If you’re struggling to come up with a name for a fantasy character, you could end up finding all the inspiration you need in the plant kingdom. Flowers evoke feelings of elegance and grace, which can make flower names most suitable for characters like elves and centaurs, or, if you’re making a character for a D&D campaign, these names could work well for a firbolg or druid as well. Really, any character associated with the fey or nature could be a good fit for names like these. 

Although these names are best suited for fantasy characters, they could end up being meaningful for any character. Take a look, and you might find something you like!

Acacia

The word Acacia describes a genus of shrubs and trees. These plants have iconic seed pods and often bloom white or yellow flowers, though some species are red or purple. They are notoriously challenging to grow—often requiring someone to manually chip away at the seed coat—but they have been coveted throughout history for their medicinal and preservative properties. 

As a name, Acacia has Greek origins, and means “thorny,” since many plants in the Acacia genus are covered in thorns. It would be well-suited to a character who has a lot of positive qualities, but holds themself back due to anxiety, past trauma, or some other personal obstacle. 

Alcea

Alcea is the name of the genus of flowering plants commonly known as “hollyhocks.” These plants are coveted as ornamental plants due to their bright flowers and tendency to attract hummingbirds and butterflies. 

Alcea is an uncommon name of Greek origin, and is understood to mean “foundation” or “strength, courage, and protection.” In the language of flowers, this flower symbolizes ambition. Naturally, this name would be well-suited for a character who is driven and passionate, with a tendency to care for and protect their friends. 

Alyssum

Alyssum is the name for a genus of flowering plants that are iconic for having clusters of tiny bright white or yellow flowers, though some species can be pink or purple. They are often used as food for caterpillars, and they have been known to attract many moths and butterflies to a garden. 

As a name, Alyssum can mean “shelter” and “protection,” and the Greek definition for the word is “without madness,” or “to cure madness.” It could be a good name for a doctor or a character with healing abilities, or simply someone who takes on the role of protecting their friends. 

Amaranth

Amaranth derives from the genus Amaranthus, which includes species of plants used for food and ornamental gardens. It is known for its distinct flowers, which are small clusters that can grow in long tendrils, and range in color from striking fuchsia to deep maroon. Amaranth seeds are commonly used in cuisine, though all parts of the plant are technically edible. 

The name Amaranth is of Greek origin, and means “unfading,” so it could be suited to a character who powers on regardless of their circumstances. 

Anthurium

Anthurium is the name for a genus of plants that are most commonly known as “laceleafs,” “flamingo flowers,” and “tailflowers.” These plants have unique flowers called bracts, which feature a spiky cluster of flowers (called a spadix) that grows on the end of a stem and a specialized (often brightly colored) leaf that surrounds it (called a spathe). They often have large, heart-shaped leaves, and berries that are mildly toxic.

Although Anthurium has not historically been used as a name, and the Greek definition (“flower tail”) doesn’t offer much in terms of meaning, it could end up being a good name for a character who is flashy and bombastic—or anyone who is distinctly unusual. 

Bryony

Bryony is a genus of plants known for being poisonous—often extremely so. The leaves, flowers, berries, and roots can all be fatally toxic if ingested. However, that is not the only way this plant has been known to be destructive. Its ability to climb and its dense foliage can overcome and shade out most other vegetation around it, which can disrupt gardens and ecosystems alike. That said, sometimes they are planted in gardens deliberately, for their soft green flowers and bold red, black, or green berries. 

As a name, Bryony has Greek origins, and means “climbing plant.” Based on the destructive nature of the plant itself (and its common classification as an invasive weed), it could be best suited for a character who has their fair share of toxic traits as well. However, if you wanted a more positive spin, it could also work well for a character who is able to overcome adversity and rise above their peers. 

Calla

Calla is a genus of plant that only contains one species: the Calla palustris, more commonly known as the “bog arum,” “water-arum,” or “marsh calla.” It looks quite like a peace lily, with a similar greenish-yellow spadix and a curved white leaf, called a spathe. It produces bright red berries and is highly poisonous. 

As a name, Calla is of Greek origin, and means “beautiful.” It could end up being the perfect name for a character who uses their beauty or charm to trick or manipulate others.

Calliandra

Calliandra is a genus of plants that are delightfully nicknamed “powder-puff plants” or “fairy dusters.” This is because of their iconic flowers that resemble fuzzy pom-poms or feather dusters due to their many long stamens. In addition to that, they are known to bloom year-round, and are often red, pink, purple, or white. 

Calliandra is also a name that is derived from the Greek name Calandra, which means “lovely one.” Given that meaning, and the adorable fuzzy flowers that are iconic to this plant, this name could be perfect for a delicate and graceful character, such as a nimble elf or some other fae creature. 

Camellia

Camellia is a genus of flowering plants that are highly coveted for their gorgeous (and often very large) pink flowers. They are used most often in ornamental gardens and for making tea, but the seeds can also be pressed to make oil that is used in cooking, hair care, and cleaning and treating blades. However, these plants are extremely delicate and susceptible to many pests and parasites. Many of the most commonly cultivated species are rare in the wild due to their natural habitats being destroyed. 

The name Camellia has Latin origins, and means “religious attendant” or “helper to the priest.” It could be a great choice for a cleric or paladin, or any character who deals with religious themes. It could also be a good fit for someone who has a wide range of skills and abilities. 

Cassia

Cassia is a genus of flowering plants that, for a long time, was used as a label to classify plants  that didn’t fit neatly into other categories. Additionally (and confusingly), many plants in the Cinnamomum genus are also commonly called “Cassias.” Because of the unconventional use of the label, it is unclear how many true cassias exist, and many have wildly different properties and uses from one another. Some are edible, some are toxic, some are shrubs, some are trees, and some are used in herbal medicine. Over the years, many Cassia plants have been moved to more appropriate genera. 

Cassia is a Latin name that means “cinnamon,” because of its relation to the Cinnamomum cassia, a tree that produces a warm, cinnamon-like bark used as a spice (and, shockingly, it’s not in the Cassia genus). This name could be fitting for someone warm and inviting, or, alternatively, someone who is not who they say they are. 

Celosia

Celosia is a genus of plants commonly known as “Woolflowers.” The flowers vary wildly in color, from common yellows and reds to the more unusual white, silver, and fuchsia. It is a popular food in many parts of the world, and it is said to have a delicate texture and a taste similar to spinach. It is hardy and grows well in conditions that would be inhospitable to many other kinds of crops, and it is highly successful at spreading its seeds without human intervention, making it extremely low-effort to grow. 

