Checking on Culture: An Aide to Building Story Backgrounds

by Lee Killough

World-building isn’t just for science fictionEvery story—SF, fantasy, spy thriller, mystery, historical romance, western, or the Great American Novel—happens somewhere. Every story involves characters whose background has helped make them what they are. The author must create the place and characters.Checking On Culture provides a structured approach to that creation, a checklist Lee Killough developed for writing her own books. The fifty-two items, arranged alphabetically, cover cultural activities from Agriculture to Weights and Measures. Augmenting each category are commentary, examples and questions to help the writer consider all aspects of the category. Habitat determines the materials available for making clothing, and how it is used. Furs keep Eskimos warm in arctic cold. In the desert, long robes hanging loose from the shoulder not only afford protection from the sun but cool by allowing air to circulate up along the body. How do your characters dress? Does clothing differentiate class? The sexes? If body fur, say, makes clothing unnecessary, what do they use for pockets?Whatever the genre, and whether the writer needs just a reminder to be sure of local details in a book set close to home, or wants to construct an entire civilization, the checklist is an adaptable, ideal tool.

Genres: Writing

72 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

Lee Killough has been storytelling since the age of four or five, when she began making up her own bedtime stories. So when she discovered science fiction and mysteries about age eleven, she began writing her own science fiction and mysteries. Because her great fear was running out of these by reading everything her small hometown library had. It took her late husband Pat Killough, though, years later, to convince her to try selling her work. Her first published stories were science fiction and her short story, "Symphony For a Lost Traveler", earned a Hugo Award nomination in 1985.

She used to joke that she wrote SF because she dealt with non-humans every day...spending twenty-seven years as chief technologist in the Radiology Department at Kansas State University's Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital before retiring to write full-time.

Because she loves both SF and mysteries and hated choose between the two genres, her work combines them. Except for one fantasy, The Leopard’s Daughter, most of her novels are mysteries with SF or fantasy elements...with a preference for supernatural detectives: vampire, werewolves, even a ghost. She has set her procedurals in the future, on alien words, and in the country of dark fantasy. Her best known detective is vampire cop Garreth Mikaelian, of Blood Hunt, Bloodlinks, and Blood Games. Five of her novels and a novella are now available as e-books and she is editing more to turn into e-books.

Lee makes her home in Manhattan, Kansas, with her book-dealer husband Denny Riordan, a spunky terrier mix, and a house crammed with books.

Reviews

[S. Wigget · Rating 4 out of 5]

My copy is an earlier and zine-like edition, _Checking on Culture: A Checklist for Culture Building_, copyright 1993. I purchased it at Archon in St. Louis in 2004 (the centennial of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis).

I went over this book cover to cover while the document of my world-building chart (for a specific fantasy novel) is open in front of me. Very, very helpful book.

[Tracy S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been invaluable to me as a writer. It's good to remember, when you're writing a fantasy world, to put the bones in.