The stories we tell have characters in them. I know, this seems obvious, but stick with me. Characters come from cultures and those cultures shape who they are, just like we are shaped by our cultures in the real world. None of us crawled out from under a damp rock with our opinions magically sprung from our minds like Athena springing from the mind of Zeus. This very obvious fact has a very big implication for fantasy world building. Creating the culture that gives rise to your protagonist is one of the most complex, rewarding and complicated tasks you can undertake.
At first this task can seem daunting. After all, culture includes language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music, art, and more. It is the fabric of a community's life and it ties individuals together, giving them a common identity. Culture is dynamic, evolving with society's progress, reflecting the values, norms, and practices that define a way of life.
That is certainly a mouthful! But on this podcast we focus on world building what we need when we need it, so how do we build a culture or multiple cultures without drowning in the details?
We take the same approach as we have taken in the other episodes of this podcast. We break the process of cultural creation down into components, then we fill in what we can, moving between sections as we need to. Culture just has more sections than our previous elements! That is the process today’s episode kicks off. We will define the cultures that you want to build and the social framework that forms the scaffolding that you can hang the rest of the details of the culture on. Welcome to another episode of Worldbuilding Blueprints from Just In Time Worlds with your host Marie Mullany.
If you're watching this on YouTube there is a playlist where you can watch the other episodes in the information card. If you're listening to this in a podcast app, the previous episodes are available there. This episode as always is brought to you by the wonderful members of my YouTube channel who make this entire endeavor worthwhile and there is details on how to join their magnificent ranks and the perks you can get in the links down below.
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Right, without further ado, let’s define the framework of your culture!
[Social Structure and Hierarchy]
When world building cultures I like to start with the social structure of the culture because that allows me to understand the stratum of society that I need to world build. What do I mean by this? Social hierarchies organize the structure of society. They dictate the distribution of power, resources, and influence and honestly they are pervasive. Where there are people, there is hierarchy. Attempting to create a society devoid of hierarchies would mean redefining the very fabric of social interactions and would require considerable justification in your narrative. I'm not saying you can't do it, but you would have to create a very different species to have a environment completely without hierarchy. It is important to consider that however strange and fantastical your world is, and we can build phenomenally fantastical things bound only by the limits of our imagination, but however fantastical your world is, your audience, your readers are human. They understand hierarchies. Trying to get them to understand a society without hierarchy will be a complex task, which you can undertake, but if you are going to undertake it your story should provide immense payoff for all the complexity that's going to go into your world. OK, so with all of those caveats out of the way, let's talk about concrete world building of status and structures in societies!
How can you define social structures for your cultures? I like to start with understanding the root of status.
[Root of Status]
At the highest level, hierarchies can be defined either as ascribed status systems, or achieved status systems. Ascribed status systems is where your status is conferred on you by something out of your control like being born to the right family. As an example, in the Indian caste system, birth determined everything, including who you could marry. On the other hand, achieved status systems is where social position is earned through actions. An example of this is the pecking order of academic institutions which is most often determined by the numbers of papers you've published and your degrees and so on, hence based on your achievements.
Most status systems are actually a mix of both ascribed and achieved. Consider the class system of the USA during the Gilded Age, where your birth mattered but money counted for more, resulting in the concept of new money versus old money. This was a mixture between ascribed and achieved status system. In such a mixed system, the tension between achieved status and ascribed status can become a great driving force in your world's narrative. If you think again of that conflict between new money and old money, that is because of the conflict between ascribed status and achieved status and can provide a great conflict or motivation for your character.
So in defining the status system of your world, that is our first exercise: What is the root of your status? Is it an ascribed status system and if so, what is the ascribing attribute? Birth is of course the common one, but don’t overlook something like luck. Maybe your culture worships a god of luck and when a child is born, they role a dice and if it comes up double six, the kid is destined to a leader. Basically, ascribed is anything the character doesn’t have control over. Or does your culture have an achieved status system and if so, what is that achievement? Physical? Mental? Magical? Or something else completely?
