noodle scribbles @scribble-dee-doo - Tumblr Blog

picking 4 wips/concepts to see if i can make a dent in the pile...

Fire/Glow (doctordonna week fill): drafting - i feel like the "script" serves pretty well as an outline, so i'm chipping away at it. wc: uuh i'll go find that later

DoctorDonna AU: snippets - rewatched journey's end and decided my 16 year late fixit looks like the doctordonna making an executive decision that the alien in the middle of a breakdown should not be responsible for the fates of multiple people and kidnapping him. currently jotting down snippets as they come to me, which might be enough to get a oneshot down. 1015w

Amnesia Sanzo AU (saiyuki): snippets - ukoku actually gets sanzo with muten and pulls a bit of a winter soldier. i feel like there's enough meat here to actually outline and turn it into a proper fic, but idk if i can noodle my way into a finished product ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 1323w

saiyuki genderswap - extremely self-indulgent snippets, less of a fic and more kicking around a concept for fun. saiyuki has some gender aspects that are especially juicy to flip. 719w

#noodle speaks #wip roundup

circumference-pie

Website idea: Writers of all nationalities give each other advice on how to name OCs from their native culture/language.

For example, a native English speaker can tell you that "Henry Edward" is kinda weird and evokes Tudor kings, and a native Chinese speaker can tell you that, I don't know, "mīmī" sounds cute but means titties.

supernumerarianism

Re: Chinese names, there is something cool people should know about, (maybe you already know):

Using this database, you can access the names and biographical information of real people across Chinese historical periods and dynasties. You can go on here and find the names (not just given names but courtesy names and other sorts of honorary aliases, depending on the period) of thousands of real individuals, though it's almost entirely men in the older dynasties. Very few women.

Need a character name for your Tang Dynasty official? Check out the CBDB and find a *literal Tang Dynasty official* to grab a name from!

duckprintspress

Announcing the May Trope Mayhem Prompt List for 2026!

May Trope Mayhem is a multi-fandom/original creation event open to writers, artists, and creators of all kinds! Our creators have shared their favorite tropes, and we’ve put together a list of 31, one per day through the month of May. We encourage creators to join us for this month of fun tropey mayhem.

Our goal is to promote motivation and help with habit building, so we’re encouraging authors to keep their ficlets under 1,000 words, artists to stick to making just a sketch, gif makers to only do a single image, etc., as applicable to whatever you’re making.

This event is primarily held on Tumblr, but you’re welcome to participate anywhere Duck Prints Press has an account (you can see all our current platforms here) and we’ll keep our eyes on our tag everywhere!

How can you participate? It’s easy! There’s just a few simple rules:

write a ficlet or a poem, create art, make a gif, or create any other content that you want, aligned with the prompt for the day!

post your correctly tagged fills to Tumblr, and we’ll reblog them! We’ll reskeet works on Bluesky, retoot those on Mastodon, you get the idea. Note: we do not use Twitter.

you must tag warnings such as gore, MCD, sexual content, etc., so that people can make informed decisions!

please also tag fandom and ship, so people can find what interests them!

we ask that you put the tags at the top of your post, so they’re easy to find.

if you write more than 1k words and post the whole text on Tumblr or wherever, please use a read more if the platform allows.

if you create something with NSFW content or potentially triggering material, please put the entire work under a read more.

Ping us (duckprintspress) or tag your creations “#may trope mayhem” and so we can find them! We’ll reblog all fills that follow the above rules and are posted between May 1st and June 8th, 2026. Posting starts May 1st!

If you post to AO3, you can also add them to our collection there!

You don’t have to sign up for May Trope Mayhem, just post your fills. You don’t have to be a member of the Press nor do you have to be following us. You don’t have to be part of a specific fandom. We’re open to all ships, genres, formats, ratings, kinks, etc.! You can post whatever properly tagged content you want. You don’t have to post fills on the corresponding day, though we ask that if you’re creating for a day that hasn’t happened yet, please wait for that day to post.

Participating in May Trope Mayhem? Want to chat fandom, books, creation, and more? Join our Book Lover’s Discord Server!

