Transform Your Storytelling: A Day in the Life of Your Characters

Join Marie in discussing how magic and technology affect the daily lives of your characters.

Link to the tech calculator: Tech Calculator | Marie Mullany

My website: World Building | Marie Mullany Writing
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Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring your culture
• 2:09 The Tech Calculator
• 2:29 Technology & Magic Model
• 3:04 Magic & Tech Levels
• 7:32 Enablers
• 10:44 Calculator again
• 11:45 Categories & Cultural impact
• 27:18 A Day in the Life Of

Transcript

If there is one tool every fantasy or science fiction world builder needs, it's this: how to design a day in the life of your character. It is, hands down, the best way to ensure that you have a firm grasp on the culture that informs your characters' daily lives and therefore shapes their personality, knowledge, understanding, and skill. 
Today, I want to take you through this critical element of world-building, but I don't want to start with the daily life. No, I want to start with the level of technology and magic employed by your culture. Why start there, I hear you ask? The answer is simple: if you understand the technology and magic your character interacts with daily, designing a day in their life becomes a rewarding exercise that allows you to think about the impact of technology and magic on their culture. But if you don't know what level of technology and magic the culture has, the daily life exercise becomes a confusing endeavor, half world-building and half plot convenience-driven.
In this podcast, I'm going to take you through the model I use for determining the impact of magic and technology and the questions I answer for the daily life of my characters. Welcome to another episode of World Building 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 previous episodes in the information card. If you're listening to this on a podcast app, the previous episodes are available there.
As always, this episode is brought to you by the wonderful members of my YouTube channel who make this entire endeavor worthwhile. There are details on how to join their magnificent ranks and the perks you can get in the links down below. You will also note a link down below to something called the Technology Calculator. I'll explain how that works shortly, but it's a tool available on my website for anyone to use to play around with their magic and technology levels in a given culture.
Alright, let's dive straight in and talk about technology and magic levels. Technology and magic both offer ways to shape the world, and their interplay is a fundamental aspect of speculative world-building. Understanding the levels of technology and magic in your world is essential to creating a believable and immersive setting.
I define six levels for technology and for magic, each representing a progression in complexity and capability. My technological levels are:
Level 1: Primitive Technology
Here, the culture has basic tools made from natural materials, control over fire, and simple shelters. Society is nomadic or semi-nomadic, relying on hunting, foraging, and basic plant cultivation.
Level 2: Early Agricultural Technology
On this level, farming tools, domestication of plants and animals, and basic irrigation are introduced. Communities become more settled, with the construction of simple structures for homes.
Level 3: Classical and Medieval Technology
Advancements in metallurgy, construction of complex buildings, and enhanced agricultural techniques define this level. There is increased engineering knowledge, allowing for projects like aqueducts and fortified settlements to be completed.
Level 4: Renaissance and Early Industrial Technology
This level is marked by significant advancements in scientific knowledge and engineering principles, such as the invention of the printing press and mechanized farming equipment, leading to early factory systems.
Level 5: Modern Technology
This is our world, given a century or so. We have high levels of technological sophistication with widespread use of electricity and internal combustion engines or their equivalent. Advanced medical technology and global communication networks cover the globe. The internet blossoms with all its awesomeness and all its problems.
Level 6: Futuristic Technology
This is future, cutting-edge technology, such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and quantum computing. Exploration and colonization of space with potential for off-world living environments are possible at this level.
So that's our six technology levels. Accompanying them are six magic levels:
Level 1: Minor Magic
Magic is rare and rudimentary, limited to small charms and minor enhancements. Usage is highly limited or not integrated into daily life.
Level 2: Basic Magic
Magic is more common, with simple spells and enchantments improving basic tasks. Formalized study of magic begins, influencing construction, agriculture, and minor health.
Level 3: Intermediate Magic
Magic becomes an integral part of society, with spells significantly affecting daily life. Magical institutions and guilds are established, replacing or enhancing traditional technology.
Level 4: Advanced Magic
Magic is highly advanced and deeply integrated into all aspects of society. Powerful spells and enchantments can alter reality significantly, with magical academies conducting extensive research.
