Building a Culture

Introduction

If you are writing science fiction or fantasy, you'll probably want to create your own universe, your own world, and your own cultures. Heck, that's half the fun after all. Building a realistic culture takes an understanding of human nature, research, creativity, and intuition. You can make your job easier by having a rudimentary understanding of culture itself.

This article gives you a starting point to help you create more realistic cultures for your stories. Before you begin reading it, you should read the What is Culture? article in the anthropology section of this web site. It will help you understand the terminology and thinking behind this article. When you're finished, you can return to this article.

This article covers the following topics:

Using Cultures in Stories
Asking Some Questions
Wrap Up

You can can click on one of the topics above to jump right to it or use the browse buttons below to peruse the article.