🍖 How to Build a Culture Without Just Inventing Spices and Necklaces
(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)
So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented:
→ Three types of ceremonial jewelry
→ A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed
→ A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn
Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.
And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.
Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.
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🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style
Ask yourself:
→ Who’s in charge, and why?
→ Who has land? Who doesn’t?
→ What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?
Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.
Start there. Not at the embroidery.
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2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict
Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?
→ What was destroyed and mythologized?
→ What do the survivors still whisper about?
→ What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?
No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.
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3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists
Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about:
→ Death?
→ Love?
→ Time?
→ The natural world?
→ Justice?
Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.
You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.
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4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)
Culture shows up in:
→ What people apologize for
→ What insults cut deepest
→ What people are embarrassed about
→ What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately
For instance:
→ A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?”
→ A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.
This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.
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5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals
Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about:
→ Breakfast routines?
→ How people greet each other on the street?
→ Who cooks, and who eats first?
→ What’s considered “clean” or “proper”?
→ How is parenting handled? Divorce?
Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.
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6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture
A culture isn’t a monolith.
Even in deeply traditional societies, people:
→ Rebel
→ Question
→ Break rules
→ Misinterpret laws
→ Mock sacred things
→ Act hypocritically
→ Weaponize or resist what’s expected
Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.
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7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap
Worldbuilding gets boring fast when:
→ The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure
→ The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric”
→ Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like
You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy.
→ Let ugly things be beloved.
→ Let beautiful things be corrupt.
→ Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.
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📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy):
→ Culture is not food and jewelry.
→ Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction.
→ Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter.
→ Let your world feel lived in, not curated.
The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list.
It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.
Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)
—rin t.
// writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range
// thewriteadviceforwriters
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Let's talk about when being healed isn't the best outcome.
We've all read the stories where a main character is sick/disabled, and by the end they've been magically cured. It's a good thing, right?
What about when it isn't? What about when the price of health isn't worth it? When the strings attached to the cure are worse than the disease?
Enter Rosie. (I know I yap about this girl a lot, but she's my MC)
Diagnosed with a terminal autoimmune illness at the age of ten, and expected to die before she hit her teens. Her parents, desperate to save her no matter the cost.
Her father, a CIA agent at the time, got lucky enough his please fell on the right ears. The right people were sympathetic enough to put a word in here and there, until someone reached out with an idea just so crazy it might work.
And it did. Rosie was cured. But the cost left her not entire human anymore, and too valuable or dangerous for the government to let go back home.
At 12, she was labeled an "asset".
Assets don't have rights. Assets don't have bank accounts or voter registration. Assets don't have protection. The only way out is to prove she's not useful anymore, but failure to complete a mission could mean death.
She owes DATAS her life.
She'd rather give it back.
Let's talk about tropes. I love a good "reluctant father adopts a sunshine child and learns to be a better person" story (Looking at you The Mandalorian, The Witcher, The Bad Batch, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms).
But where are the reluctant mothers? It seems (at least in my experience, which is not universal obviously) that as soon as a female protagonist encounters a child in literature, the narrative softens her. No matter how badass or battle scarred she was introduced as, she folds quickly into the motherly role.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE motherhood in fiction and real life. But too often, motherhood is treated as some kind of innate instinct that sweeps over the character while fatherhood is explored as a brave choice.
For Rosie, it's not instinctive. She's not comfortable with raising Lux. She knows nothing about children, and her own raising was more a cautionary tale than guideline. The only thing she knows is that she wants to give this child the chance she never had.
And Lux really is just a child. Fur and scales not withstanding, he's an eight year old. He's scared and confused in a world he doesn't understand, he doesn't know how he got there, and while Eden is everything a little boy would want in an adoptive dad... there's something about Rosie he can't put his fuzzy little finger on. But she feels like home.
A character like Rosie is harder to draw than to write. In writing, I can tell a reader what she's feeling and thinking under the surface. The nerves, the insecurity, the struggle to belong all play out on the page. But in art, she's stoic. She keeps her emotions hidden. Her RBF is not resting at all, it's on guard like armor.
Still, no one can look pissed off at all times, so here's some Rosie facial expression practice! And a 100 face drawing challenge for reference. I'll definitely do more of these with other characters, it was a lot of fun.
What face are you feeling today?
Music is a huge part of my writing process, particularly when I'm trying to get into the head of one of my characters. Rosie's songs are often heavy, fast beats that announce themselves before the lyrics start. Those lyrics sound angry at first, but when examined show a much more fragile heart underneath. Some are a cry for help, some an anthem of holding onto hope even in the darkest of times. All of them tell the story of someone who's drowning, self-destructing under the weight of something they can't escape as they hurtle towards a collapse. Someone who, if you sit long enough with their rage, will take off its mask and introduce its true name as Grief.