Level 5: High Magic
Magic is a dominant force with nearly unlimited potential. Spells can achieve extraordinary feats, and magical infrastructure supports entire cities.
Level 6: Epic Magic
Magic reaches god-like levels, reshaping reality and achieving immortality. Magic users wield immense power, often rivaling deities.
Bear in mind that the magic levels are very theoretical because they will be somewhat different for every world builder, as our magic systems are different. The purpose here isn't to be a straitjacket for your world-building; the purpose is to give you a tool to help you think of the possible impacts of your magic system on the cultures of your world.
OK, back to the model to determine the level of technology and magic in your society. We break down the application of technology and magic into ten broad categories: home, agriculture, communication, medical, sanitation, travel, information transfer or education, navigation, warfare, and tools and technology. For each category, we look at specific enablers that drive technological and magical advancements.
For technology, those enablers are: Power Source
This starts at fire and, at its most advanced level, represents something like Dyson spheres, where you absorb energy from the stars themselves.
Engineering Level
This defines how precisely your culture can work tools, starting at flint napping, where they can shape basic hammers, and ending with printing tools with micro-precision using energy as the source.
Science Knowledge
This defines how well your society understands the world around them and the natural and physical laws.
Material Mastery
This defines what materials your society uses, starting with simple clay and stone and ending with the creation of whatever element they need through the manipulation of quantum forces.
These four enablers define your technology level, and if you have a high technology level, their levels should also be high.
For magic, remember these are very generic enablers for your system. You might have different enablers. Again, this is a tool to help you think, not a tool that generates your world for you.
OK, so magic enablers:
Magical Source
This is the base power at the core of your magic system. For example, it could be elemental power, divine power, some sort of force that exists in quantum space, or anything else you could think of.
Magical Skill
This represents the level of skill your mages have. For example, if you have an elemental magic system that is manipulated by means of runes carved into the flesh of the caster and activated at will, this would represent how many runes and how small they can carve those runes.
Magical Principles
This represents how much of the magic your people understand. For example, your system might be manipulated through prayers, but it's not a god that grants those prayers. Instead, the prayers form a ritual that allows the raw power of creation to be safely channeled by the mage. In that case, the mage's understanding of base principles would be quite low, even if their skills are high.
Constraints
This enabler represents any constraining attributes of the magic system, like needing specific material components, the mage needing to be fit, or the mage being exhausted by magic.
On the calculator on my site, I've provided a breakdown of each category with scores for the enablers for both magic and technology, for achieving a certain level for that category. On the calculator, you can select the level of technology your world is at and the level of magic your world is at, and the calculator will work out the scores for your enablers and the scores in the categories to allow you to consider how magic and technology influence your culture.
If you do go and play with the calculator and have ideas around how it works or thoughts for its improvement, please feel free to leave a comment down below or contact me on Discord, and you can join my Discord server on the link in the description. The calculator is in a very early stage of development, and I'd love to have your thoughts around it.
OK, so let's get back to the podcast and explore what this model means for your culture and the technology and magic that it has available to it.
Taking these one category at a time, we'll start with homes. If technology scores higher than magic in the category of homes, the homes of your people more or less fit into their Earth historical equivalents, and magic has a minor impact. Your elites probably live in bigger, more fortified homes like country villas, castles, or manor houses, while the peasants live in everything from village huts to tenements.
If magic scores the same or higher than technology, then magic has quite an impact on this category. It can either replace some of the enablers of technology, so, for example, mages can lift heavy stone blocks and take the place of modern cranes, and therefore engineering, or perhaps magic completely replaces some or all of the shelters, like the spell Leomund's Tiny Hut in D&D. If magic has a high impact in the homes category and magic is cheap and available to most people, technological advancement in the construction industry is likely to stall.
If magic is restricted to an elite few, those with access to magic will likely live in advanced homes, enabling them and their descendants to increase generational wealth and status over those who do not have magic. You will likely have a society where there is a stark contrast between the homes of mages and those wealthy enough to afford mages, and the common people who lack those resources.
