How does one properly World-Build?

[TheCatholicCrow]

When beginning a new fantasy novel, I ask "Who are the main characters, and what culture do they come from?" I trained as an anthropologist, and to me, culture determines characters' world views and beliefs. Once you determine the culture, many of the character details will fill in automatically. Then, as I fill in an outline of those details, I work out the back story: relevant personal history, relevant cultural history, the physical setting, the magic systems (religious and secular, male magic and female magic), etc.

^^^ THIS! ^^^

Anyone with an Anthro background will probably agree ... but yeah ... establishing culture is HUGE.

 

[skip.knox]

Hey Anthro, what is a culture? I know how I treat the word as a historian, but some specifics might help others.

 

[Futhark]

I'm currently doing the Working with Diversity unit in my counselling diploma. It says that culture is a set of beliefs, values and attitudes that are passed from one generation to the next. Culture provides a context for an individual's place in society and the wider world. Through the transmission of traditions and societal rules, among other things, an individual's identity is more often than not built on this foundation. Everything from body language to cognitive patterns to what they think tastes good is influenced (yes, I like Vegemite). Of course, there are many definitions for culture, this is just food for thought.

I found a table called Elements of Culture on Pinterest that's interesting, but it's not mine so...

 

[Peat]

Something I'm considering adding to my process after a chat with a friend is limitations. He argues that you've got to know what your characters can't do or otherwise plotting often becomes an exercise in pulling things out of your fundament.

Me, I'd expand on the idea. When you start creating your cultures, your geography, your everything, I think its really important to know what things definitely aren't going to be in. For example, some worlds make a point of avoiding the standard western European inspirations. I imagine most of us think of these sort of limitations without ever really intending to but taking a moment to stop and think can make things that bit more coherent.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Oddly enough, my appraoch was a free-spirited willy-nilly one. While yes, I knew how the world began, and how the world ended, and a whole lot of basic culture story points throughout time, the real details weren't set in stone until I had the world built, as in the complete map of the world. Geology and climate are such a huge part of how cultures develop... I needed that to really gel all the liquid concepts. Once the stone of the world was in place... things fall into place. And the beauty is, when doing a photoshop map, lots of geo-details I just threw in sparked ideas... Huh, that's an interesting mountain... Huh, people there would be geographically isolated, how would they develop? So, my process was a weird loosy goosey thing.

Geography, climate, religion, and natural resources... and make those fit the basic boundaries of my concept... that's how I'd start again. Or if more lazy, hit the random button on Terraformer until I got world map that tripped my trigger, LOL. Then, off to the races with however that vision inspired my brain.