This is a low-pressure event, held in good fun, and we look forward to seeing what you create!

MAY TROPE MAYHEM Prompt List Text Version:

#writing prompt #writing events

elle-thereafter

These are important things I have learned about writing fiction. I know these things, but sometimes I need a reminder. So I am writing them here, both as a reminder for myself, and as a reminder for all those who, like me, sometimes forget.

Characters must make choices.

Characters should often make bad choices before they make good choices.

Character choices should drive the vast majority of the plot. Characters reacting to having random stuff thrown at them is far less interesting than characters reacting to the stuff they've thrown after it's ricocheted around and comes bouncing back toward them.

If a character refuses to make a choice, there better be consequences for that too, and you better have a damn clear way of showing those consequences to the reader and the character.

Nearly every time I'm struggling with writing something, taking a step back and thinking about these 4 things usually helps get me unstuck.

luna-azzurra

Writing Tips for messy Writers #3 <3

mckitterick

V.E. Schwab's advice for creating memorable characters - works for both protagonists and villains

source post: X

dduane

This is really good advice.

It also ties neatly into the simplest version of the formula for getting people emotionally engaged with your characters: or how to build the moment in which your character starts moving from their initial state to the state in which they'll start changing their own lives.

First, you figure out the one important thing the character believes that they're wrong about. There's usually a core misperception that they haven't examined. Once they're forced to engage with it, it'll start to change everything about their perception of the world they're inhabiting and/or the people in it.

Then, as V.E. says, you identify the character's great desire and their great fear: the thing that character wants more than anything, and the thing or situation that terrifies them, and that they'll go to any lengths to avoid.

And having identified these two objects or situations, you build a situation in which the two forces will be in close, direct opposition to one another... then drop the character down in between them, and squeeze. Those two opposing forces become the jaws of a vise... and you crank the vise more and more tightly closed until the character has no choice but to acknowledge those opposing forces, and start (even in a small way) to deal with the pressure being exerted and push their way through.

This does not have to be, initially, a great climactic moment. In fact, it works better if it's not. It's more effective if your character has a brief low-intensity brush with these conditions-in-conflict early on. That way, when your big resolution scene comes along about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way along through the story arc, you'll have set up a resonance between that earlier hint or intimation of what's to come, and the really big blowoff. Your readers will recognize the resonance—the throb of tension between the two occurrences, like the vibration of a plucked string—and will find satisfaction both in the true resolution having been partially telegraphed earlier, and in how it's now being experienced and resolved in full.

This approach also allows you to set up more minor resonances between the realization of the conflict and its final resolution. These can serve to bind the structure of the work more closely together: to make it look (and be) less like a series of loosely strung-together plot events, and more like a unified whole, in which ripples of story business flow backwards and forwards, interpenetrating and influencing one another, and hinting at the big one to come.

But none of this can happen until the paired and opposing what-do-they-most-desire, what-do-they-most-fear axes have been defined. So that's a subject it's smart to spend some while thinking about (and for all your characters, not just the major ones), to be sure you're getting it right.

It's not unusual to get the wrong answers, or merely superficial ones, while you're still working out what's actually going on with the characters. So take your time. Eventually you'll find a set of answers that feel unquestionably right... and you can then nail those down in your notes and get on with making the kind of "good trouble" for your characters that will see them made complete.

pantserspen

How to Fix Underwriting

1. Slow down at emotionally important moments.

Big emotions need space to land. If a scene feels rushed, pause the plot briefly to show how the moment affects the character.

2. Add reactions, not explanations.

Instead of explaining what a character feels, show it through physical responses, hesitation, or small actions that reveal emotion naturally.

3. Ground every scene in the senses.

If a scene feels thin, add one or two sensory details—sound, texture, smell, or temperature—to make the moment feel lived-in.

4. Let thoughts interrupt action.

A line of internal thought can deepen a scene without slowing it too much. Thoughts show stakes, fear, longing, or conflict beneath the action.

5. Expand consequences, not events.

You don’t need more things to happen—you need to show what matters. Focus on how events change relationships, decisions, or self-perception.

