Education is an often overlooked aspect of worldbuilding, even though education defines our individual worldviews and skill sets and also supports society as a whole. After all, people can’t occupy trades or other societal roles if they don’t know how. Today I want to explore how to develop the educational systems of your world… and why “fantasy school” isn’t always the answer. Continue reading “Fantasy School… or Not – Worldbuilding Education”
Culture and tradition are crucially interwoven. Tradition is the means through which culture is preserved and reinforced, which makes it the ultimate tool for exploring fictional worldviews. I’ve talked about building festivals and holidays before, but today I want to focus on how to use both “special” traditions (like holidays) and everyday traditions (like nightly worship) to emphasize and support a cultural worldview. Continue reading “Culture and Tradition in Fantasy”
In the past I’ve discussed how to use fantasy worldbuilding to explore worldview (and why it’s important to include real-world worldview), and I’ve talked about how to build the foundation of your world (which is what will form the basis of worldview). But I haven’t actually talked about why a cultural worldview is important as an aspect of the worldbuilding process, so today I want to fix that.
This is the core point. Everything else is secondary. A cultural worldview colors every aspect of a culture, influences how your characters think, breeds conflict when worldviews clash… Everything within and surrounding a culture is going to be influenced by that culture’s worldview. Therefore, it ought to be an intentional consideration. A culture’s worldview is the axis Continue reading “Why Cultural Worldview in Fantasy is Important”
Something I’ve always found fascinating, as a Christian with an interest in story, is how so many mythologies have points in which they reflect the truth of how the world was made, how it flooded, and even sometimes how it was saved and how it will end. When something is true, it is impossible to completely obscure that truth. Which is why I think it’s important for authors to lay out the groundwork for their fictional worlds fairly early on; the foundational truth of your world will shine through in many different areas. Continue reading “Deciding the Foundational Truth of Your World”
Something I’ve been exploring a lot lately in my Deseran worldbuilding is worldview. What cultures believe what? How do those beliefs differ from group to group and person to person? How do those beliefs clash with the beliefs of other cultures? I’ve found that I really enjoy exploring these different perspectives, and exploring how they do or don’t capture the real-world truth. So I wanted to write about some ways we can explore worldview effectively when writing fantasy, in hopes that some of you will also find it interesting or informative. This is something I’m still learning, so I don’t have it all figured out yet, but here are some of the things I’ve been able to identify from my own thought processes. Continue reading “Writing Fantasy to Explore Worldview”