The name Celosia derives from the Greek word for “burning” because of their bright pointed flower heads that look almost like flames. It would be a great name for a character with an unshakable will and an independent attitude. 

Crocus

Crocus is the genus of plants that is famous for the Saffron Crocus, which is responsible for producing the most expensive spice in the world. The flowers are often purple, yellow, white, or orange, but the saffron it produces is used to make orange or red dye. In addition to that, saffron is a highly valued spice in the culinary world, and is widely considered to be luxurious. 

Although Crocus is not generally used as a name, it could end up being just the right fit for a character who values the finer things in life and likes to live luxuriously. 

Cyclamen

Cyclamen is the name for a genus of plants with an unusual appearance and an even more unusual way of growing. Unlike many similar ornamental plants, cyclamen flowers grow from a round tuber that resembles a potato. The flowers themselves face downward and have upswept petals, giving them the appearance of being inside-out. The leaves are large and heart-shaped, with purple undersides and a distinct “Christmas tree” pattern on the top. 

Although Cyclamen is not generally used as a name, that’s a bit of a missed opportunity. Not only does it come with the convenient and suave nickname “Cy,” but it could also end up being a perfect fit for a truly unique character. 

Cypress

Cypress vines (not to be confused with cypress trees) are little red star-shaped flowers that grow on vines. It is also known as “star glories,” “cypress vine morning glories,” and “hummingbird vines.” The plant grows quickly and can cover a wide area in a short span of time, earning it the unfortunate title of “invasive species,” though it thrives just as well in small spaces. Still, its beautiful flowers and tendency to attract hummingbirds keep it popular for ornamental gardens.

As a name, Cypress derives from the Greek name “Cyparissus” or “Kyparissos.” It is generally used in reference to the cypress tree, which is often seen as a symbol of mourning. This could work well for a character who thrives in any condition and makes the most of their circumstances. 

Dianella

Dianella is a genus of flowers more commonly known as “flax lilies,” or, more specifically, “blue flax lilies.” They are known for their soft blue flowers and vibrant, shiny blue berries, and have long strap leaves that sprout up directly from the ground. Some of the berries are edible (and reportedly taste nutty and sweet), but some other species are highly poisonous.

The name Dianella is said to originate from the Roman Goddess Diana, and the diminutive suffix -ella. Although it is not often used as a name, it can be seen as a unique reimagining of more common similar names such as Danielle or Diane. It could work really well for a character who is full of surprises.

Dicentra

Dicentra is a genus of plants known by the common name “bleeding-hearts.” These plants are iconic, and some of the strangest-looking flowers in the world. Some flowers are heart-shaped, some look like teardrops, and some look entirely alien, with multiple layers of different lengthed petals contorting out like tentacles. The flowers can be a range of colors from pink and blue to cream and even brown. 

Although Dicentra is not generally used as a name, it has a beautiful sound that could work wonderfully for a tragic villain or some creepy or wildly unusual personality. 

Eglantine

Eglantine is a species of rose that is also known as “sweet briar.” It is coveted for its large, pink blooms that smell of sweet apples, and the large rosehips (the fruits) that are used to make a popular and nutritious tea. Uniquely, it is considered to be critically endangered in some parts of the world (like Portugal), and invasive in other parts (like Argentina). It is able to grow in almost all climates, barring the extreme north. 

The name Eglantine generally means “sweet and prickly,” or similar variations of that. It would be a great fit for a character who uses a sweet persona to get people to trust them, only to later betray that trust. 

Euphorbia 

Euphorbia, also commonly called “spurge,”  is the name of one of the largest genera of flowering plants, including roughly 2,000 different species. The eclectic mix of different plant species that fall under this classification includes succulents, trees, tiny shrubs, and even the classic poinsettias that pop up around Christmastime. One thing that makes them similar, however, is that all the species share the same poisonous, latex-like sap. In addition to that, all the species are known for having flowers that lack the common structures of traditional flowers—namely petals. The actual flower is more like a small bulb, and what looks like petals are actually leaves that have taken up the characteristics of petals in order to attract pollinators. 

As a name, Euphorbia originates from the Greek name Euphorbus. Both the modern name and its original Greek form have a mystical sound to them and could be a good match for an eclectic scientist or wizard. 

Flax

Flax, also known as “linseed,” is a plant cultivated primarily for its practical uses, like making linseed oil, textiles, or flax meal for cooking. Linseed oil has many uses, including in wood finishes and paints. However, these plants do have ornamental potential, since they are known to stand tall and bloom red, yellow, white, or violet, depending on the species. 

As a name, Flax is short and bold, and that, coupled with the versatility of the flax plant, leads it to be a good fit for a pragmatic or resourceful character.

Forsythia

Forsythia is a genus of flowering shrubs that grow in the early spring, and are often referred to as “Easter Trees.” They produce bright yellow flowers with four distinct petals, and in autumn, the leaves turn a soft peachy color before the plant goes dormant for the winter. The fruits of this plant are actually dry pods containing several winged seeds, which allows the seeds to be carried on the wind to propagate in new locations. 

The name Forsythia actually comes from William Forsyth, a famous Scottish botanist from the late 1700s and early 1800s. It means “man of peace,” so it could be a good fit for a character who is serene and even-tempered. Alternatively, you could lean more into the spring imagery, and apply it to a character who is young and spritely—and perhaps has wings, just like the seeds of the forsythia plant. 

Freesia

Freesia is a genus of plants best known for their large, funnel-shaped flowers. They are sought after for ornamental gardens because of their large iconic blooms, and they are frequently included in wedding bouquets as well. Not only that, their strong fragrance is often utilized in the production of creams, perfumes, and other cosmetics.

The Freesia got its name from the German botanist and physician Friedrich Freese in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It is gaining popularity as a given name, and it is generally understood to simply mean “flower.” It is simple and elegant, and may be a good fit for a character who shares those traits.  

Galax

Galax is a genus that only contains one species: Galax urceolata. The plant is referred to simply as “wandplant,” “wandflower,” or “beetleweed.” These nicknames come from the long tendrils of white flowers (called a “raceme”) that grow up above the rest of the plant, resembling a magic wand made of flowers. The leaves are known to be dense and leathery, and are heart-shaped with serrated edges.

As a name, Galax invokes that same sense of magical wonder as the plant itself. It could be a great name for any character who uses magic. 

Gaura

Gaura, also known as “Lindheimer’s beeblossum,” “Lindheimer’s clockweed,” and “Indian feather,” is a gorgeous ornamental plant known for its unique shape and delicate blossoms. The flowers bloom in white or pink, and despite their fragile appearance, the plant itself is quite hardy and can survive a long period of time without water. The stem and leaves of the plant are covered in a fine, soft hair, and the edges of the leaves are slightly serrated. 

