Worldbuilding Basics

Writing a Realistically Developed Culture

Worldbuilding can be a tricky thing to get the hang of, especially if you are new to writing and don’t fully understand everything you need. Like all parts of creating a story, worldbuilding is essential because it acts as the basis for your setting and potentially the plot's conflict. Without worldbuilding, a story can feel hollow and not alive. On the opposite side, a story can feel bloated or poorly written if it tries too hard to make you understand its worldbuilding and setting. There is a fine line to walk when it comes to creating your world and making sure that it feels real. The best way to make a good world and believable culture is to understand the very basics of creating fictional geography, history, and language.

Geography

The most important aspect of any fictional world you create is the world itself. The geography of the real world has played an important role in how our societies have developed and fought throughout our history. To create a world with believable nations, conflict, and culture you need to first understand geography and what a believable world looks like. I understand that it sounds boring and time-consuming, but a large part of being an author is studying what you don’t know so that your writing turns out better.

A good example of how geography affects the conflict and history of our world is to look at the Caucus Mountains. Throughout our history, many empires - including the Romans, Ottomans, and Russians - would have their expansion halted because of the Caucus Range. The reason for this is because the mountains are a massive range that are surrounded by seas on both sides making it impossible to cross on land and unwise to cross by sea. This barrier of tiny mountains determined the range of many empires and thus allowed the people beyond the range to develop a culture untouched by those empires.

Geography doesn’t just affect the way people expand but also how they live in the land they’ve chosen as their own. For example: Scotland is a very mountainous region covered in highlands and rolling hills. This terrain is very rocky and not very good for farming which is why old Scottish cultures put focus on using the land for shepherding. If they had tried to farm the highlands instead, it would have ended very poorly for them.

For a good guide to understanding the basics of geography watch this:

If You’re Interested in Quickly Making Detailed Maps Try This:

History

An important element of how cultures have developed and continue to develop is their history. The events and conflicts of the past are important forging factors for how a group of people identify themselves in the world and in comparison to other cultural groups.

When you start writing down the history of your fictional cultural group you don’t have to be too in-depth; start small with a few key historical moments that influenced cultural development.

Some real-world examples of major events with big cultural impacts would be the Spanish exploration and pillaging of the Americas, the French revolution, and the American occupation of Japan after World War two. All three of these events are easily remembered because they had a massive impact on the development of the cultures involved. South America had many cultures destroyed, the French became a people ruled by democracy rather than a king, and the Japanese became a technological state that quickly developed and sold new technology.

Language

One of the most obvious factors that defines a culture and a group of people is the way they communicate. Language is a large part of our world and can often be a dividing factor. While many authors try to step around the issue of different languages in their settings, I believe that it can be a fun bit or worldbuilding that can often help (or hinder) the creation of conflict in a story.

Let’s look at “Priory of the Orange Tree” by Samantha Shannon. In this story, language and culture play an important role in the story’s conflict. The plot is driven by the crashing of different cultures through politics and a language gap. Near the end of the story, a character from Seiiki (a fictional country based on Japan) must interact with a character from Inys (a fictional monarchy based on England). There is a long chapter of conflict between the characters because one is under the belief that the other cannot understand him which leads to him desperately trying to convey his urgent needs in any way he can.

This use of language not only helps drive the conflict in the story but it also helps to make the setting feel like a real place with real history instead of just a background for dragon slaying. Language is the heart of culture and is something that lets us identify with the other people in our groups. There are tons of real-world examples found just in the US showing how language can bring people together to form distinct groups.

When adding fictional language to your world, remember, no one is asking you to take after JRR Tolkien and actually create a language. If you want to include fictional words to help with immersion then go right ahead, but please make sure they are consistent with the cultures you create.

Want to take the dive and create an entire language? Try this as a guide:

Personal Example

It would be unfair to end this without talking about how I have used all three of these to create cultures in my writing. For my example, I will be taking a look at the culture of the Toxe, a fictional alien species from a series of short stories I publish online.

First, geography. In the ancient times, before the Toxe left their homeworld, they lived on a planet that had few large continental land masses. The few continents that did exist were heavily populated. Their flat lands and river lands were developed for farming while the more mountainous regions were used for hunting and the creation of temples. One continent was a very thin, long mass that stretched across the northern hemisphere and was made almost entirely of mountainous terrain. This created a culture of people who used the height and safety of the mountains to live peacefully. They would hunt, fish, and gather food in the mountains while living in hot spring valleys.

Second, history. The history of the Toxe before their ventures into space is not something that I have widely developed because the parts of their history that are important to the stories I write, all happen after they began exploring space. The key events that caused great cultural change are, the colonization of another planet in their solar system, the eruption of a supervolcano on their homeworld, and the recolonization of their homeworld. All three of these events led to a massive shift in culture. They were no longer a people that could live in pleasure because they had survived a near extinction. This led to them becoming a species that valued efficiency and proper use of resources to ensure that they would never suffer the shortages caused by the eruption.

Third, language. In the short stories I write about them, the Toxe are a very unity-focused species. They care about making sure that every one of them is united as one group. This focus on unity was then pushed further by the government creating and establishing an official language that would be used as the standard for all forms of communication. This common tongue helped make communication easy for the species, but it also served to hurt heir cultures because it almost erased one of the most important aspects of culture.