Of course, it’s quite likely that your status system is a mixture between ascribed and achieved, and in that case, note down both the ascribed and the achieved elements in this exercise.
Now that we know the root of status, we can define our societal structure right? Well, not quite. Next, we need to talk about exceptions.
[Exceptions]
No matter how rigid your system, there will be exceptions. Even in a super ascribed status system, there would still be those who have achieved social mobility through either dire need, or through exceptional skill. For examples of this just consider all of the female warriors and leaders in our world who made their way through very ascribed patriarchal systems of most of our cultures. These female exceptions are not common but they exist in every culture.
Conversely in achievement based systems, ascribed exceptions will surely creep in. Consider Hollywood where you’d think status is determined by achievement, by how good you are at acting and directing, but even here there is nepotism. Who your family is and how involved they are in acting matters, that’s why we talk of nepo-babies in Hollywood, so there is a degree of nepotism, even in an achievement-based status hierarchy.
So there will always be exceptions to either your achieved status or your ascribed system. And this is the second exercise: what are the exceptions to the status system in your society? If your status is predominantly ascribed, what circumstances will merit somebody breaking their ascribed status? If your status system is predominantly an achievement based system, what ascribed attributes will get somebody to bypass the normal achievement structures? Again, don't get stuck on birth. It could be luck based, it could be the way you look, it could be a lucky birthmark on your shoulder blade. The ascribed shortcut could be anything that you don't have control over that could elevate you past your peers.
And these exception again are a rich source of conflict and storytelling. A character could look up to someone who had been such an exception, striving to be like them, like Arya from Game of Thrones. Another character could be bitter because they did everything right, but through some ascribed attribute, they were overlooked for a promotion. These are all very human motivations, things we understand and can relate to. And if you want readers hooked on your story, give them characters they can relate to and you’re A for Away!
Okay, so we’ve got roots of status and exceptions to hierarchies. Good enough? Well, no. Let’s talk about how people identify status and why it matters.
[Identification of Status]
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll realize we haven’t actually defined the hierarchy of your culture yet. We’ll do that in this section, including naming the actual ranks. Before we do get into that, I want to point out that you can have a hierarchy with loser ranks that have no formal name and are based on influence only. These systems will not have formal identification of status, but will be based on more “who you know”, or achievements like “rich”, which can have varying definitions. So you don’t have to have formal identification and titles for your culture, but in most cases, parts of your culture will often have these things and they can make for some really rich world building elements, as you’ll see further on. Okay, with that out of the way, let’s talk about titles!
In academic settings, titles such as lecturer, professor, associate professor, department head, and dean illustrate a clear, ranked structure in an achievement system. The same applies to ascribed systems, consider European nobility, with titles like knight, baron, count, marquis, duke, and king. So titles are applicable to both achievement and ascribed systems.
But what titles should you create? It's tempting at this point to invent new titles to convey a unique culture. However, consider this: by incorporating titles from the culture that inspires your world, you can immerse the reader more deeply. This approach avoids overloading them with new vocabulary, facilitating their engagement with the story. While fantasy readers appreciate novel terms, they don't want a story so laden with unfamiliar words that it becomes inaccessible. It's about striking the right balance—enough fantasy elements to enchant, but not so many that the narrative becomes opaque. Now, maybe you don’t want to use the term professor and that’s fine, but consider adapting an English word like Head Teacher or something like that, rather than inventing some unrelated gobbledygook.
If you do go with an invention, try to keep all the invented titles at least seemingly related to each other. And try to keep them pronounceable.
Titles should feel organic to your world. They usually originate from the language of your setting, reflecting its culture and history. For instance, the term "Duke" derives from the Latin "dux," meaning leader—a military command. European noble titles often have military origins, tracing back to the establishment of order post-Roman Empire.
