Why Cultural Worldview in Fantasy is Important

In the past I’ve discussed how to use fantasy worldbuilding to explore worldview (and why it’s important to include real-world worldview), and I’ve talked about how to build the foundation of your world (which is what will form the basis of worldview). But I haven’t actually talked about why a cultural worldview is important as an aspect of the worldbuilding process, so today I want to fix that.

Worldview Colors Everything

This is the core point. Everything else is secondary. A cultural worldview colors every aspect of a culture, influences how your characters think, breeds conflict when worldviews clash… Everything within and surrounding a culture is going to be influenced by that culture’s worldview. Therefore, it ought to be an intentional consideration. A culture’s worldview is the axis on which it turns. Since realizing this and becoming more intentional about cultural worldviews in my own worldbuilding, I’ve come to struggle to develop any culture that I haven’t found the axis of. Only once I discover the driving beliefs behind a culture can I figure out how it behaves, because its behavior is driven by that cultural worldview.

Let’s take an example from Deseran. Piradin’s cultural worldview stems from its origin myth:

According to Havanir religion, the god Havani came upon a fully formed earth and saw its great potential as wasted. Desiring to fulfill the world’s potential, Havani created men. For a time, men lived in peace as Havani intended. However, Havani eventually discovered that something was missing from man’s life, and that men also had no way to procreate like the animals did. Havani developed the idea of woman, but he only created one at first, to confirm that his plan would work. Thus, the first fight broke out. The men all clamored for the woman’s time, attention, and body, disrespecting her and fighting each other even to death. Havani tried to remedy his mistake by creating more women, but the damage had been done. Men had discovered the lure of competition, and continued to fight over even small things, and women endured continued disrespect from many men.

Havani sent a group of pure-hearted men to intervene, but they were unsuccessful. Havani withdrew the pure-hearted men, and the few women who remained unadulterated, from the rest of mankind and walked with them personally, teaching them how to live in peace and nurture and protect the earth as intended.

It’s this myth that leads to their practice of pacifism, their matriarchal society, their courtship practices, their hierarchy of crimes (abdication of family responsibility is one of the highest offenses), their approach to the treatment of animals, etc., etc. All of their behavior stems from this cultural worldview. And so does their opinion of neighboring cultures. Piradi relations with a neighboring culture that does a lot of hunting are strained because the Piradi believe hunting should be engaged in only when it’s necessary to control the size of the animal population

Cultural Worldview Influences Character Voice

As Kristen Kieffer mentions in her post on developing character voice, the culture a character lives in is going to influence how that character thinks and speaks and behaves. The degree of influence may vary. If a Piradi character were displaced to the U.S., they might cling to their Piradi culture and reject U.S. culture… thus displaying the influence of the Piradi culture and the lack of influence of U.S. culture. Just as we are influenced in real life by the cultures that surround us–whether primary cultures or sub-cultures–your characters ought to be informed by the cultural worldviews around them.

Cultural worldview is as much a character consideration as a worldbuilding consideration. Considering your character’s worldview, as informed by the culture around them, will enable you to create a stronger and more unique character voice. And the influence on character voice, in turn, will help your worldbuilding to seem more organic and meaningful.

Worldviews Conflict

Worldbuilding, character… The next cornerstone is plot, right? And cultural worldview contributes to this, also. Worldviews are a natural source of conflict. Take, again, the example of the Piradi and their hunter neighbors. One culture believes that humans shouldn’t injure animals unless it’s necessary, the other believes that hunting is a natural part of life. This produces external conflict. And this external conflict could provide internal conflict, as well. What if one of the Piradi struggled to reconcile their positive experience with individual hunters with their belief that hunting is a grotesque offense? Might they have trouble understanding how such good people can be so evil? Or perhaps how hunting can be evil if the people who practice it are so good? Internal conflict.

You could also have a character whose worldview shifts over the course of a story, first drawing its influence from culture A and then coming to see culture B as the right one. Or you could have a character who blends different worldviews and is spurned by members of both cultures.

Or you could go larger-scale and write about one nation that seeks to overthrow or conquer another in order to squash their conflicting worldview. Or a nation that tries to win others over to its worldview, with mixed results.

As with character voice, using cultural worldview to influence plot not only strengthens your plot, but also strengthens your world and makes it invaluable to the story. Worldbuilding ought to be an integral part of a book, and utilizing cultural worldview can be a great tool to ensure that it is.

Let’s chat! What are some of the most prominent worldviews in your world? How do they impact the characters and stories within the world? How do they conflict with one another?

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