Moving on to agriculture, if technology scores higher than magic, agriculture relies on technological advancements like the irrigation system, mechanized farming, and ultimately things like genetic modification of crops or the generation of food through energy printing. If magic scores higher or equal, it can potentially enhance crop growth, control the weather, or eliminate pests. Fields might require fewer workers, and food shortages could be a rare occurrence. If magic is cheap and widespread, traditional farming techniques might stagnate. If magic is restricted, magic users could dominate food production, leading to significant social stratification through wealth. Consider a spell that can create food out of thin air. If your mages can do that, they control food production, and a person who controls food is very close to being in control of society.
Category three is communication. Again, if technology is more developed than magic, we would expect a range of communication services from postal services to the internet and instant digital communication. However, if magic is higher than technology, it might allow for instant communication via enchanted objects, telepathy, or magical messages. Magic could enable long-distance conversations and secure communications, as it does in the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. Widespread magic could slow technological advancements in communication. I doubt if the telegraph will ever make it to the world of Stormlight simply because they already have the spanreed. Why would they need to now lay wires all across the world as well for the technological solution? If magic is very restricted, mages may control critical communication networks, leading to societal divides based on access to this magical communication. Bear in mind what I always say: ideas don't flourish in a vacuum. If the mages can communicate and no one else can with any ease, I expect magic will flourish and be a high determinant of social status as they can exchange ideas, but everybody else is restricted to much slower communication.
Category four is medical. A society that relies primarily on technology and has a high technology score for medical probably includes advanced surgical techniques, antibiotics, vaccines, and genetic engineering. On the other hand, if the magic score is high, that could mean that wounds can be instantly healed, diseases can be cured, or at the very highest level of magic, immortality could be gained. In this case, magical healing could replace many technological medical interventions, and this could change your society in dramatic ways as your society might be at a low technological level but a very high medical level, enjoying ease of childbirth, ease of wound closure, and lack of diseases. This would fundamentally alter your cultures, as they would not suffer the kinds of diseases that our society suffered before medical science caught up with things like germ theory and vaccines. And as with the other sections, if magic is accessible, technological medical advancements may very well lag behind, and your magic users might dominate healthcare. In fact, this could result in stark differences in medical care quality and availability depending on how easily those mages distribute that healthcare and at what price.
Closely associated with medical care comes sanitation and hygiene. Again, if technology is dominant here, societies probably develop as we did in our world. They would go with public baths, sewer systems, water treatment facilities, indoor plumbing, and eventually public health infrastructure. Sanitation would be managed through complex engineering solutions. But if magic is your dominant force, potentially water could be purified, waste eliminated, and personal hygiene ensured through enchantments or spells. Public health could be maintained by magical means. Widespread magic probably reduces the need for technological sanitation advancements. Even if magic is only really available to the elite, the whole society will likely benefit from this kind of magic as good public sanitation benefits all. My go-to example for this is always Joel Rosenberg's "The Sleeping Dragon," where the mages had a sewer system with a dragon chained up in it that flamed the sewage to ash. This benefited the whole city, of course, removing the hazards of sewage. So that kind of general sanitation would likely be available to everyone, with only the more personal hygiene solutions being restricted to the elite or the magic users. And that kind of public sanitation would dramatically lessen the diseases and viruses that ripped through cities during the years before we understood the need for sanitation and for germ theory. So really, give some thought to how your magic system affects your sanitation and hygiene, and how that in turn affects your culture.
That brings us to just over the halfway point of our categories and category number six is travel. With a higher technology score in travel, the wheel is likely to be your dominant force, with infrastructure for carts and eventually cars dominating. Flying by means of technology will lead to the same kinds of aviation as we have now, by and large. However, a higher magic impact will result in methods such as teleportation, flying mounts, portals, or even enchanted vehicles providing fast and efficient travel. If you have this kind of travel available in your world, technological travel might well stagnate. Like with communication, this can create significant social and economic divides. If only the magical elite have access to this kind of travel, mages can easily join forces to trade between cities, but normal people have to plod from town to town using pony carts. In that case, mages are going to enjoy substantial economic advantages. But if global portals are available to everyone in a Stone Age world, it is likely that the flourishing of ideas, trade, and contact between cultures will create a substantially different world from the one that we have today as people trade in both ideas, technologies, and magical innovations.