6. Strengthen setting where emotion peaks.

The environment should echo or contrast the emotion of the scene. Setting is not decoration—it’s emotional reinforcement.

7. Add specific details instead of general ones.

Underwriting often relies on vague language. Swap “they argued” for one sharp line of dialogue or a specific breaking point.

8. Let dialogue breathe.

Short dialogue exchanges without pauses can feel flat. Add beats—silence, gestures, interruptions—to give the conversation weight.

9. Show transitions between scenes.

If scenes jump too quickly, readers feel disoriented. A brief transition helps establish time, mood, and emotional continuity.

10. Clarify stakes early in the scene.

If readers don’t know what can be lost, scenes feel empty. Make sure the character wants something specific and fears losing it.

11. Use the “what are they feeling right now?” check.

After each major beat, ask what emotion is dominant in that moment. If it’s missing on the page, the scene is likely underwritten.

12. Expand scenes that feel “too clean.”

If a scene resolves too neatly or quickly, it probably needs more tension. Messy emotions and unresolved feelings add depth.

martinsharmony

I primarily write non fiction in the form of journaling in a public blog. But I still want my writing to be good. These work for non fiction too.

#writing

notatzimisce

You know, one of the most shameful consequences of scifi/game authors not knowing shit is cyberpsychosis, or Essence, or whatever in-universe asspull for a mechanical limiter on how much cyberware you can cram into a character sheet.

There is an easy excuse in real life! You may not be able to get both a pacemaker and a DBS device because they're both pieces of sensitive equipment that could theoretically interfere with each other, and nobody engineered them not to. Trivially you can extrapolate this to all cybernetics. If your various augs weren't Specifically designed not to mess with each other (and of course the various megacorps might take things a step further, making their shit actively hostile to mix-and-matching), you might have problems; and obviously, the more pieces of hardware you've patchworked yourself with, the worse things get. You'd have to be one real crazy motherfucker to tell a back-alley doctor to load you up with whatever they've got.

It's more grounded and more realistic and less shitty and it actively enhances the atmosphere of cyberpunk in a way that "losing your humanity" does not. we are missing out on much because none of these writers know anything about how medtech works

#worldbuilding

concerningwolves

favourite things about first drafts:

square brackets with notes to self mid-line like [does this make sense with worldbuilding?]

ah yes, Main Character and their closest friends, Unnamed Character A and Unnamed Character B.

bullshitting your way through something that you probably definitely need to research later

also square brackets to link up scenes. [scene transition idk] my beloved

the total freedom of word vomits

"I'll fix that later"

the moment when the world and characters start to gain a life of their own

pieces falling into place as you write that you were uncertain about before you started

the accomplishment of Made A Thing

concerningwolves

Not only is this allowed but it's something i encourage all writers of any kind to play with! :D

The idea that all writers know what to say all the time and just splash fully-formed drafts out one word after the other is false. There are some who can do it, but i think most of us... can't. Which is why we need tricks like square bracket notes! They're not cheats or lazy writing or some other flavour of Not Allowed, but instead really really important tools that we should use as much as we need to.

Some of the most helpful tricks I've collected over the years are:

make some notes in square brackets – e.g., I had to write a scene on a sailboat, but I know nothing about sailing so i literally just had notes like [boat part] and [how to do X thing?]. If you use square brackets as punctuation anyway, use something else like [[double square brackets]] or a unique letter combination like XY at the start of the note; the point is to pick something you can search for easily later on.

(You can also style inline comments in a different font/colour. Scrivener has an inline annotation feature; if you use Word, you can make a specific Style to make notes stand out at a glance, etc.)

bullet-point your way through any tricky parts – this can be pure stream-of-consciousness vague ideas. it only needs to make sense to me later. much more helpful than just leaving big blank gaps that Future Me has to work out how to fill, but also better than dwelling on a piece of writing forever.

use comment tools – mostly do this if I have ideas for alternate events and/or phrasing, or if I want to check something for continuity purposes.

write out of order – Best advice i ever got for academic writing is to know or even write your conclusion first and your introduction last, which your main argument in between. Similar principles apply in fiction, or any kind of creative writing. If there's a part of the essay that I can visualise clearly or a part of the story that is particularly exciting or important, I might write that first, then figure out how it fits/how everything fits around it.

keep a loose scenes and/or "outtakes" folder – anything that i write out of order goes here, along with any notes for how I think I want to incorporate it into the full text. In the same vein, if I delete something but don't know for sure it will never be relevent ever again, it gets cut and pasted into an outtakes folder.