The name Gaura comes from the Greek word for “superb,” for the plant’s impressive appearance. It could really suit a character who is full of surprises and is stronger than they look—or someone who really dresses to impress. 

Heliconia

Heliconia is a genus of plants that are delightfully unique. They are often called “lobster-claws,” “toucan beak,” “wild plantain,” and “false bird-of-paradise.” The plant is closely related to bananas, and a lot of the main structure of the leaves resembles those plants, with large palm-like leaves on the end of long stems. However, Heliconia’s drooping flowers stand out by being bright red and resembling lobster claws—though some varieties are orange, pink, or yellow.

Although Heliconia is not often used as a name, it could work well for a character who is always doing something spontaneous or unexpected. 

Ixora

Ixora is a genus of flowering plants most commonly known as “West Indian Jasmine,” though it has many other names. Ixora plants are highly coveted as bonsai because of their large, dark, leathery leaves and tendency to bloom year-round in the right conditions. The flowers themselves are tiny, but grow in large, round clusters. They are often red, white, yellow, and pink. 

Ixora is a gorgeous name with impressive origins. It comes from a Portuguese translation of “Isvara,” which is Sanskrit for “lord.” Likewise, a character named Ixora could be imposing and impressive, commanding respect simply by being present. 

Jonquil

Jonquil, also known as “rush daffodil,” is a flower very closely related to the common daffodil. There are many differences between them, from subtle differences in the shape of their leaves to the climate in which they grow, but the most striking difference is their scent. Daffodils are known to be subtle and sweet, but jonquil flowers have a strong, perfume-like scent. Despite these differences, many people assume that Jonquil and daffodils are the same. 

The name Jonquil originates from the Latin “Juncus,” which means “reed.” It would work out well for a character who feels like they don’t totally fit in with their peers.

Junellia

Junellia is the name of a genus of plants in the Verbena/Vervain family. These plants are characterized by small flowers that grow in tight clusters, and are often a light pastel pink, lilac, or white. Like other plants in the Verbena family, these flowers are highly sought-after for ornamental gardens for their soft colors and flower coverage, as well as their tendency to attract many butterflies and hummingbirds.

Although Junellia is not traditionally used as a name, it bears resemblance to other names like Junia or Junellie, which simply means “born in June.” It could be a good name for a youthful and sunshiney character, or anyone with ties to nature, like druids or fae. 

Kalmia

Kalmia is a genus of flowering shrubs with blooms that resemble tiny parasols. They are often a delicate pink, white, or red, and are so renowned for their beauty that when they were first discovered, they were incredibly expensive, and sought after by botanists like they were gold. However, despite its unparalleled beauty, the plant itself contains a lethal neurotoxin, and has earned itself titles like “lambkill” and “sheep poison” for its tendency to be accidentally eaten by sheep.

As a name, Kalmia is well suited to a character who deals in poisons, or someone who is known for having a pretty face and an abrasive personality. 

Kennedia

Kennedia is a genus of peculiar-looking plants with flowers that somewhat resemble pea pods. The stem and leaves are hairy, and the blooms are so unusual it is hard to describe them in words. With multiple bracts, petals, and stamens, many species of Kennedia look more monstrous than beautiful. Additionally, these flowers can be bright blue, red, violet, and even black. 

As a name, Kennedia comes from the name “Kennedy,” which hails from Ireland. Although it has a sweet sound and harkens to a more traditional name, the monstrous flower from which it derives makes it more suitable for someone hiding a dark curse, like a monster form or some kind of evil corruption. 

Lantana

Lantana is a genus of flowering plants known for their iconic, bright flower clusters that come in almost any hue. These clusters grow out in a spiral shape and often change color as they age, resulting in mesmerizing patterns with two or three colors within a single cluster. Despite its gorgeous appearance, some species of Lantana plants have been known to wreak havoc on ecosystems by being lethally poisonous and aggressively invasive. 

As a name, Lantana is as fiery as the blooms on a Lantana plant. It could be well suited to a character who is a skilled fighter or potion-maker, or simply someone with an attitude to match their namesake’s vibrant nature. 

Larkspur

Larkspur is the common name for the genus Delphinium, which is well known for having spike-shaped clusters of flowers (called raceme). These blooms, which resemble spurs, are most commonly blue or purple, though some species can be pink or white. Because of the vibrancy of the color, some species are used to make brilliant blue ink. However, like many of the prettiest flowers, larkspur are toxic, and can result in a slow, painful death.

Because of their alluring appearance and slow toxin, Larkspur could be a name well-suited to a character who ends up betraying their friends, or one who uses their appearance to lure their foes into a false sense of security. 

Linaria

Linaria, also known as “Toadflax,” is a genus of flowering plants that thrive so well it is often characterized as weeds. The flowers have a wide variety of shapes and colors, and many species are known for having unusual and oblong blooms. They are simple, alluring, and easy to grow—but they can get out of hand quickly if they are not often trimmed back. 

As far as names go, Linaria is one of the more elegant ones. With repeating vowel sounds and no hard consonants, it is befitting for an elf or other species of graceful disposition. 

Lonicera

Lonicera is the name of the genus of plants that contains the famed honeysuckle. These plants are named for their sweet, edible nectar, and are coveted for ornamental gardens because of their bright colors and tendency to attract hummingbirds. They grow best when they are able to climb up existing plants and structures, and because of this, they are often utilized to disguise unsightly walls or fences. However, if not trimmed back carefully, it can quickly grow out of control. 

The name Lonicera comes from the Renaissance botanist, Adam Lonicer, and it adapts quite well to being a given name. Although it sounds graceful and dignified, it could also end up working well for a character who is attractive, but overbearing and high-maintenance. 

Narcissus

Narcissus is the name for a genus of spring flowers containing species like the common daffodil and the jonquil. These flowers are known for their characteristic bell-shaped corolla in the center and six conspicuous petals beneath that, always white or yellow in color. These iconic flowers have been a popular choice for millennia, with records showing that they were cultivated in ancient Rome and Greece in 300 AD—and possibly even earlier than that. 

The name Narcissus comes from an ancient Greek myth of a youth who fell in love with his own reflection and wasted his life gazing at himself. When he died, a narcissus flower sprouted up in his place. Naturally, this name would be well suited to a character who is rather grandiose and attention-seeking. 

