Scribes & Archers

St. Patrick’s Day has nothing to do with leprechauns, four-leaf clovers, or lucky pots of gold… except in grocery stores and on my blog today because I did allow the seasonal aesthetic to inspire today’s topic. Today we’re talking about how your fictional cultures view providence, luck, and fortune–whether they see all three as synonymous or maintain distinct categories. Let’s get started! (And to be fair, here’s a video–albeit a somewhat comedic one–about the actual reason we’ll be wearing green next week.)

Establish Your World’s Baseline

Before you develop individual cultures’ views of providence and luck, it’s beneficial to have an idea of what those terms really mean in your world and who (or what) is truly responsible for events occurring the way that they do. Is your world guided by a sovereign god/pantheon? Do things really come about by chance or luck? Are events steered primarily by man’s choices?

Knowing how things truly work in your world will inform the patterns your cultures will be able to observe, which will inform their beliefs even if only in small measure. It’s harder for your characters to maintain a belief that reality shapes itself around man’s choices if they can see a pattern of events occurring contrary to man’s choices, for example. They may still cling to that belief for other reasons, but the true pattern of your world will show itself and alter, prove, or disprove cultural worldviews in the process.

Look at Your Culture’s Religion

Your culture’s religion is likely to play a significant role in their perception of providence and fortune. If they believe in a sovereign god/pantheon, that may settle the matter entirely; they may believe strictly in providence ordained by their god(s). If, on the other hand, they believe in less powerful gods, or gods who intentionally allow men to make mistakes and forge their own fortune–for good or ill–then this may be much less clear-cut. There may be more room in the latter scenario for your culture to believe in man-made destiny; in some impersonal and ethereal “fate,” “luck,” etc.; or in some combination of providence, man-made fortune, and “luck.”

Think about the character of your culture’s god(s). Are they personal or impersonal? Omnipotent/omniscient or limited in power and knowledge? What is their perceived design for humanity–or do they even have one? All of these factors may go into your culture’s perception of their gods’ influence on the direction their lives take.

The Agency of Man

Man doesn’t generally like to relinquish control of things. This is certainly true in the real world, and it’s probably true of mankind in your created world as well (your fictional races may be prone to this same weakness, or may avoid this pitfall in favor of different weaknesses). Many like to believe that man can shape his own destiny, determine his own fortune, make his own luck. Whether or not this is true in your world, at its core, there are likely to be cultures that believe this–and many cultures that believe it in part even if they don’t believe that man is the primary driver of events.

Your culture might believe, for example, that the decisions of men are responsible for all things. They’ll have to create an explanation for how it works out when individuals have competing interests and take competing actions, but perhaps this is their belief. Or maybe instead they believe that life is primarily driven by some impersonal “fate,” but it can be influenced by man’s choices and “fate” may take an interest in individuals–perhaps some individuals are naturally more in favor with “fate,” in this culture’s view, due to their connection with magic or for some other reason. Or perhaps they believe that the gods have the final say in events, but that they may bow to man’s requests from time to time, or work in cooperation with man. Some relatively few cultures may, of course, take the more extreme position of believing that their god(s) are fully sovereign and their own activities follow a course set by said god(s), with no effect of their own.

The question of providence/luck/fortune is, ultimately, a question of man’s agency, and how highly your culture thinks of itself and the design of man (or other races).

Environment Matters

This is an influence that may be easy to overlook, but your culture’s environment can play a part in how they view providence, etc., because their environment forms the shape of the world that they’re most closely observing. It’s a bit like the illustration of the blind men and the elephant; different cultures in your world are all observing the same world with the same fundamental laws, but a mariner culture will be most familiar with the patterns reflected in the sea, a mountain-dwelling culture will be most familiar with the rugged, solid nature of the mountains, a desert-dwelling culture will be most familiar with the shifting and unforgiving desert, etc., and these observations may then carry over into their conception of the nature and patterns of the world’s metaphysics as well as its physics.

Take that mariner culture, for example. If they apply their observations of the sea to be reflective of the metaphysical reality of time and providence, then they may see fortune as a fluid thing that passes in repeated cycles. They may also acknowledge that it has moments that are less predictable, wilder and more surprising, that throw things out of the comfortable order one may have been used to. Perhaps they believe that man can steer through destiny, but will have the most success when he steers in tandem with the natural flow of providence.

You don’t have to tie your culture’s view of providence quite so closely to their observations of the natural world, but it is worth noting that cultures which have done less to divorce natural revelation from the metaphysics underlying their world may draw heavily on that natural revelation in their efforts to understand those metaphysics. Of course, your culture may have undergone this divorce of the physical and metaphysical, in which case their environment may have very little to do with their perception of providence, except perhaps as vestiges from a previous time prior to that division.

What This Means for Everyday Life

None of what this post has covered has any bearing unless it impacts how your characters think, observe the world around them, and go about their daily lives, since that is what matters in your storytelling. The good news is, the matter of providence can influence those things quite a bit!

Your culture’s view on providence and luck can affect your character’s voice, which can then be reflected in how they interact with the world and (if you’re writing in 1st person or in limited 3rd person) how they narrate their story.

It can also affect how they perceive their own agency, which can influence how they behave with regard to the plot of your story. Do they believe their actions have drastic consequences, that they’re duty-bound to follow the path laid for them by providence, or that their actions have little consequence? This will affect how they respond to events in the story and how they do or don’t drive the story forward.

Looking to ensure your plot events are character-driven? Check out the plotting prompts in the Scribes & Archers resource library!

It can also affect the type of story you’re telling, in some cases. “Chosen One” stories and other prophecy-driven stories rely on certain cultural views (and underlying mechanics) of providence and fate in order to function, and whether your core culture is in agreement or disagreement with these views and mechanics can drastically alter the tone and trajectory of such a story.

On a more surface-level note, your culture’s view of luck, etc. can also affect their language and common sayings, which can color your character voice and make your setting more immersive.

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I’d love to hear from you. How do the cultures in your world view providence, luck, etc.? How does this affect your characters and plot? Is this a topic you’d considered before? Share in the comments!