important.


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## Caliburn (May 16, 2012)

I tend to work backwards with culture: values and social organisation first, followed by details like habitat, diet, economy etc. I do the same approach with characters and I think the things that make characters believable and interesting are the same things that make cultures believable. 
Not a direct answer, but other people have already listed the major themes.


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## Chilari (May 16, 2012)

I think one aspect of culture that is easily forgotten is economy. This brushes on geography, politics and religion, but I think is a separate factor itself too.

In terms of geography - what resources does the country possess, including climate? This determines what metals they can mine, whether they can produce or have to import ceramics, what food they eat, what fabrics they use, etc.

In terms of politics - who controls resources? How are they distributed to the wider community? You might have a single elite family which controls everything and gives out food as required by the masses, with careful records kept. Or you might have a more egalitarian culture, where at some point in the past the land was divided up and everyone has enough land to farm their own food - or sell their surplus to whoever they want to trade with. Or there might be this sort of setup, but with a governing body controlling the means of trade, such that those with a surplus don't get much benefit from it. In classical Athens, merchants from outside the Athenian empire had to pay customs taxes when trading at Athenian harbours, while Athenian merchants did not.

In terms of religion - what if a particular resource was commonly used in dedications to the gods. Bronze and marble statues were often dedicated to the gods in classical Greece, so there's an economy in scultuing which is much larger than it would have been if people only wanted statues to decorate their gardens. In Egypt, honey was amongst possible dedications, and thus valuable, and thus widely produced. One Egyptian prime minister of (if I recall correctly from my dissertation) about 1700BCE had scenes involving beekeeping in his tomb; part of his role included recording dedications made to the temple.


Besides economy, there are also myths about the culture's origins, the origins of their gods and heroes, or even the origins of certain monuments. The temple of Apollo at Delphi was said to have several predecessors, including one built of gold by the gods, one of bronze by the heroes of the Bronze Age, and one, older then even the gold one, of wax and feathers by birds and bees sent ahead by Apollo before the gods even got there. In fact animals are often woven into Greek myths like this - I couldn't count on two hands the number of times Zeus slept with some queen or princess in the form of a bull or swan, and bees crop up elsewhere including in a cave where Zeus as an infant was nursed.


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## Targon (Nov 26, 2012)

One major thing people somtimes overlook in my opinion. To me cultures get a lot of their look, attitude and feel is the way they fight. The materials they use, their attitude towards warfare etc. Hope this helps


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## gilamere (Jan 18, 2013)

This is a good sum up of how academics view culture and something to print out for when you think about culture creation to help get you started.  From an anthropological stand point, a culture is defined primarily by:

Social structure: gender politics, systems of organization (government, factions, parties, unions), who is kin, how family households are structured (nuclear, extended, compounds of kin, multiple spouses or mates), what marriage contract defines (who does teh baby belong to, who lives where, is there compensation involved, is this for politics or obligation...look up ghosts brides for some fun reading on marriage customs), obligations to greater community vs family/clan/household, and many other systems of how we interact between ourselves and others.  War would also fall under this category, who is us and who is "them".  Social lass, Social station, caste, clans, blood family all fall under this category.

Belief system:  This is not religion, so to speak, but the people's collection of beliefs, secular or religious, or anything in between, like "superstition" and folk beliefs. There are many and varying degrees of what constitutes religion, so what is "religion" and what is not is highly debatable as to where you are from as the author.  But there are other things that people believe, perhaps not everyone zealously, which are recognizable to the people from the culture, like the Western European and American love of thin young women in their media.  Elite Renaissance European peoples did not prize being thin as highly as we do today.  Those are two different belief systems from two different cultures.  And there are practices like shamanism, which tend to be more a collection of practices and beliefs than what our culture we tend to think of as religion, and even most modern shamans tend to not classify shamanism as a religion.  Taboos, philosophy, mores fall under this category.

Technology:  I'm not sure if I would include magic use in this category, it would depend on how it developed in the world you are creating.  Technology which survives as a part of culture is based on need.  War is always a great impetus for technological advancement or at least matching, because the home party will almost always not want to die from some different or advanced weapon they don't have or have knowledge of.  But a society that puts free market high on it's priorities will also have a greater technological advancement than others around them who might be a closed market.  Remember to keep technology simple for the needs of the people, few would keep making ultra-death rays at an extremely high cost, when your opponent has a simple projectile shooter, like a gun.  But also have fun with it, there might be other water conveyance systems than aqueducts!!  In this perspective, things like medicine, even herbal knowledge, would constitute technology.  A shaman's rattle could also be considered technology, as he and his patients would certainly attest to the fact that he would need it to heal.

Economy:  This is more that just market trends and stock prices.  Anthropologically, economy is a about resource acquisition and sustainability. What resources are a high priority? Land, waterways, knowledge, workers, access to ports, pipelines, holy places, these are all types of resources. What forms for currency are there, remember there are still places where you can, for instance, trade sheep for goats.  Who supports who, and how, is the main question for looking at economy from this perspective.  What is a prize commodity?  What would be sold on the black market?  What is scarce and what is abundant?  What kind economic system do they have?  How to do your people get what they need, and secondly, how do they get what they want?  How do they compensate others for it or the service?

Now these 4 pillars of culture are not independent of each other, belief effects technology as much as technology effects belief, eg. stem cell therapy and it's application.  Economy is effected by technology, social structure and belief, eg. think of the difficulties in having a major name brand restaurant enter the market place on a new continent.  If one aspect changes, there will be across all four pillars.They are interdependent, and it is my opinion, this is the kind of detail in a story that lends credibility to the culture creation and interactions.  Do you need to address all of these aspects all the time, I don't think so, but little details thrown in here and there can lend more realism to your world and peoples.


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## gilamere (Jan 18, 2013)

My husband just added, "never forget the culture of your target audience for whom you are writing!!  If they don't understand the cultural perspective of your people, there may be a problem which will require some delicate writing.  To a professional writer, someone who wants to get paid, you have to have buy-in and believability from your audience!"


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