Nerine

Nerine is a genus of plants commonly known as “Jersey Lilies” or “Spider Lilies.” Their long and spindly petals resemble the legs of a spider or small octopus, and come in shades of pink, white, and red. Interestingly, despite their common names, they are not considered true lilies. Although these delicate flowers are gorgeous and unique, they are not often cultivated, and many species are threatened with extinction. 

The name Nerine means “sea nymph,” so naturally, it would be well suited to any character associated with water or the sea, like a sea elf, mermaid, or pirate. 

Nivale

Nivale comes from the flower “trillium nivale,” which is an iconic little flower also known as the “snow trillium” or “dwarf white trillium.” These flowers bloom while snow still blankets the ground, and rarely grow above 9 cm. Their flowers are small and white, bearing only three petals in a triangular shape. They have an indefinite lifespan and can live for many years, however, they bloom for only about three weeks before the entire plant drops its seeds and recedes back underground. Additionally, they are known to be extremely delicate plants, and simply plucking the flowers from them can damage the plant so significantly that it dies.

The name Nivale, predictably, means “white,” after the white flowers that grow from the trillium nivale plant. The name could work well for a character who is sensitive and has a tendency to withdraw, but has a lot of positive qualities they could share with the world if only they had the confidence to. 

Nolana

Nolana, also known as “Chilean bell flower,” is a genus of flowers in the nightshade family. They are known for their trumpet shape and range of colors from white to blue, with a bright yellow center. It is a simple plant often used in commercial landscaping and home gardens, and it requires full sun to thrive.

As a name, Nolana (and the more masculine form “Nolan”) is of Gaelic origin, and means “champion.” It is a name that would be well-suited to a character who is charming and universally liked, with an uncanny ability to persuade others of anything. 

Ophrys

Ophrys is the name of a genus of orchids with a peculiar set of attributes. Known as “bee orchids,” the flowers of this plant mimic the appearance and pheromones of female bugs (often bees), effectively fooling male bugs into trying to mate with the flower, thus pollinating it. Additionally, bee orchids are highly dependent on symbiotic fungi to absorb nutrients from the soil, so removing these plants from their native habitat is nearly impossible.

In another weird twist, Ophrys is the Greek word for “eyebrow,” since the plant is known to be fuzzy like the body of a bee—or, well, an eyebrow. The name could end up working really well for a deceptive character, or someone who relies on their appearance to elicit information from others. 

Plumeria

Plumeria, also known as “frangipani,” is a genus of flowering plants with a delightful appearance. Each flower has five leaves that overlap each other in a spiral sort of shape, giving them the appearance of tiny pinwheels. They grow in clusters and are often white, orange, pink, or yellow. Fittingly, their seeds have little wings on them to be carried by the wind and propagated elsewhere. 

The name Plumeria comes from the 17th-century French botanist Charles Plumier. It could be a good name for a character who is free-spirited and goes where the wind takes them. 

Scilla

Scilla is a genus of flowering plants that are known for their iconic blue flowers and dark stamens, though pink, purple, and white variations exist. They are considered to be a valuable ornamental plant because of their vibrant color, but also because they bloom very early on in the spring season, and are often among the first flowers to appear after winter.

The name Scilla means “ancient,” and it works really well both as a standalone name and as a nickname for Priscilla. The name could also stem from the Greek name Skylla, which references a terrible sea monster. It could end up working well for a character who is associated with the sea.

Settia

The name Settia comes from the poinsettia plant, which is well known for its bright red and green foliage that often finds its way into traditional Christmas decorations. Although they are known for their red leaves (known as bracts), there are varieties that come in orange, cream, white, pink, or even multiple different colors at once. These leaves all start out green, however, and when the nights are long enough to leave the plants in darkness for 14 hours at a time, the bracts change colors into the iconic red that everyone knows and loves.

As a name, Settia (also spelled as Setia), means “faith” or “truth.” It could be a perfect name for a paladin or cleric, or any character associated with deities or festivities. 

Sorrel

Sorrel, also known as “spinach dock,” is an herbaceous plant with green and crimson leaves. When it blooms, its flowers grow in large whorled spikes, though they aren’t exactly visually impressive. Although it has little to no value as an ornamental flower, it is coveted for use in cuisine for its sharp and sour flavor, despite being poisonous in large quantities. It is often puréed and added to soups or sauces.

As a name, Sorrel has French origins, and means “reddish brown.” It is a warm and gentle-sounding name, and would be a good fit for a character who is authentic and dependable. 

Teasel

Teasel (or Teazel) is a common name for the genus Dipsacus, which includes some pretty unique flowers. Teasels are known for their prickly leaves and stems, and the large, spiky inflorescence (cluster of flowers) that can be purple, pink, or white. These tiny flowers grow close together, covering the entire seedhead and creating the illusion of one large, spherical flower. 

The name Teasel means “to tease,” and the plant likely got that name from its use in textile processing, where the seedheads would be used like a comb to tease wool fabric to make it more textured or fuzzy. It would be a name well-suited to a character who likes to joke around, or perhaps a fae trickster. 

Ursinia

Ursinia is a genus of flowering plants in the daisy family. They are known mostly for their iconic circular, bright orange or yellow flowers with striking, dark centers, though some species of Ursinia can also be red, white, or cream. It blooms often and for long periods of time, and is well-known for being easy to grow. Although they might sound unremarkable, they are often compared to a vibrant sunrise.

Ursinias get their name from the German scholar Johannes Heinrich Ursinus. Both Ursinia and Ursinus could make good names for fantasy characters, and may be a particularly good fit for a character who is reliable and upbeat. 

Verbena

Verbena, also known as Vervain or Verveine, is a genus of semi-woody flowering plants, although the name is often used in reference to the species known as “common verbena.” Their flowers are tiny and grow in clusters, and are often a soft blue or purple color, though white, pink, and red varieties exist. They are highly valuable for their uncanny ability to attract many different kinds of butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds, so they are considered by many to be an indispensable part of butterfly gardens. Additionally, the common verbena is known for being a “honey plant,” which means the plant’s nectar is used by bees to make honey. 

The names Verbena, Vervain, and Verveine all have great potential as fantasy names. The name Verbena means “sacred foliage” because the plant was believed to have spiritual significance to ancient Romans. It could be a good fit for a cleric or paladin character, or simply any character with connections to the divine or nature.  

Vinca

Vinca is a genus of flowering plants commonly known as “periwinkles.” The flowers are violet (or occasionally white), and always have five petals. They tend to grow low to the ground and can spread across a landscape fairly rapidly, creating a dense ground cover. However, although they are beautiful, their ability to spread rapidly in many different climates has earned the plant the title of invasive species. 