The seventh category is generational transfer of information, and this is a bit of a funny category and I'll speak about it more when I eventually talk about education in cultures. But what it essentially means is how well a society records their current knowledge so that the next generation of scientists, engineers, and thinkers can build on the knowledge of the previous generation. We stand on the shoulders of giants and all that. If this is a category dominated by technology, information storage ranges from cave paintings and oral traditions to papyrus scrolls and handwritten records, and after the printing press's invention, printed books and eventually digital media and advanced databases. At the high end of technology, knowledge is easily accessible and widely distributed. If magic is the dominant force, then there might be enchanted books or devices like the ancient database of SG-1 that download knowledge directly into the mind of the user, or other such devices to transfer memory and knowledge. If your culture has access to these devices earlier than we invented, for example, the printing press, again, they might rapidly advance as they are able to consume the knowledge of the past and build on it for the future. But if only mages can access these repositories, if it is restricted knowledge, this could lead to information-driven hierarchies that would affect your social hierarchies of the culture. It could very well lead to two different cultures evolving, one of high magic and high technology through magic, and one where people are still living at the Stone Age level. That would be a very interesting exploration of the effect of information and its generational transfer on a society.
Category eight is navigation. If technology is the dominant force here, society likely goes through the process of creating maps and inventing the compass, chronometers, sextants, and eventually GPS and advanced maps. Magic might result in scrying spells, guiding spells, or even viewing the world from a bird's eye point of view. Mages might be known as guides or wayfinders, and might form a guild in their own right as caravan guides were in much earlier ages.
Then we come to category nine: weapons and warfare. This one is a beast. Obviously, for a high-tech score, consider if you're pre-gun or post-gun because that makes a lot of difference to your technological landscape for your culture. Magic, though, in this category, can change everything. If warriors are still swinging swords when mages are throwing fireballs, there's a stark and harsh contrast between armies with lots of mages and armies with lots of warriors. As George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" shows, when Aegon the Conqueror turned up with his dragons, the Seven Kingdoms folded like wet tissue paper because they had swords and he had an AOE weapon with no constraints—talk about OP. Magic might render technological advancements in warfare completely obsolete, and magical superiority in this category could lead to heavily stratified society based on the military power of magic.
Finally, tools and technology. This is what it says on the box: the actual tools the culture uses. If it's a technological culture, it starts with flint napping that creates hammers and bone sewing needles and things like that, and it ends with cell phones and iPads and whatever futuristic tech you can imagine. If magic is widespread, technological development might stall completely, though. Let's think again about the world of the Stormlight Archive, where fabrials take the place of much of our tools in their society. I don't see technology ever developing far enough to replace fabrials, do you? Let me know in the comments below. In such a society, magic users could dominate industries. If there was an actual magical industrial revolution, your mages might well be the factory owners and investors, leading to a massive divide between mages and common workers.
Those are our ten categories and how magic and technology might intersect between them. What do you think? Did I miss any big categories? Let me know in the comments. If you played with the model and figured out your world's intersection of technology and magic, what do you think of what the model spat out for you? Is it relevant to your world? Let me know in the comments as well.
Now it is finally time to tackle that exercise that I opened with: how to do a day in the life of a character. Once you have established your magical and technological levels, it's time to test your culture by going through the exercise of a day in the life. This exercise helps to ground you in the culture, giving you a clear picture of how every person in the social strata of your cultures lives. So, you will want to do this exercise for every social strata of your culture, as we defined in the earlier podcast when we discussed status structures in cultures.
When going through the daily routine of my culture, these are the aspects that I like to consider:
First, where do they sleep? When they wake up, are they in a bedroom? What is their home built out of? Is it a single room or a multi-generational home? Or is it a shared environment? Do they have privacy? This is one of the most fundamental questions you can answer about a culture because they will spend a lot of time in their home building connections with their family. So, if their home is very crowded, they are unlikely to have a sense of privacy. But if they are used to privacy in their home and thrust into a very non-private environment, this might deeply affect them.
