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Holly Lisle's Create a Culture Clinic

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Ranked #7,232 in Books, Poetry & Writing, #258,879 overall

A Step-by-Step Course in Creating Peoples and Philosophies for Fiction

Is your novel lacking something?

Do you feel like you're writing a flat cardboard cutout world?

Maybe you don't know your characters as well as you should. Maybe you don't know their real identity, what they believe, what rules they've set for themselves, what folk tales they were told whilst they were growing up.

And if you don't know those things then how do you know what motivates them?

If you don't know what motivates them then you don't have a plot.

Holly Lisle's Create a Culture Clinic will lead you through everything you need to start looking into your invented world and drawing out the details which will make your book into a chunky, meaty, believeable world that your readers will want to lose themselves in.

Contents at a Glance

Why I'm Using the Create a Culture Clini...
Not Just For Fantasy Writers...
How I'm Using the Create a Culture Clini...
Talyn
Kushiel's Dart

Why I'm Using the Create a Culture Clinic

I downloaded this book a while ago and printed it all out, ready to read it but I hadn't started properly using it until recently when I realised I needed to know way more about my imaginary world than I'd imagined I would like "so what is that religion you mentioned really about, Rachel?" and "why exactly does everyone hate that one character for his beliefs?".

I originally intended to use this book with a novel I'd written for National Novel Writing Month one year but when I abandoned that novel to the box under my bed I forgot all about creating cultures.

Now I've started a new book which is set partly in our world and partly in a different world. As I'm bringing someone from our world into the other world I knew I needed to know all sorts of weird and wonderful things about how this new world worked. I wanted to have characters telling my traveller all the ins and outs of the religions and architecture and governments and home life... well maybe not all of it!

After reading Holly Lisle's book Talyn and Jacqueline Carey's book Kushiel's Dart I knew I wanted to write something that was as rich in culture as those. I wanted several different cultures clashing and I wanted to write about lives very different from my own.

Not Just For Fantasy Writers...

Create a Culture Clinic isn't just for people who write about faraway worlds with three suns and eight moons with blue grass that tastes of chocolate milkshake. This course will also help you to really think about your own culture and sub cultures within your culture that you don't have first hand experience of. This clinic is about getting you to write in a way that's going to hold up even when your culture moves on and changes.

How I'm Using the Create a Culture Clinic

As you can see above I've got a project file set up for the novel I'm currently working on.

I've got my culture stuff in the front of the file although I'm anticipating that I'm going to end up having to move the culture project work into its own file one day. At the moment I just have a little bit of information that I'm starting off with I'm sure that as I continue to write I'm going to end up with a pretty well rounded culture with cursory information for most aspects.

Talyn

By Holly Lisle.

Talyn: A Novel of Korre

by: Holly Lisle

Amazon Price: $1.38 (as of 05/31/2012)

Holly uses examples from her novel Talyn in the Create a Culture Clinic. This is a great book, I highly recommend it to anyone who loves fantasy novels- and also anyone who hates fantasy novels- this will change your mind.

Talyn is a woman who's trying to find a new life after peace has been declared in her land. She falls in love with an outsider. But what is he really up too and why is he really interested in Talyn?

Kushiel's Dart

By Jacqueline Carey.

Kushiel's Dart

by: Jacqueline Carey

Amazon Price: $4.63 (as of 05/31/2012)

Kushiel's Dart is an amazing work of fiction. It's an enormous book and absolutely packed full of culture clashes, religions and government. Oh yeah and there are a few kinky bits- you've been warned.

Phedre is a courtesan whose life leads her through different lands, uncovering terrible plots and maybe just becoming the saviour of her people.

What's Inside?

The Culture Clinic has 4 main sections:

Home Life

Community

Religion

Government

Each section is then split up into further sections with a series of questions to help prompt you to realise what your invented people are about. You can answer as many or few questions as you want, depending on what you need for your novel. Holly recommends doing only as much as you need to kick-start your writing. If you then get stuck again she recommends coming back to the questions and answering some more of them. This is incredibly beneficial for anyone who's stuck with their plot and doesn't know where to go next.