The name Vinca means “to bind or fetter” (in chains), or “to conquer.” It could be a good name for a villain, or someone with tragic elements to their past. 

Wisteria

Wisteria is the name of a genus of twining vines that become woody at maturity. They are well-known and loved for their iconic, drooping clusters of purple flowers, and they have a long history of use in art, particularly in Japan. Although the lilac varieties are the most often cultivated, pink, white, and deep purple varieties exist. 

Wisterias are known in the language of flowers as the flower of devotion, and they are often used to symbolize romance. The name Wisteria could fit a character who is sweet or suave, or perhaps a bit of a hopeless romantic. It may even be a good fit for a charming bard.

Zephyranthes 

Zephyranthes is the name of a genus of ornamental flowers often referred to as “fairy lilies,” “Zephyr lilies,” “rainflowers,” and “rain lilies.” Their flowers are large and funnel-shaped with six petals, and they may face upward or tilt toward the ground. They bloom in a range of different hues of yellows and pinks, and though their flowers only last a few days, they grow in a sequence so there are always new blooms on the plant—particularly in rainy weather. They are particularly prone to blooming right after a lengthy rainstorm. 

There is a lot of good symbolism you can draw from Zephyranthes. The name stems from the Greek god Zephyrus, the personification of the west wind, and the fact that the flowers bloom after rainstorms means the name could really suit a character who has flourished after getting through hard times. 

Zinnia

Zinnia refers to a genus of plants with truly recognizable flowers. The thing that makes these flowers unique is that they appear to be a composite structure, with a cluster of small blooms in the center of a larger flower. In addition to that, each flower grows on the end of a tall, isolated stem, and can come in a huge variety of colors, including white, yellow, orange, red, purple, lilac, and even green. Even more interestingly, however, is that these flowers can be cultivated in zero-gravity conditions, and have bloomed aboard the International Space Station. 

The name Zinnia comes from the German botanist Johann Gottfried Zinn. Though it starts with a sound that is often underutilized in common naming conventions, its short length and traditional -ia ending makes it feel like the perfect mix of unique and classic. Add to that the fact that it is currently blooming in space, and you have a ton of great inspiration for adding history to a character’s name. It could suit a character with some connection to the cosmos or the divine, or it could simply fit someone who stands alone and depends only on themself. 

Some Final Notes

Names don’t always have to have some kind of special meaning! Sometimes, picking a name for a character is as simple as finding one that sounds cool. However, all names have some kind of history, and examining the origins of those names can not only help you decide which one fits the character best, but it can also give you inspiration for the character’s past and personality. Plus, it gives you a cool fact you can share about your character on a whim, which can be fun if you get to introduce them to people for group roleplay or tabletop gaming. 

Regardless of your methodology, you can’t deny that names are important! They become the cornerstone of the character’s identity, and in most settings, they play a role in others’ first impressions of the character. Names can seriously impact how your characters are perceived—for better or for worse—so it’s best to take the process seriously. 

I hope you liked this list, and if not, I wish you luck in your continued search! The perfect name is out there, I promise!

If you’re writing a fantasy story, or any story containing magical themes, it’s pretty likely that you’ll end up including some kind of magical curse (also known as a jinx or hex) in the storyline somewhere. A curse can provide a straightforward backstory and motive for a character (not just in written works, but for D&D and other roleplay environments too), but it can also tie the character into the lore of the world and the overarching plot. It can also lead to the development of good conflict—both internal and external. 

As far as plot devices go, a curse works well for establishing a lot more than just the plot. However, it’s not always easy to include a curse in a storyline without it getting messy, confusing, or cliché. Once you understand the formula, however, you’ll be able to create a unique and interesting curse that will have your readers cheering the poor character (or characters) on from the sidelines. 

What Counts as a Curse?

A curse can be defined as something that negatively affects a character, group of characters, region, etc, in a way that wouldn’t naturally occur. It is often inflicted (usually by gods or supernatural entities) as retribution for some sort of crime or misdeed, and almost always exceeds the severity of the original offense.

If you want some examples, you can take a look at the many Ancient Greek stories that feature curses as major plots, such as Prometheus being cursed for giving humans the gift of fire without Zeus’s permission. He was chained to a rock and had an Eagle eat his liver, which would grow back each day to start the torment again. Medusa is another famous example—she was transformed by the Goddess Athena into that snake-headed monster that turns men to stone, as a consequence of breaking her vow of celibacy.

Curses are magical by nature, so you’ll need to have a good grasp on how magic works in your world before you can start thinking about the specifics of a particular curse. If you want to reference a guide for creating a magic system for your world, you can check out my other article: How to Write About Magic.

How to Curse Your Character

There are many things to consider when writing about curses, so it can be helpful to break the task up into manageable sections. This way, you can be sure you haven’t neglected any one element. 

Who Does the Curse Affect?

First and foremost, you need to decide who is getting cursed. Traditionally, the recipient of a curse is a single individual, but it can also extend to the person’s entire family, their descendants, their town, or any groups they are associated with.

Your character may be the original recipient of the curse, or they may not. They might have simply had the misfortune of being associated with a cursed person in one way or another, such as inheriting their parent’s curse or being the victim of collective punishment. Some also involve passing the same affliction onto anyone the cursed person loves or interacts with. 

What Does the Curse Do?

Curses can end up looking like whatever you want. A character could be doomed to have wet socks forever, or they could be forced to always taste anchovies. Characters could grow extra limbs, occasionally split into clones, or have hair that grows an inch a minute. More severe curses could result in a character causing depression or poor health to anyone who spends time around them, killing whoever touches their skin directly, or sleeping eternally. Really, there are no limits to what you can do. 

However, it is common for a curse to bear some resemblance to the crime committed. A person who stole food could be punished to always feel hungry, no matter how much they eat. A person accused of lying may lose their ability to speak at all. A person who has caused pain and suffering to others may get afflicted with wounds that can never heal. If you’re stumped for ideas, examine what the character does to get hexed in the first place, and you may find the inspiration you’re looking for. 

Who/What is Responsible for the Curse?

A curse has to come from somewhere, but you have a lot of options to pick from.

If your story operates under a hierarchy of gods, demigods, and other higher powers, that’s an easy source for a curse. The Ancient Greeks often wrote about the curses their various gods and goddesses would bestow on mortals, and it would make sense that only deities can manipulate fate and reality in the way a curse often requires. However, relying on the divine to dole out magical misfortune is not something that is going to work for every story—and even if your story has gods, you might not want that to be the only way a person can wind up getting jinxed. 