Basic rule though is that you do not have to get your writing perfect on the first try. This is where drafts come in. The way I see it is to treat each draft as a fresh start – I create/open a new document (well, new Scrivener file) and start over as if from scratch. Each draft gets a narrower focus than the last. This is my process, as an example:

first draft is the word vomit. You do whatever you need to do to get it onto the page, and it can be terrible. In fact, it probably should be terrible. You can fix everything later. it's fine.

The second draft is a half-hearted cleanup attempt. I'll re-type everything because everything is subject to change, from the characters' personalities to the pacing to the order of events. It's all primordial goop, basically. i'm just poking and prodding and making a few adjustments, but mostly trying to create a more stable version of the first draft. All shortcut tricks continue to be my best friend.

By draft three I'll let myself copy-paste between documents if I'm particularly happy with a passage, but try not to get hung up on anything specific. I'll still make liberal use of square brackets etc. as I need to, but try to address as many from the previous draft as I can. This is where I get more brutal with making decisions and trying to fix parts of the story in place.

Draft four is usually my final draft, but there's literally no rules about how many drafts you're allowed to write. It's at this point that I try to keep square brackets etc. to a minimum (unless i've diverged significantly from the plot of a previous draft and having to rewrite large chunks), and make sure to address all the notes and problems encountered in previous drafts.

This is when I move on to revisions. Revisions are the "final do-overs", for me. I start them when I'm satisfied with all the large-scale aspects: plot and chronology; characters' personalities, motivations and arcs; large-scale pacing (so the over-arcing pace, rather than the pacing in individual scenes); backstories; and worldbuilding. I'll copy the last draft's document instead of starting with a blank one. First I run through those large scale things one more time and tweak until I'm happy, not just satisfied. Then I shrink my focus to in-scene pacing, dialogue, and the quality of the writing itself.

I'll also rewrite my plot outline between each draft, too. The act of actually re-writing stuff is very helpful for making your brain think about it.

Drafting like this isn't for everyone, but realising that you can just bullshit your way through chunks of text was a massive game-changer for me. Some people will do a draft, then work on something else, then come back and do another draft, work on something else, etc. Some people's drafting process will look more like what I consider to be revisions. Do whatever works for you. Just remember that from the moment you first decide you Want to Write a Thing to the moment you hit "post" or "publish" or give your manuscript over to a publisher, you can keep making as many changes as you like in any way you like. (And if you go the querying to traditional publishing route, you'll probably get suggestions for, and have space/time to make, changes to the manuscript quite far into the process).

laurenkmoody

Yes!!

I don't believe I've ever met two writers who have exactly the same process. Every writer I've spoken to about the craft of writing has their own process, usually developed over years and years of practice and trying things out.

For example, I don't rewrite at all, that sounds horrendous, I just save-as to create a new draft. I also get the big structure stuff done in outlining, but I'm a weirdo who writes 20k word outlines. As mentioned above, I am one of those people who needs space between drafts--or at least, between rough draft and first revision. And I do my first revision on paper, always. The human brain processes screens and hardcopy differently! I write all over my printed rough draft, and then go back to the doc and apply those edits and anything else that occurs to me at the time, so my draft 2 is more sort of draft 2.5??

There's a lot more, obviously, and it's different between novels and short stories (I don't print short stories unless I'm really struggling). But I'm always experimenting with different ways to write, and sometimes they work and sometimes I get stranded and have to go back to the drawing board. Some people have a lot more hand writing in the prep stages, in notebooks or on index cards--I visited someone once whose dining room walls were covered in butcher paper and index cards with pushpins!

So if you're a newbie writer, experiment! Read about a bunch of different ways to get those words down! Try new things! Put notes and placeholders and such in your drafts, write by the seat of your pants, try out the whole in-depth outline thing, revise every paragraph before moving on to the next one, whatever works!!

