Building A Culture
October 18th 2009 16:09
Today's exercise is to designed to help you build a culture. Culture includes things like history, art, music, and language. Now, during this course you aren't going to build an extremely complex history, history of art, or language; it's simply impossible in such a short time period. But you are going to build the beginnings of a culture, enough to write a book in it without the book seeming entirely flat.
Again you're going to research cultures of the world around you. We've looked at religions with Gods similar to yours, and those are probably the cultures you're going to want to look at as well; so quickly search up a couple websites about each culture. Don't use Wikipedia, unless it's a mini-Wiki (likely to be more reliable), because anyone can edit Wikipedia and it is not always a reliable source.
1. What kind of cultures have evolved in climates similar to yours? Name each and describe each in a paragraph; include things like how they tell stories through the generations, what they do at the beginning of each new season (there was typically some sort of celebration for each) and what basic rituals are around food (preparing, cooking, and eating it).
2. What major differences are there between your world and ours that would affect cultural development? This includes things like magic and direct appearances of the deities of your world.
3. What are three challenges most people in your world face? (Things like common poverty, extreme winters throughout most of the world, or frequent droughts can be put here. It can also include things like controlling wild magic that courses through the land, struggling to obey a God that will literally torture them if they don't, things like that.)
4. How might these challenges make people in your world different from in ours?
5. What kind of religion does this culture have? How might this affect things like gender roles and class/caste?
If you only have male deities, or only have female deities, then obviously one gender is going to be seen by society as better than another. If your deities ask that their people help the poor, the average middle-class person might be more friendly with those below them-or not. If your deities say that the poor are worthless and should be enslaved, voila, you have an entirely different culture.
Think about whether or not the Gods you have created endorse things like war, slavery, torture and death penalties for criminals. What they have endorsed will make a big difference in the culture you are creating.
6. How is myth/legend/history passed down from one generation to the next?
This could be complicated or simple. It could be consistently one tradition for the last several hundred years-oral, pictoral, or written-or it could have changed. Perhaps early in the milennia it was pictoral, people drawing pictures on rocks to communicate-there may have been many reasons for this, including different cultures meeting and melding with different languages-and then it shifted to oral, and around the time your story begins, it is becoming written. It is unlikely that it was always written.
Think about the impact this would have. Myths would change more in an oral tradition than a pictoral or written tradition over time; words would be left out here and there, and given enough time, one story may become another one entirely.
7. How are various classes/castes different from each other?
The difference is unlikely to be purely about money. Factors in class may include such things as skin colour (if there are different races) or cultural heritage (if they are partially from someplace else), your parents, and things as arbitrary as hair colour and eye colour. The class you are born into will probably influence how much power you have. It will probably affect how much land you can or do own, how much money you can or do make/have, how much influence you do or do not have over other people.
In your world the poorest class may not have any rights to own land, and may indeed only be allowed to rent land. Or perhaps there is slavery, and that is the lowest class; in history slaves were commonly not considered to even be people. Perhaps a boy has much more power than a girl, or the other way around. If you are born into one family, you might be rich, own a lot of land, and be able to influence government policy-whereas if you are born into another, you might be poor and work for a rich person doing something like cleaning their houses or cooking their meals, and be forced to spend (by a law not allowing you to own your own property) the small wage they give you mostly on renting out their land.
I suggest you take a look at some older class systems and how they were enforced as you are making your decisions. Also figure out what their releases are-when the lowest class is allowed a little bit of freedom for a day or two. These things keep the system in flow. A day that the entire kingdom celebrates and that everyone has off makes the general population happier.
For more information to help you build your world, check out these rants by Limyaael:
Creating A Historical Background Of Ideas For Your World 1 on creating a history of ideas; think stories, think myth, think art. This is a great rant.
Creating A Historical Background Of Ideas For Your World 2 the second half of this wonderful rant.
Class/Caste Systems I believed I've already linked you guys to this one but you might want to read it again while you're working on this exercise.
Daily Prompt
The love of my life (500 words; can be any character's PoV, novel-related or not.)
