Culture – Page 2 – The Fire Thieves Studio

How to Begin an Invented Civilization, and How Far to Detail it.

14Sep

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Storytelling, Worldbuilding Process

How to Begin an Invented Civilization, and How Far to Detail it.

One of the hardest parts of building a culture from scratch is grasping the scope of the world. How much is necessary? How much serves the story and how much is just wasting time? (I don't think it's ever wasting time to fill out the details, but that's just me.) So to that end, I want to look at three categories based on their level of importance to understanding a culture you've invented. These are the places to start, what details a closer look might reveal, and then the little intimate details that can really breathe life into your portrayal of an original setting. 1: The Foundation Stones These are the things that I think a culture really NEEDS. Without any one of these things, you cannot really grasp the rest. They should be the foundation upon which the rest of your ori...

How to Name Things when you struggle with Naming Things

31Aug

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Species/Race, Worldbuilding Exercise, Worldbuilding Topic

How to Name Things when you struggle with Naming Things

Coming up with the perfect name for a character, a location, or almost anything can be one of the most frustrating parts of worldbuilding, or storytelling in general. At times the perfect name just comes to you, but often, when you have to name a thing before you can move on, it can be feel like nothing fits, and what you settle on sounds like garbage the next time you hear it. It is easy to overthink, especially if it is an important name, like a main character. It is also unfortunately easy to tell when someone has overthought a name. Johnny Stormlash. Nikki Heat. There is a kind of a love of ironically appropriate names, but for me, unless it really fits the genre to be so cheesy, those kinds of names only annoy me. So I'm going to go through some ways to circumvent the brain...

Creating New Civilizations with a Random Generator

24Aug

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Species/Race, Worldbuilding Exercise, Worldbuilding Topic

Creating New Civilizations with a Random Generator

Mountainside Temple in Bhutan Where to begin: Asking Questions I've already talked about this in previous posts because it is one of the key aspects of my methodology when it comes to worldbuilding. If you're stuck, don't know where to go next, don't have any idea what might need to be added to bring some uniqueness to your world, you want to start asking questions. Each answer will provide the potential for new questions, new answers, connections, and patterns to develop. Let us say you know you want a warrior culture, but don't want them to just be Klingons or follow that same honorable warrior cliche. You want something more original. Let's say they are human, for the sake of ease. Where do you go from here? Well, we've already established two parameters for what they need t...

Creating New Cultures and How to Not Make Them Racist

17Aug

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Worldbuilding Topic

Creating New Cultures and How to Not Make Them Racist

What makes a civilization? What makes a culture? I'm going to define a culture as a group with shared traditions and values, often regional, and a civilization as one or more cultures with a shared identity and system of government.A civilization can be made up of one culture, but it would probably be small, with a very small regional footprint. Usually a civilization is made up of a group of cultures that have allied, or been conquered into falling in line under one rule. As we can see in real civilizations throughout the world, there can be no small amount strife between cultures under the hat of one civilization. So how often, if you're designing fantasy races such as civilization of elves, say, do you consider the cultures that exist within that civilization? Usually in fantasy ...