Also please feel free to come talk to me about it! I love hearing about how people write.

coquelicoq

Reconsider Your Need For a Big Bad by Instead Giving Everybody Their Own Bespoke Bad in the Form of Problems That Have No Good Solutions

Okay, but what about plot? Advice about plot is very confusing. One person will say that plot ought to be planned out precisely down to every beat in every scene. The next will say it doesn’t exist at all. Isn’t it just things happening? I’m pretty sure it’s just things happening. It’s probably best if those things are happening for some reason. Many SFF stories are built around big, central reasons: empires to defeat, dark lords to overcome, worlds to save, societies to reform. All of which is fun and fine, sure, I like to lust over defeat a dark lord as much as anyone, but there is also value in thinking about how we can shape a story if we don’t have a singular goal sitting at the center.

It’s not obvious from the start, but there is no big villain to defeat or catastrophe to prevent in MDZS. Sure, there’s a ruthless dude who starts a war to seize power, and when he’s dispatched there’s a sleazy dude who fills the power vacuum, and there is least one unapologetic mass murderer just kinda hanging around doing his own thing, not to mention that the adaptations tend to fiddle with the villainy levels of several characters in different ways. But there is no one bad guy whose removal would solve all the problems. There’s no huge catastrophe to be averted, no doomsday to be stopped. What we do have, of course, is Wei Wuxian, who is known as a villain within the story (he’s resurrected because somebody wants a malevolent spirit to do some nasty shit), but that is very much not the same thing as being the actual villain. Again: what the characters in the story believe is a deliberate distortion of what’s actually going on. So instead of looking at the role each character plays in working toward or against a common goal, “Avengers Assemble!”-style, let’s step back down to some more fundamental character questions: What do they want as individuals? What’s stopping them from getting it? What happens if they don’t get it? What happens if they do? And—this part is key—what happens when these desires and obstacles are in conflict with each other? It’s really easy to do this with MDZS, which is why it’s such a great example to use for studying how a story arises from multi-layered character conflict. For example, Lan Wangji’s primary goal is to protect Wei Wuxian, which puts him into conflict with everybody who has ever so much as looked at Wei Wuxian funny (eg., enemies, teenagers, fluffy dogs), as well as with Wei Wuxian himself, who has the admirable self-preservation instincts of somebody who dies in the prologue of his own story. Both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng share the primary goal of wanting to protect the people important to them, but the way they go about it puts them into direct conflict—a conflict that is at its most painful when they are in fact trying to protect each other. Wen Qing also wants to protect her loved ones, only for her that means conflict with both those who are endangering them and those who are protecting them. Jin Guangyao wants respect and security in a world that doles out those things according to familial status, not individual ability. Lan Xichen wants to lead with kindness and understanding while surrounded by fellow leaders who really don’t care much for either. I could go on and on, all the way down the entire character list, but the point is this: when all of your characters are linked not by a single unifying goal, but instead by a tangled web of conflicting relationships and desires, you have endless opportunities to stick them in situations in which there is no easy way out. In which somebody is always going to get hurt. In which desperately trying to do the right thing can still end in tragedy. In which you get to cackle with evil glee while your readers agonizing over every new development, absorbed with all the doubts and dangers, so invested in the emotional fabric of the story that they have to see it through to the end.

That doesn’t mean you can’t still fight doomsdays and evil empires! Nor does it mean every story has to do this to the same extreme; Mo Xiang Tong Xiu very obviously set out to write a story about how trying to do the right thing can still end in unspeakable calamity (but also a story in which unspeakable calamity does not render one undeserving of love and happiness). The question of scale is entirely up to you. It’s the array of choices that matters—well, that and the heart-wrenching feeling you can create when none of those choices are easy.

Kali Wallace, From Now on I’m Taking All of My Storytelling Lessons From This Wild Epic About Love, Loyalty, and Necromancy, Tor.com, January 4, 2022

#writing

whumptober

WHUMPTOBER 2025: PROMPTS LIST

Welcome to Whumptober 2025 — The Eighth Year!