Again you're going to research cultures of the world around you. We've looked at religions with Gods similar to yours, and those are probably the cultures you're going to want to look at as well; so quickly search up a couple websites about each culture. Don't use Wikipedia, unless it's a mini-Wiki (likely to be more reliable), because anyone can edit Wikipedia and it is not always a reliable source.
1. What kind of cultures have evolved in climates similar to yours? Name each and describe each in a paragraph; include things like how they tell stories through the generations, what they do at the beginning of each new season (there was typically some sort of celebration for each) and what basic rituals are around food (preparing, cooking, and eating it).
2. What major differences are there between your world and ours that would affect cultural development? This includes things like magic and direct appearances of the deities of your world.
3. What are three challenges most people in your world face? (Things like common poverty, extreme winters throughout most of the world, or frequent droughts can be put here. It can also include things like controlling wild magic that courses through the land, struggling to obey a God that will literally torture them if they don't, things like that.)
4. How might these challenges make people in your world different from in ours?
5. What kind of religion does this culture have? How might this affect things like gender roles and class/caste?
If you only have male deities, or only have female deities, then obviously one gender is going to be seen by society as better than another. If your deities ask that their people help the poor, the average middle-class person might be more friendly with those below them-or not. If your deities say that the poor are worthless and should be enslaved, voila, you have an entirely different culture.
Think about whether or not the Gods you have created endorse things like war, slavery, torture and death penalties for criminals. What they have endorsed will make a big difference in the culture you are creating.
6. How is myth/legend/history passed down from one generation to the next?
This could be complicated or simple. It could be consistently one tradition for the last several hundred years-oral, pictoral, or written-or it could have changed. Perhaps early in the milennia it was pictoral, people drawing pictures on rocks to communicate-there may have been many reasons for this, including different cultures meeting and melding with different languages-and then it shifted to oral, and around the time your story begins, it is becoming written. It is unlikely that it was always written.
Think about the impact this would have. Myths would change more in an oral tradition than a pictoral or written tradition over time; words would be left out here and there, and given enough time, one story may become another one entirely.
7. How are various classes/castes different from each other?
The difference is unlikely to be purely about money. Factors in class may include such things as skin colour (if there are different races) or cultural heritage (if they are partially from someplace else), your parents, and things as arbitrary as hair colour and eye colour. The class you are born into will probably influence how much power you have. It will probably affect how much land you can or do own, how much money you can or do make/have, how much influence you do or do not have over other people.
In your world the poorest class may not have any rights to own land, and may indeed only be allowed to rent land. Or perhaps there is slavery, and that is the lowest class; in history slaves were commonly not considered to even be people. Perhaps a boy has much more power than a girl, or the other way around. If you are born into one family, you might be rich, own a lot of land, and be able to influence government policy-whereas if you are born into another, you might be poor and work for a rich person doing something like cleaning their houses or cooking their meals, and be forced to spend (by a law not allowing you to own your own property) the small wage they give you mostly on renting out their land.
I suggest you take a look at some older class systems and how they were enforced as you are making your decisions. Also figure out what their releases are-when the lowest class is allowed a little bit of freedom for a day or two. These things keep the system in flow. A day that the entire kingdom celebrates and that everyone has off makes the general population happier.
For more information to help you build your world, check out these rants by Limyaael:
Creating A Historical Background Of Ideas For Your World 1 on creating a history of ideas; think stories, think myth, think art. This is a great rant.
Creating A Historical Background Of Ideas For Your World 2 the second half of this wonderful rant.
Class/Caste Systems I believed I've already linked you guys to this one but you might want to read it again while you're working on this exercise.
Daily Prompt
The love of my life (500 words; can be any character's PoV, novel-related or not.)
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Comment by Glas
There is some debate on step 6. As to whether written or verbal accurate. No need to get into the debate but one thing about oral recital was verse. When written in verse form the subject it was easier to maintain accuracy than just reciting a story. Written history from generation to generation could be just as inaccurate due to the lack of literacy and interpretation.
Comment by Dianna G
I Wish This Was 42
Fictional Worlds
Well, the facts written would likely be more accurate; society's interpretation of them may not be...
~Dianna