So far I've spent the most time on the Religion Section and a little of the Home Life Section because I've got stuck at the point where I need to know more about my hero's background. He's quite a devout sort and I've flippantly made references to his religion and a prophet he follows which differs from the prophet another character follows. I've now got conflict between these two characters but I want to know what exactly it is that they hate about the other's beliefs.

Home Life

Home Life is split into sections with questions concerning:
Single Life
Paired Life
Family Life
Life Cycle
Life Cycle concerns all the age ranges from child birth through to death.

That may all seem fairly simple but consider that within each of these sections your culture will have specific artefacts that pertain to certain stages of life, specific buildings that people in these social and age groups can live in, certain books and clothes that are specific to age range, rituals that have to be performed and so on.

Community

The Community section is concerned with getting you to develop ideas about what your community's philosophy is, what sort of social groups will form within the community, social divisions, money and commerce etc etc.

In short, how do your people come together as a culture and how do they relate or not relate to each other.

How do your singles, pairs and families relate to other singles, pairs and families?

Who talks to who? Who is forbidden from talking to someone?

This is all important stuff that will add to your story.

Religion

This is the bit that I raced forward to rush on!
Apparently inventing religions is also Holly Lisle's favourite bit of making a new culture too.

I was brought up in a very religious household so religion was something I knew. One of my main characters comes from a very strict religion and it's going to cause a problem with another character who's fairly liberal and open minded but not aligned with any God or whatnot.

In the Religion section Holly will get you to think about who your gods, saints, prophets and angels are. She'll get you to think about the pros and cons of following the religion, the ceremonies, rituals, holidays etc.

You'll have everything you need to triggering your mind into thinking about why your people think a certain way.

I'm busy trying to take the little things I've said already in my novel and gel them together in one religion. I want to start exploring creation stories and explanations of why things are the way they are in my world.

My culture is heavily influenced by its religion.

Maybe you don't think religion is important today in our culture. Perhaps you're trying to imagine a culture without a religion? Well think about all the holidays we have- they celebrate religious events- some of them are celebrating several different events from different religions.

Government

Yawn, government! Some people can't bear to talk about religion, well I'm not too fond of politics.

I haven't got to the point where I'm working on the government of my culture but it's going to have to be explored soon. My story is based around the royalty of my culture and how they've become overthrown so I'm going to need to do some hard thinking about the hierarchy of power (as Holly calls it) and what's changed now that the royal family has changed. The military is also going to play a big role- this is another section Holly has under the government.

The Fun Bits!

As well as leading you through all the questions you'll need to invent your own culture, Holly also encourages you to draw and even make (if needs be) any artifact that you might use in your culture.

Below you can see where I've doodled the complicated bridal wear for my culture. If I was really insane and desperately needed to work out how this outfit worked (maybe my book needs all that detail, afterall) I could go on to make a mock-up!

Holly cautions against going too far, however. Only ever do as much as you need to carry on with your writing again.

Perhaps you need to make a garment too? Or invent a recipe? Maybe you need to write sections from a book? Holly will show you how and how you can use those techniques to add meat to the bones of your story.

Excuse me, I have a religious text to write...

Getting Organised

As well as leading you through questions and prompts to get you thinking about your culture, Holly also gives you tips for how to organise your work to make it an easy reference guide for years to come.

Included in the Create a Culture Clinic are a series of worksheets to use as a quick reference index system. Included in these sheets you will also find sheets for you to record information for books that are important in your world.

Holly will even tell you what materials you'll need to create your file.

Holly Lisle's Create a Culture Clinic

A Step-by-Step Course in Creating Peoples and Philosophies for Fiction

Contents at a Glance

Contents at a Glance

Why I'm Using the Create a Culture Clinic

Not Just For Fantasy Writers...

How I'm Using the Create a Culture Clinic

Talyn

By Holly Lisle.

Kushiel's Dart

By Jacqueline Carey.

Contents

What's Inside?

Home Life

Community

Religion

Government

The Fun Bits!

Getting Organised

Useful Stationary For Your Culture File

Feel free to add your favourite brand of stationary.

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Where Can You Get Your Hands On This Book?

Create a Culture Clinic

By Holly Lisle.

Video Tips from Holly Lisle

Holly's Books

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