WHUMPTOBER is a month-long, prompt-based creation CHALLENGE (think: Inktober, but whumpier). There are four prompts for each day of the month, giving 124 for you to play with! There is also a list of 18 alternative prompts that can be subbed in for any day to give participants as much creative freedom as possible.

All prompts are meant to serve as inspiration without being taken literally (e.g. you don’t have to include the exact wording of prompts into your work). Feel free to run rampant on interpretation. For example, if the prompt is “flame", you could create something with reference to a candle/campfire, your character could have suffered a burn, or the flame could be a reference to an ‘old flame’ - an old relationship. It’s truly down to you!

You can produce work in any media you choose, including but not limited to: writing, visual artwork, photo/video/audio edits, paper crafts and elaborate recommendation lists (not just a list of links). You can participate as much or as little as you want (i.e. you don’t have to do ALL the prompts if you don’t want to) and prompts can be used in any order. They are also free to use even after the event ends.

Please make sure to read the Event Info and FAQ carefully, as most of your questions will be answered there already. For everything else, you are welcome to come to our ask box or ask questions in our Discord server here.

Information on how to TAG is here.

This year’s AO3 Collection can be found here.

This year’s playlist can be found here.

The ‘Anatomy of a Whumptober Prompt’ post can be found here.

And our 'Resources for Writing Sensitive Topics’ post is here.

We’re very excited to see the community come together for yet another year of Whumptober! Go ham with the prompts, and support your fellow creators - we wish you all the best of luck, but most importantly: HAVE FUN!

Happy whumping,

Mods Vanne, Yenn, Kitty and Surro

Text versions of the prompts, including a google doc format, are posted below the cut!

nick-nonya

the right question to ask when worldbuilding is not "does this make sense", it's "does this fuck tremendously".

podcastwizard

affirmations for writers: i know how to write. i have seen sentences before, and i know how to make one. i can identify up to several words and their meanings. i am not afraid of semicolons.

#funny

sesamie

some of my favorite online resources for nautical/maritime/age of sail things - this is a longish post full of links and i spent a bit of time putting it together from my various bookmarks and collections!! please enjoy!

this blog (christine demerchant) and its many lists of terms and informative pages, for example: sails & rigs & sailing, hull & construction terms, anchors & anchorage, types of boats & ships, points of sail - at the bottom of every page there is a list of books on the topic as well!! this blog is INVALUABLE and has basically everything, and if it doesn't have something it certainly has a link to another blog or a book that has what you need. there's also lot of interesting articles about the author's adventures in making her own sails and building boats and experimenting with sailing. the site is a little difficult to navigate but the information on it is incredible and all very experience-based!!

there's also this blog (roland's model ship building) which is SUCH a delight - it is mostly model ships as the name would suggest but it is an incredibly close look at the little complicated parts of ships and a great resource for the more "how does this look" aspect if a little less "how does this work". my favorite page is the process of building model HMS surprise - it's SO fascinating and even just a quick look through makes visualizing and understanding the physics of it all easier. this in particular is a very good drawing resource for tall ships!

the ever-famous shipindex.org is a completely invaluable resource as well. pretty much anything you want to know about a specific ship can be found here, or at least it makes a spectacular jumping-off point!

another famous resource is falconer's marine dictionary, or: "A New Universal Dictionary of the Marine; Being a Copious Explanation of the Technical Terms and Phrases Usually Employed in the Construction, Equipment, Machinery, Movements, and Military, as Well as Naval, Operations of Ships: with Such Parts of Astronomy, and Navigation, as Will be Found Useful to Practical Navigators" by william falconer and expanded by william burney - the whole text is here online but it can be a little hard to read and understand so i would supplement with the other resources here!

there is also the oxford companion to ships and the sea which i do not have a copy of nor do i have online access to the full text, BUT you can search and find keywords and it will show you excerpts which is surprisingly helpful!! especially good if you don't have time to read the whole dictionary trying to find one specific term.

in the same vein is the oxford encyclopedia of maritime history - same deal as the above and i do not have access to the full text but this is SO useful for looking up specific people and places and ships and battles and such!!! there's TONS of information in this one.