Speaking of their home, the second thing I like to consider is furniture and fittings. What is most of the furniture made of? How do they light their houses? Do they have water, sinks, and taps inside their houses, or do they have to go outside to pump for water?
Then hygiene: when they get up, how do they wash their face, if they do wash their face? How do they go to the bathroom and dispose of waste? When do they bathe, and is it private or public? Bathing practices can provide a very rich cultural detail and influence the interactions of a culture. It might be that your culture has an understanding that if you are in the public baths, you can say anything you like and all are considered equal. But once you leave the baths, once again, everybody wears their face or their status.
Speaking of getting clothed after bathing, what do the people of your strata wear? What materials are their clothes made of? Are there differences between men's and women's clothing? Consider where these materials come from. Do they have cotton? Is it animal-based? Do they have different materials and colors for your different strata in society? Are there sumptuary laws that govern what different classes may wear?
Next, meals. What do people eat? How many meals do they eat and when? What is the first meal when they get up? What is the last meal before bed? How much does the season impact their eating habits? Do they eat different meals in summer or in winter? What do they consider to be a treat, and does that differ between the strata of your society?
Once they have eaten breakfast, if they do eat breakfast, and gotten dressed, where do they go next? How do people typically earn a living? How do they get food on the table? How do the nobles get money or the elite get money? How are jobs learned and passed down through the generations? How many hours a day do they work, and how much leisure time do people have?
Speaking of leisure time, what do people do after dark? How do they entertain themselves? Are there sports, games, or other recreational activities? How do they get the news? Are there storytellers, bars, casinos?
Then I like to add in two additional categories that aren't specifically part of the day in the life of, and that is "what if?" This is where I ask a series of questions that aren't part of the daily life of the person but might happen to them every now and again. These are questions like: how do people defend themselves if they're attacked? What and who would attack them? How are they healed if they're hurt? How do they send messages to the people in their town? How about long-distance messages? If they need to travel, how do they travel?
Lastly, measurements. How do people keep track of time during the day and the year? How do they measure distances and weights? You can, of course, use miles and inches or kilometers and seconds or anything from our world if you have a good idea that the reader will be able to grasp easily. It can really cement the reader into your world if you make up your own measurement system, as I did for the measurement of time in the Sanguine Chronicles, where I used the candle clock and the water clock, and so on. However, don't do it just to do it. If you're going to replace inches with thumbs, for example, that's just a one-to-one replacement. In that case, just use inches. Asking the reader to remember something so arbitrary creates an unnecessary barrier to entry, in my opinion. But if the measurement is going to give you a whole set of idiomatic expressions that can help the reader feel the culture of your world, then it is worth it, in my opinion. What do you think? When is replacing measurements worth it in a fantasy world, and when should you just use the measurements we have? Let me know in the comments.
These questions should allow you to explore a full day in the life of your character and hence build out enough of your culture that you are easily able to write it and give the reader a rich, lived-in culture for each of your characters. Do you see how those questions all tie back to the categories we defined for our technology and magic, and how understanding the levels of technology and magic in your culture tie into creating the daily life of your character? Let me know in the comments what you think of the questions and the categories of the model.
That's a wrap for today's episode on culture building. Next month, we'll tackle education and communication in detail, and then we'll wrap up cultures with an episode on art before turning our attention to religion. I know religion is part of culture, but in fantasy, religion can also stand outside of culture, so it, along with economics and politics, gets its own chapter in the eventual book that will come from these podcasts. There is a worksheet that accompanies this podcast, and it is available to all paying members of my YouTube channel. A special shout-out to Tony and Katie as members of Building in Stone and Dylan and Tiffany as members of Building in Wood. You, dear listener, can join their ranks for as little as a cup of coffee a month and get access to all the worksheets for this podcast. But don't feel pressured to support me financially. You can also support the podcast just by sharing the episode around.
On that note, I will see you soon for another episode. Remember, build what you need when you need it, and happy world-building!