Similar to the above point, curses can be the result of meddling with other supernatural beings, such as fae, demons, witches, and more. Creatures that are generally known as tricksters, such as kitsune and imps, may end up cursing someone more out of boredom than to punish anyone.

Finally, curses can come from ordinary people in a myriad of situations. Curses could come from strong emotions, like despair or anger, and a truly impassioned person must only speak their intention aloud for it to become true (regardless of if they would regret it later). A person can even jinx themself in this manner (“I’ll be doomed if I lose this competition”). Similarly, a person on their deathbed may be able to use their last words to curse someone who wronged them in life. 

Additionally, even if cursing someone isn’t something everyone can do, it may be something people can learn. If magic is learnable, then it stands to reason that a person would be able to learn how to curse someone too, even if they have to dabble in forbidden magic to do so. 

Of course, you don’t need to use all of these ideas in your story. You might want to make it so only fae (or something else) can curse people, and that’s okay. Only you know what’s going to work for your story. 

What Triggers the Curse?

The trigger is the event or action that results in a person being cursed. 

There are a ton of reasons a person can get cursed, but by far the most common one is by doing something they aren’t supposed to, and getting punished by whoever (or whatever) is harmed as a result. If a person steals secrets from the gods, then naturally the gods would want to discipline that person to put them in their place. If a person traps a fairy in a cage, naturally that fairy (or the other fae) would want to punish them appropriately. If some rich politician has been extorting a town to gain wealth, then the collective ill will of the townspeople could set a curse upon him. 

Now, of course, the trigger for a curse is not always quite so justified or obvious. A curse could fall on someone undeservedly, or by simple misfortune. A person could get cursed simply for witnessing something on accident, or touching a cursed object (books are a common choice). They could end up the victim of a trickster, or they could stupidly stumble into a bad situation. 

If the character you’re writing about in the present is not the person who triggered the curse, you need to consider who got hexed initially, and why, and by whom. If it’s a generational curse started by the character’s grandmother, consider what she did in the first place. If your character fell in love with a cursed character and inherited their plight as a result, what did that love interest do to merit that?

How to Break the Curse

Often, the point of a curse is to force a character on a journey to break it—even if that seems impossible at the outset. 

Sometimes, the steps that need to be taken to break the curse are outlined from the moment a person gets cursed. A witch may reveal that only true love’s kiss would set them free (a favorite trope for Disney), or that discovering some truth or solving some mystery would bring about an end to their suffering. Breaking a curse may involve falling in love, righting some wrong that was committed, solving a seemingly unsolvable problem, or (in a more straightforward approach) killing the character who jinxed them to begin with.

Other times, the solution to a curse is not as clearly defined. A character might set off on a quest to break their curse with no actual idea how to do that, in which case, figuring out what to do in the first place plays an important role in the plotline. Other times, a person may just try to continue living their life as normally as they can, under the impression that their curse is impossible to break—at least until something spurs them into action. 

Even if a character is plagued by an eternal curse that can only be broken by completing an impossible task, a character can actually end up finding a loophole to take advantage of. For example, if the curse stipulates the only way to break it is to die, and the character dies and is resuscitated or resurrected, then technically their curse has been broken. 

Tips for Writing About Curses

Stories that revolve around curses often have an inherent moral objective. In the past, people would use stories about curses to warn others about the consequences of defying the law, the gods, or the social code, and this has left its mark on modern stories as well. 

In order to break a curse, a character often has to undergo trials that teach them something they wouldn’t have learned otherwise, often in relation to whatever they did to get cursed in the first place. For example, a person who was cursed for stealing can only break free by sacrificing something they love. In the end, they learn not to steal again, but not because of the threat of being cursed again—rather, they learn not to steal because they learn to understand loss and become sympathetic to victims of theft. 

Your story doesn’t have to include some subliminal moral messaging in order to be successful, but it can be helpful to understand why stories like this exist in the first place, and why they continue to resonate with people, even after millennia of storytelling.

Creating a fictional world of the caliber of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings is no small task. It’s one of the most overwhelming creative endeavors you can undertake. Even the most creatively driven people can burn out before their fictional world is fully realized, and the reason for this is that there are so many things you need to consider to make everything work. 

However, if you can invest the time, energy, and research into making it truly immersive, a well-thought-out world for your characters to occupy will elevate your story far beyond others in your genre. It can be exhausting to think about, but with the right strategy, your world will start coming together in no time. 

Taking Notes

Without a doubt, the single most important thing you can do when planning a fictional world is to take notes. If you don’t write everything down and keep things organized, you’re never going to be able to keep things consistent—and you’ll risk forgetting good ideas. 

The way you choose to organize information about your fictional world is up to you, but my recommendation is to open a dedicated account with a cloud service, like Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive (Google Drive is my personal pick).

Do not keep all your notes about the world on a single document. It will quickly become impossible to navigate and far too lengthy. Instead, make a new document for each idea. You will feel less need to truncate the information you’re writing down, and it will be easier to read if you’re looking to reference a specific thing later. Then, you can create different folders to group similar ideas together. 

For example, say your world has four unique civilizations on it with vastly different cultures. You will need a folder for civilizations, with four subfolders—one for each civilization. Within those subfolders, you may have additional subfolders for their cultural practices, religions, language, history, and more. You can even create dedicated documents for different folk tales and myths from the world. If there are rulebooks, religious texts, stories, poetry, or songs that are important to the world, you can compose them in their own documents as well. 

As you fill your Cloud with folders, subfolders, word documents, and spreadsheets, keep in mind that both Drive and OneDrive allow you to link between different files. If you mention a concept in one document, and you have more information on that concept in another document, you can link to it. This allows you to easily navigate to different documents that relate to the topic you’re looking at. 

And of course, it should go without saying that you need to write absolutely everything down. The things that truly bring a world to life are the small details, so even if you think something isn’t that important, you should write it down anyway.

The Basics

Long before you can start thinking about little details for your world, you need to consider some of the broader ideas. Your world needs a foundation before you can start doing much else to it. 

Genre and Context

The first thing you should consider when you begin thinking about your world is its purpose. 

What do you need your fictional world to do? What is the primary genre that the world plays host to? What do you need it to achieve? Is this world a fantasy landscape? A world parallel to earth? A sci-fi dystopia? An alternate timeline for the world as we know it? 

By considering the primary context of the world, you can anticipate the things you will need to plan out later. For example, if you need a fictional world for a fantasy story, then you’re going to need to figure out just about everything that makes the world work. If you are writing a world that is meant to represent Earth in 1000 years, then you will have different goals—namely figuring out how existing things have evolved over time. 