also, a super interesting primary source: digital collections of midshipmen's letters and journals in the united states naval academy!! these are hefty, each link contains a ton of stuff:

Richard Mueller Nixon Letters (1926-1930)

Henry Mylin Keiffer Scrapbook (1907-1911) (one of my favorites of all time, absolutely worth at least a cursory glance)

John Porter Merrell Johnston Letters (1932-1937)

William Frederick Durand U.S.S. Mayflower journal of practice cruise (1879)

Roscoe C. Bulmer Journal (1894-1896)

Josiah G. Beckwith Letters (1853-1855)

this is not my whole collection but it is a fantastic set of jumping-off points and i tried to include the widest & most general databases that i could. if you have a great online resource to add please let me know, and if you have book recommendations i would appreciate those too!!!

#writing reference #resources

thewriteadviceforwriters

🍖 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.

─────── ✦ ───────

🔗 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.

─────── ✦ ───────

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.

─────── ✦ ───────

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.

─────── ✦ ───────

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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lilietsblog

I feel like you're veering away from the most fundamental and interesting part of what makes a culture: material conditions.

What DO they eat? I don't mean the spice, though that's interesting for trade relations. I mean are they agricultural? Pastoralist? Forest gardening? Fishing? A magic-based system of sustenance that never existed IRL? What's the climate like? How long do they need to store food to make it through the year? How much latitude do they have before famine? What are the horizontal and vertical lines of association people form as a safety network for a bad year?

What's the weather like? What's the landscape like? Where, in what shape, and out of what do they build houses? Are there earthquakes, tornados, floods that they need to make their houses resistant to?

What's the wildlife like? What do they hunt and eat, what hunts and eats them, what do they consider sacred, what did they domesticate? What do they feed to the domesticated ones and how does this align with their own sustenance? Who can afford to keep, or not keep, animals? What do they have a symbiotic relationship with? What animals are pests and what animals hunt them? (Note: this includes bugs and birds)

How easy is it to find metal? Which metal? How easy is it to find stone? Clay? Wood? Other fuel? Sand? What's the most abundant/easy to grow resource to make fabric out of? What unique/rare resources do they have for trade? How easily defensible is the territory?

What food is considered low class "last resort before famine"? How does the wealthy/ruling class distinguish itself? What technology do they have? (Note: magic that actually works is technology) What's the demographic dynamic (dying out, boom-bust cycle, growing, stable)? How many children do they have and how many of them die? What trade/diplomatic links do they have? How much of the land is inhabited and by what principle? (Ie just the coast, fertile valleys with mountains in between, desert oases, along rivers, etc)

How widespread is literacy? How expensive are books? What do they use for non-book casual writing and how expensive is that? Do they have public education and for whom? How urbanized are they? How much do they use currency vs barter vs guy economy? ("I know a guy")

There's so, so much that forms a culture out of where they live and what they eat. You won't invent a truly interesting and deep culture without starting with how it grows out of the land it lives on. Aesthetics you can slap on top however you want, invent or steal, as long as they go on top of a solid foundation.

And that is where you can REALLY mess with worldbuilding. What about a subterranean culture that hides from deadly conditions on the surface? What about a seafaring culture that forms floating islands out of connected ships? What about a tree-dwelling culture that uses magic to ensure they have everything they need? What about a culture that actually legitimately needs blood sacrifice to appease deific neighbours? Building houses out of seaweed, wood, stone, clay, bones? Dragon riders, dragon tamers, dragon allies?

Most of what's in the OP is determined by / arises from the material conditions I've listed here. Oh, it's not RIGIDLY determined, there's still plenty of degrees of freedom, but lots of options get cut off as nonsensical. It's EASIER to build a society that hangs together if you start with what they eat. It doesn't matter what you call their staple grain, it matters where and how they grow it. The personality and relationships of their gods literally DESCRIBE their climate. Most religious/sacred customs are a form of passing on agricultural/hygienic/ecological/historical knowledge. Most aesthetics are based on what local materials are available+cheap to make pretty with.

You can do SO MUCH if you start with questions like "what way of life would naturally form around resetting dungeons"!!!!