Hi, my name’s Austin and you’ve stumbled across my first post! I’m excited to be putting together this blog so I can share my experiences as a science fiction & fantasy writer and an anthropologist.
Throughout these posts, I’ll be delving into the topics I’m really passionate about and exploring the common ground between them. This means I’ll be talking about the craft of writing fiction, travel, and culture & history. All these things feed my creativity by informing the way I view the world and inspiring my approach to storytelling.
Why Writing and Culture?
I’ve been writing fiction for a long time, certainly before I went off to college. But after obtaining a master’s degree in sociocultural anthropology and spending time abroad studying and doing research, my eyes opened to a world of possibilities.
I gained new knowledge and tools that helped me understand culture and human behavior. As a result, this has added depth to my character development and worldbuilding in stories. As storytellers our primary goal is to immerse the audience in the world we create for them—whether that’s on the page, the screen, or over sound waves. And I’d argue that the best way to achieve a sense of immersion is to develop characters, societies, and worlds that are as deep as they are believable.
This is why exploring culture is important for writers, and it’s exactly why I want to pair it with the craft of writing itself. We can become much stronger writers simply by learning about the diversity of behavior, beliefs, values, social norms, and livelihoods of our world.
People, societies, and cultures always exist within a specific context. If we pay attention to that context, peeling back the layers to discover why things are the way they are, we’ll be better equipped to create people, societies, and cultures in our stories that have real texture. And a textured story is often an immersive one.
Will Every Post be Like This?
Definitely not! A lot of the time I will just be talking about the craft of writing, focusing on how you can become a better writer and storyteller through different approaches, techniques, and principles. But, occasionally, I’d also like to discuss how examining and researching culture can also strengthen your writing, especially when it comes to characters and worldbuilding.
Like I said at the beginning, I’m passionate about writing fiction, traveling, and experiencing other cultures. Those all arise from my desire to chase a sense of wonder, which is also what drives my creativity. So, for me, these three things belong together and build on each other.
Building those worlds comes from ideas, and ideas come from the net of experience. The wider the net, the more ideas you’ll collect.
By exploring more of the world, I get to see other ways that people live, and that enables me to write more vibrant and diverse stories. Part of the thrill of writing and reading fiction is exploring a new and exciting world. Building those worlds comes from ideas, and ideas come from the net of experience. The wider the net, the more ideas you’ll collect.
What stories might you invent after visiting a temple in the Himalayas and witnessing a shamanic trance? What about after a trip to Japan where you become fascinated with the art of Kabuki?
Hopefully, along the way, I’ll also explore some of the different kinds of storytelling traditions that exist in other cultures. The craft of writing I cover throughout this blog is a deep subject, but it’s also rooted in western traditions of storytelling. Other ways of engaging in narrative exist all over the world. Examining them provides a good opportunity to learn something new about creating compelling stories.
How Do I Apply Culture in my Story?
The real answer is that there are virtually endless ways this can be done. The idea is to explore the aspects of other cultures, or critically examine your own, and try to tease out how those things affect the actual people.
Let’s take, for example, two extremes: one involves an industrialized society that emphasizes individuality and runs off an economy based on wage-labor. The other extreme is a nomadic society sustained mostly by herding.
Now, how do you think the lived experiences of these two groups of people will be different? How will their cultures shape the way they see and act within the world, and how will it shape their behavior and the way they relate to others?
This is just brushing the surface-level of culture. How will roles within those societies determine differences in experience? How will a wealthy person in the industrialized society interact with their culture compared to a poor person who can’t secure a job? How will their beliefs, values, and ways of socializing change based on their role in the society?
These considerations are crucial to writing dynamic, three-dimensional characters. And, in the case of science fiction & fantasy, I’d argue it’s even more important because you’ll often invent your own cultures through your worldbuilding. But maybe that raises another question for you, which might look something like…
why look at real culture if i’m creating fictional ones?
The fact is we don’t create anything from scratch. No matter how imaginative your fictional world is, you still build it based on real-world patterns. We also tend to default to the patterns we’re already familiar with. Exploring beyond these default patterns contributes to worldbuilding that is immersive, diverse, and believable. This means learning about other cultures, peoples, and ways of life that aren’t familiar to you.
What would life be like in a mountain-dwelling herding society? How would it interact with its neighbors? Is your character from a poor family of herders or are they artisans, merchants, laborers, etc? How does their position in the society impact how they’re treated and how they socialize?
All these questions are worldbuilding exercises. It’s a great idea to draw from societies and cultures in the real world to inspire you. But remember that it’s often about the little details. The various foods that are eaten. Common spices and fragrances. Small habits of daily life such as religious observances or traditions. The kinds of celebrations they hold. The specifics are what makes the world vivid and textured.
The point is exploring other cultures can give you a new pattern to guide your worldbuilding. But now I want to provide a word of caution. You must be very careful not to appropriate another culture for your fictional one. This is a complicated and hot-button topic. I can’t do it justice in this brief post. For now, I just want to bring the issue to your attention.
Every writer, especially those creating societies and characters whose backgrounds are different from their own, should engage in this ongoing discussion. There are many resources to look into, such as #ownvoices. Try looking up books, essays, podcasts, Q&As, etc.
How Do I Avoid Portraying Cultures insensitively?
At the risk of over-generalizing, I’ll say this: what you don’t want to do is portray a real culture in your fictional setting by relying on assumptions and stereotypes, exoticizing it, or casting it as one-dimensional. Without proper research, which includes engaging with members of that culture or background (seriously, this is important), you run the risk of portraying those communities in a problematic or misleading way.
So, do your research, make intentional decisions, and be critical with yourself. Are you basing your fictional culture on a real one in a way that’s sensitive and responsible? Don’t hesitate to share with others, particularly people from that culture, to make sure that you are being sensitive.
It can be a daunting task, but most great writing evolves out of research and due diligence. It’s not easy portraying other cultures and backgrounds—patterns—that are different from our defaults. But if you turn to them for ideas and inspiration, your fictional worlds will take on so much more texture and depth.
After all, humanity is not a monolith. Its incredible diversity should inspire us to stretch beyond our comfort zone. There are enough stories about knights, magicians, and dragons set in the equivalent of medieval Europe. Of course, there’s still plenty of room for those kinds of stories if that’s what you want to write. But there’s so much more ground, and ways of life, to cover.
Don’t Be Afraid To Stretch
Don’t be afraid to step outside your own box. Not only does this contribute to richer and more varied stories, it provides us the opportunity to represent peoples and cultures that are often left out of the narrative.
We live in an exciting time where science fiction & fantasy is becoming increasingly diverse, both in the kinds of stories that are being written and in the authors who write them. Don’t be afraid to step outside your own box. Not only does this contribute to richer and more varied stories, it provides us the opportunity to represent peoples and cultures that are often left out of the narrative.
One of the most important lessons I learned both as a writer and an anthropologist is that we use stories to create meaning in our lives. And stories are so much more powerful when we can see ourselves in them.
Austin is a freelance writer, editor, and fiction author. He applies his expertise and knowledge of storytelling craft to write engaging content and provide top-notch editing services. Check out his blog on writing fiction, and you can also follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
Austin Jacques 
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