Universe

Apart from the context within the world, you should consider the context around the world. What is the solar system like? What other planets or visual phenomena can be seen from the planet’s surface? Is there anything unexpected in the sky, such as an extra moon (or several), satellites, or space debris? Are any of the other planets habitable, and are there other intelligent species or colonies on any of those planets?

You should also consider if there are other interdimensional realms that exist in the world’s canon. Is the world part of a multiverse? Are there parallel dimensions? Other realms? Is there an afterlife that includes a realm for the dead, such as Heaven and Hell, Valhalla, and others? Is there a Fae realm? A dream realm?

If your world ends up being associated with other realms or worlds, then you should have at least a basic understanding of what those other realms are like and how they interact. 

Name

Of course, every place deserves a name, and your fictional world is no different. 

Depending on how many civilizations and languages exist in the world (and by extension, the universe), the process of naming your world could be a bit more complicated than you might think. Each language is likely going to have a different name for the planet, and even within the same language, different cultures may refer to it in different ways. Because of this, you can consider naming your planet while you are figuring out the specifics of the different cultures that will occupy it—though it is helpful to start thinking about this early on. 

Before you finalize a name for your planet, it can be helpful to give it a placeholder name. You can even continue to refer to the planet with its placeholder name after you’ve decided what its actual names should be. This can help keep your notes more clearly labeled, and it gives you a way to refer to it objectively and outside the lens of a particular culture. 

Biology and Nature

At this point, it’s time to start thinking about the biology of the fictional world. These are things such as the plants and animals that exist there, as well as weather, climate, and more. 

Landmasses

First of all, you need to have a sense of what the world looks like overall. What are the major landmasses, and what are their orientations and relations to one another? 

At this stage, it can really be helpful to draw out a basic map. You don’t have to be good at drawing to do this, and it doesn’t have to look pretty. It’s just nice to have a visual representation of the different continents and their relative size and location. You can also use special software to help you do this, such as Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator. It can generate a random map for you to use right away, or you can play with the customization tools to change names, country borders, city locations, routes, and even the elevation and shorelines. 

Once you have a map of your world, you should also consider what the names are for each of these different continents. Like with the world overall, there may be multiple different names to refer to each continent depending on the language and culture speaking about it. 

Climate

Now that you have an idea of what the layout of the world looks like, you need to decide on the climate. Is the planet blisteringly hot? Constantly covered in snow? Does it have a varied climate, with cold areas and warm areas? Are there natural disasters? What kinds? How often do they occur, and how dangerous are they? 

You have to consider how the climate varies in different continents on the planet. Are some areas significantly warmer than others? Which ones? Make sure you take notes on the climate of each continent, as that will help you in the next section. 

Geographic Features

Now, obviously, an entire planet is going to have far too many geographic features for you to be completely familiar with every single mountain, lake, and waterfall. However, you do need to have a basic understanding of the distribution of these features. What kinds of features appear in the world? How large are they? Where are they located? 

The climate of a region will help you determine what kinds of geographic features would appear there. For example, a rainforest requires warm temperatures and plenty of rainfall in order to thrive, whereas a waterfall requires both a body of water, and either deep caves or steep cliffs. 

Take a look at your map and your notes on the climate of each landmass. Which of these features appear in each landmass? Make sure to mark where they are on your map.

• Mountains
• Plateaus
• Forests
• Beaches
• Volcanos
• Waterfalls
• Caves
• Canyons
• Geysers
• Gulfs
• Valleys
• Plains
• Lakes
• Rivers
• Oceans
• Cliffs
• Deserts
• Islands
• Wetlands
• Glaciers
• Coral Reefs
• Gorges
• Rapids
• Lava Lakes
• And more

Once you have an understanding of where these features are located, you should include a few that stand out. If there’s a mountain range, consider making one mountain much larger than the others, and giving it a name. Just like how we name iconic features, like the Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park or Mount Everest in The Himalayas, you should give names to not just the region itself, but to iconic features within it. 

And finally, you should briefly consider if the history of the world has had an impact on the features present today. Has mankind (or whatever species is dominant) altered where things grow and thrive? Have landmasses shifted over time? Have there been any catastrophes that left their mark on the world, like a massive volcanic eruption or a meteor striking the planet? 

Now obviously, you don’t need to do all this at once. The features of your world will likely evolve as you work on other aspects of it, since many elements of civilization, nature, and history influence (and are influenced by) the environment.

Fauna

Fauna describes the living beings that will occupy your planet—mammals, fish, bugs, single-celled organisms, etc.

I already have an article about creating a fictional species, so I won’t go into the process as much here. Read that article if you want a more comprehensive breakdown of how to create a fictional species. 

Once you have your fictional species, you need to decide what their place is, and, most importantly, how they interact with the other species in your fictional world. Where are they native to? What climate do they thrive in? Do they live in forests, mountain ranges, or underwater? How have they adapted to live in that particular region, and are there other communities living elsewhere that have adapted differently? What do they eat? Be specific about the exact organisms they eat, rather than just saying “plants” or “meat.” 

Additionally, you need to consider how many species of one kind live in the same area. If more than one species living in the same region eats the same thing and burrows in the same places, then eventually, one species will die out. Ecosystems need to be balanced, and having too much competition in the animal world will eventually lead to one species adapting to get the upper hand, or migrating away to find less competition elsewhere. There is an exception to this rule, however. If the two species mutually benefit from working together somehow, then they may coexist.

Flora

Flora is an often overlooked element of creating a fictional world. Animals are seen as the more exciting option (and with good reason), so plants don’t often get the attention they need to be interesting. 

I already have an article on the topic, Creating Plants for a Fictional World, so make sure you check that out for an in-depth guide on how to create a fictional plant. 

Once you have a few fictional plants, you need to consider the climate and environment in which each plant thrives, as well as how they coexist with other living organisms in the same environment. What plants grow better together? Which ones are edible, and to which species? Are there any plants that are dangerous to other plants or animals? Which ones, and why? Do the plants only grow fruits during a certain time of the year? What other plants are available to eat when one plant is not fruiting?

Like with animals, you need to be aware of competition within ecosystems. If two large tree species grow in the same area, both species will compete to grow taller than the other to ensure they get the most light. If a tree falls, then whichever species that can grow the fastest is the one that takes its place. Different plant species that grow close to the ground will be competing for water or nitrogen, whereas plants that bloom at the same time will compete for pollinators or animals to spread their seeds. Plants can evolve in a myriad of ways to overcome this competition, such as producing flowers that smell sweeter, bigger leaves to absorb more sunlight, or vast underground root systems that can choke out smaller plants. In many ways, competition is what contributes to such a huge diversity of unique plants. 