If your world's lore involves colonization or cultural exchange, contrasting titles can highlight this history. An example from my books, Sangwheel Chronicles, uses both "Earl" and "Marquis" to indicate a shared rank but different cultural origins, reflecting a colonization event within the narrative.
In summary, when selecting or creating titles for your fantasy world, consider:
- Whether existing real-world titles can be adapted to your setting.
- The balance between familiar and fantastical elements to ensure readability.
- The linguistic and cultural origins of your titles, ensuring they resonate with the world's history and society.
Okay, so hopefully you’ve jotted down some titles for your culture. Now what? In our world, status is often easily identified by clothing or jewelry, especially in the more caste-orientated systems. But even in achievement systems, sumptuary laws often restricted who could wear what and this served as a very clear indication of status. Or consider academic robes. There is a strict hierarchy of color to the tassels and sashes of academic robes that identifies someone’s achievement within that hierarchy. Also consider here what honorifics are used at which tier of status, for example, my lord, Your Honor, Your Grace, Professor, etc.
Your culture would likely have some means of easy identification of status as well. This could be anything: a piece of clothing with signs of rank. I used this, defining a noble sash in the Empire culture of Sangwheel Chronicles. Or you could go with jewelry like a ring, or a coronet. You could even use physical alterations like tattoos or scars. I mean this is fantasy, you could use magic as a status identification! Whatever you use, remember it will be everywhere in your society and will inform their expressions and the way they treat each other. So, for each title in your hierarchy, determine how this is represented and identified and what honorific accompanies the title.
Also consider this, if you have cultures close to each other, close enough to have some cultural exchange, they might use the same identification structure, but slightly tweaked. This can even be a source of cultural dispute: Who first started using the cap of awesome status: the badger people or the mole people? Wars could have been fought over that cap!
By now, you have a pretty solid grasp on the societal structure of your culture. There remains only one step: The impact of the status on your people.
[The Impact of Status]
Besides the obvious, status and the means to identify it has a profound impact on a culture. Our world has many sayings derived from status symbols. How many idioms can you think of that contain the word crown for example? Let me know in the comments if you’re watching this on YouTube!
In my world of Sangwheel Chronicles, I made up idioms and sayings about my noble sash, like: Hiding behind another’s sash (using someone else’s status as a shield), or Riding someone else's tassels (equivalent to riding someone’s coattails). Using these kinds of saying helps cement your culture and ensure that your reader stays invested in your world, so it’s worth spending some time and making up a few sayings based around your status system, it’s ranks and their identification.
Beyond expressions, there are legends and history. The exceptions to your status ladder, are they historical figures? Or perhaps there is a legend that exists in your world about these exceptions, the way the Amazon legend existed in our world. How does that affect the culture’s expressions? We speak of Amazonian women because of the Amazon legend. What do people in your world call the exception to their hierarchy?
Also consider if there are any legends around the symbols of your hierarchy, like the true crown the first king wore or other such accoutrements. Think of the King Arthur legends of the sword in the stone and other myths like that for inspiration.
But don’t dive down the rabbit hole just yet! We still want to keep all this high level and avoid world builder’s disease. So, just make a few notes without diving into the details and remember, you can always come back to this section later if it turns out that you need it.
And that’s finally a wrap for status and hierarchy of your culture! Next month we're going to hit kinship structures and, if there’s time, technology and magic level. Don’t forget to download that geography chapter in the meantime and if you’re a member of the YouTube channel, the worksheet accompanying this pod cast is already available on my site. Which reminds me, this podcast was as always brought to you by the members of my channel, who I very much appreciate, and a special shout out to Tony and Katie as members of stone and Dylan and Tiffany as members of Build it in Wood. You can join their ranks for as little as a cup of coffee a month, and also get access to all the worksheets for this podcast! But don’t feel pressured, you can also support me just by sharing this podcast around. And other than that, I will see you soon for another episode. Do remember: build what you need when you need it and happy worldbuilding!
