One thing I'd like to see more discussion of, and advice about, is the issue of "entirely made up" cultures. When you're writing a setting that isn't historical (real, alternate, or future), and populating that setting with cultures that aren't identically any particular real culture, what's the best way to handle it?
I can see a number of ways to go with this, depending on to what extent a made up culture appears to be based on a particular identifiable real culture and on at what point in the creative process you notice the issue. In my own creative process, factoids and flavors and impressions from real cultures swirl around and can form into imaginary cultures quite involuntarily. Learning more about the real cultures in question may then be called for, but the purpose is different — not to make the Yrichii more like the !Kung, for example, but to make them more like themselves.
How does one most tactfully acknowledge a debt of this sort, where this imaginary culture owes its existence to that real one, but isn't intended to faithfully reproduce it?
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One thing I'd like to see more discussion of, and advice about, is the issue of "entirely made up" cultures. When you're writing a setting that isn't historical (real, alternate, or future), and populating that setting with cultures that aren't identically any particular real culture, what's the best way to handle it?
I can see a number of ways to go with this, depending on to what extent a made up culture appears to be based on a particular identifiable real culture and on at what point in the creative process you notice the issue. In my own creative process, factoids and flavors and impressions from real cultures swirl around and can form into imaginary cultures quite involuntarily. Learning more about the real cultures in question may then be called for, but the purpose is different — not to make the Yrichii more like the !Kung, for example, but to make them more like themselves.
How does one most tactfully acknowledge a debt of this sort, where this imaginary culture owes its existence to that real one, but isn't intended to faithfully reproduce it?