What's your favorite song, and what does it say about you?
i feel like something that's missing from some people's understanding of kink fiction and fantasy is, like... in fiction and fantasy, everything is in-scene.
when real people do kink in real life, you gotta do all that good out-of-scene stuff like discuss boundaries, set limits and expectations, check in with each other, do aftercare, et cetera et cetera et cetera... but in fiction, everything can be in-scene!
the people in that fanfic don't exist any more than, like, the make-believe sexy football star and make-believe sexy cheerleader in a couple's roleplay exist. that couple doesn't need to get into character and then pretend to be a sexy football star having an important consent conversation with a sexy cheerleader, because that's a conversation that's already happened out-of-scene and out-of-character. (i mean, if you're into in-character negotiations, chase your bliss.) when they're in that scene, they can just pretend to be a sexy football star having sex with a sexy cheerleader. that's okay.
so like. when fiction does kink in a way that would be unsafe or harmful irl... just keep in mind that you're not watching actual people neglecting check-ins or ignoring their set contract or genuinely harming each other. you're watching a scene without the behind-the-scenes bits, and that's okay.
this has gotten a couple replies along the lines of "yeah, you can just assume the characters worked all the important consent stuff out when you weren't looking!" which is true in some cases, but not the point i was trying to make, so please bear with me while i try to rephrase myself.
when i say in fiction, everything is in-scene, i mean that the fiction IS the scene.
if someone went up to their partner and said "hey, wouldn't it be sexy if we pretended you were manipulating and controlling me in an unethical way for sex reasons?", and then they talked through all the good and necessary consent and risk-awareness things, and then they played that scene out - that's a made-up scenario where pretend bad things happen, but no real-world people come to real-world harm, right?
now, if someone writes a story where one character manipulates and controls another in an unethical way for sex reasons... that, too, is a made-up scenario where pretend bad things happen, but no real-world people come to real-world harm.
kink fiction doesn't have to be about characters consciously and conscientiously Doing Kink. kink fiction can be stories where the kinky things people fantasize about or roleplay (but wouldn't want to happen in real life) do happen in the universe of that story. because the story is a scene.
the term i use is "non-diagetic kink". Something that is "diagetic" exists in the world of the story, while "non-diagetic" is perceivable only to the audience-- the classic example is the difference between a piano being played in a movie vs being played in the movie's soundtrack.
in "diagetic kink", the kink experience is part of the world of the story. The characters do all the negotiation and consent within the world, either on screen or implied off-screen. The fantasy is a fantasy the characters are having.
In "non-diagetic kink" the kink experience exists for the audience. The consent is akin to the musical score-- you, the audience, are doing the consent and negotiation by continuing to watch or read, as you would enjoy the music score the characters cannot. The consent is not a diagetic part of the story. The fantasy is the fantasy the audience is having through the story of the characters.
Let's talk about culture. Specifically, let's talk about food traditions.
Rosie's grandmother, Nuon (Oma), is a Cambodian immigrant. She came to the US just ahead of the Cambodian genocide. She brought her language, her food, and her traditions.
And she married a white man from Colorado.
Rosie's mother, Dara, was an only child. Nuon did not share her language with her daughter (reasons I will not spoil let) but she did pass on her culture in the meals she prepared. When Rosie was born, and later her little sister Ash, they too learned to cook alongside their Mom and Oma.
Then Rosie was taken.
Trauma can cause memory lapses, and skills not used go stagnant. By the time Rosie moves back into the family home, 13 years have passed. She's removed from the ritual of cooking. Cultural foods are unfamiliar against the backdrop of (whitewashed) popular culture. Rosie is 1/4th Cambodian, but she's disconnected with that aspect of herself. That cut maternal line, her connection to the mother she's lost and all that came before her, hangs like an amputated limb and comes with the same phantom pains.
The emptiness of a loss of culture mirrors her own internal identity issues. Cambodian vs American, Asian vs White, Human vs Weapon.
Meanwhile Ash, who grew up immersed in the cultural aspects of the family, stands as a stark reminder of everything she might have had. As polar opposite as their hair color.
Black vs White.
Let's talk about sisterhood. Specifically the Cannon sisters.
Ashley was 4 years old when Rosie left home. She barely remembers the big sister who used to catch fireflies in a jar for her, or read to her at bedtime. In the interim she navigated growing up with her father absent and her mother's battle with cancer while being raised by her grandparents. She doesn't see Rosie again until their mother's funeral, when she's 10 years old. Even when Rosie returns 2 years after that, it's not to stay. She resents Rosie's abandonment. She's hurt. She's angry. At the start of the story, she's 17.
Rosie, on the other hand, remembers. Every moment of the 4 years they had together, and 13 years of missing the sister she left behind.
What do you do when the person you're supposed to know best is a stranger? How do you make space in your life for someone who's only ever left behind a hole, with no explanation?
How do you look at a twisted version of your own reflection, who you might have been if things were different, and not feel jealousy burn?
How do you move forward if everyone who knows the truth is lying to protect you?
"Remember the terms of your contract. As long as you're a threat, DATAS owns you... and as long as they do, you'll never get away from me."
Let's talk about The Contract. The bureaucratic nightmare that binds up all of Rosie's life, and shackles her to her position as a field agent. The language is intentionally vague. She's bound by the Contract as long as she is a "threat". But a threat to who? By what metric? Who determines that? Nobody seems to know, and she's discouraged from asking in a sort of Catch 22: If she asks in order to moderate her behavior, she's considered manipulative and scrutinized harder.
Under the contract, she carries no citizenship rights. No vote. No bank account or access to her own finances. According to the paperwork, she's not even human.
Would it hold up in court? Absolutely not. But when you've been under this constraint from the age of 12, would you think to fight it?
Consider listening to "The Fine Print" by Stupendium.
Let's talk about the love interest, Eden. Bless this golden retriever of a man. This manic-pixie-dream-boy. The walking epitome of green flags and honesty. He's an oasis after being lost in the desert. He's a feast after starvation. He's everything good that Rosie has been denied.
But the thing about starving is, when you get access to food, your body doesn't know how to handle it anymore. You desperately need it, but you can't keep it down. The theory applies to love, too.
Figuring out how to accept the love she deserves might be harder than fighting a war, at least for Rosie.