Natural Resources

Like The Spice Melange in Dune, your world should have some natural resources that are considered important for one reason or another.

Your planet’s natural resources don’t have to be quite as dramatic as the example above, however. These can be things such as wood, minerals, plants, animals, fuel, ore, gas, and more. Basically, these are resources that are considered important and would form the basis of trade around the world (or within the galaxy). Important resources don’t even have to have a practical application since many herbs or other materials can be used exclusively for recreational or ceremonial purposes. To think of it simply, ask yourself: What is important on the planet, who considers it important, and why is it considered important?

Determine how the natural resources differ depending on the region, and how they can be utilized by not only the sapient species present in the world but also other animals as well. Remember to give these different resources names, especially if they will be referred to often. 

Illness

Wherever there is life, there is illness, so you may want to consider what kind of ailments will be present in your fictional world. 

I already have an article on this topic, so you can do some more reading about it here: How to Create a Fictional Illness for Your Story. That article will walk you through the process of creating a fictional illness step-by-step, so I won’t cover it here. Make sure to read that article if you want to include some ways for characters to get sick in your fictional world!

Now that you have a fictional disease, you need to decide who it affects. This is especially important in worlds that contain multiple different sapient species, like how most fantasy settings include elves, dwarves, halflings, and a whole host of different intelligent species. If the illness affects elves, does it only affect elves? Can they spread it to members of a different species? Does the disease vary in presentation or severity depending on the species of the affected person?

There is no real limit to how many different diseases can be present in your fictional world, so feel free to keep adding new ones over time. 

Civilization

Now that you’ve figured out the basic natural elements of the world, you can move on to organized society. There are many things that go into making a fictional civilization, let alone an entire world populated with different nations, cultures, and potentially, species. 

Nations and Countries

Countries are defined by borders on a map. These borders can be fuzzy or tightly controlled and are often designated by governments, colonizers, tribes, or anyone else in a position of maintaining or seizing control over a region. 

Consider how many distinct countries you want your world to have, then take out your map once again. Where should each country be located, how big should they be, and how should you draw the borders of those countries? Borders often follow shorelines, geographic features, or straight grid lines on a map. Keep in mind that countries can have hugely diverse sizes as well. Russia takes up roughly 11% of the world’s land surface area, but other countries, like Maldives, are so small they’re barely even visible on a map. Country borders may also extend into the ocean around their shores as well. 

As always, you should be thinking about naming each country and even naming regions, towns, and cities within those countries. Sometimes, a country may have the same (or similar) name as the landmass it occupies, but it can also be something completely different. 

Languages

Language can be a challenging thing to figure out, especially for written works. It’s certainly easier to simply have everyone speak English (or whatever language you’re most familiar with), but some fictional stories have had a lot of success with developing or differentiating between different fictional languages. The most prominent examples that come to mind are Klingon, a language spoken by an alien species of the same name in Star Trek, and the host of different languages spoken in D&D. 

Of course, you do not need to become fluent in fictional languages just for the sake of playing a D&D character accurately. Nor would you be expected to create and formalize a language from scratch in order to include that in your fictional world. If you want each nation to have a different dominant language, you merely need to give it a name and have a general understanding of how it sounds when it is spoken, and how it looks when it is written. 

While on the topic of language, it’s important to point out the impact that culture has on language, and vice versa. Consider which of our words and phrases stem from things in our world. Everything from the names of foods and places to simple words stems from a culture’s history, shared experiences, and overall dynamic. What would champagne be called if France didn’t exist in your world? What about French fries? French toast? Even the word “bath” originates from an ancient Roman city with the same name. History has a huge impact on language, and though you can’t be expected to change up every single word with regional context, it’s an important thing to keep in mind. 

Rather than seeing that regional context as a problem, you should see it as an opportunity! How many creative ways can you utilize that concept? What things in your world will be named after fictional cities? What metaphors can exist within this fictional context? How can people in this society communicate in unexpected and culturally relevant ways? Consider what makes the society unique, and how that would influence their use of language. 

Cultures

Culture is a huge category comprising multiple different ideas and concepts. Culture determines, and is determined by, everything that makes a society unique: music, clothing, history, food, entertainment, religion, government, social problems, and so, so much more. 

It’s probably no surprise to you at this point that I have another article that goes in-depth on this topic: Creating a Fictional Culture: Step by Step. Since that article is already pretty comprehensive, I won’t waste time repeating myself here. 

Since you’ll likely be making multiple different societies for your fictional world, you should take the time to make each one distinct. How would their greetings differ? What is considered rude in each culture? What are their behaviors, biases, and beliefs? What are the ways in which cultures would clash or fail to understand each other, and how can you use that for disastrous or comedic effect? 

Another fun thing to consider is how a civilization’s culture has been influenced by the environment around it. Climate and weather can influence fashion and the food available for recipes, while the animals and geographic features could have an impact on religion or superstitions. Something like a volcano could have serious implications for a civilization that believes in divine wrath, after all.

Food

Food is an important thing to consider for any fictional world. What are the ingredients used? What are the techniques employed? What are the dominant flavor profiles? How do these things differ between nations, which may have different ingredients available, and cultures, which may have different methods of cooking? Just as we on Earth have distinct ideas of what constitutes French, Italian, or Mexican cuisine, you should strive to give each of your fictional cultures a distinct style of food. 

It’s also important to keep in mind, especially for less technologically developed worlds, that many foods will only be available during certain times of the year. This is what has contributed to pumpkin being a fall flavor, watermelon being a summer barbecue favorite, and chestnuts being associated with Christmas. Based on seasonality, what are the flavors that your world would associate with different times of the year, and how would that differ in different parts of the world?

Technology

Your fictional world could be primitive, using only basic farm tools and horse-drawn wagons, or it could be highly technologically advanced with hoverboards and personal spaceships—or, of course, it could fall somewhere in the middle. 

Technology determines a lot about a world. It helps establish the overall setting, and in many ways, it determines what the society is able to accomplish. Technology can influence what food is available, how individuals travel, what weapons they are able to use, and what their methods of entertainment look like. Shakespearian theater wouldn’t be the groundbreaking cultural phenomenon it was in its time if it had to compete with video games. The way wars are fought will look different depending on if the soldiers are fighting with swords, guns, or huge robot mech suits. You get the idea.

In addition to considering what technology exists in the world, you should also consider who that technology can be used by. What technology is affordable, and what is only available to the upper class? Are there certain pieces of technology that are illegal or controlled by the government? Are some countries more technologically advanced than others? Why isn’t that technology being shared? How does this contribute to imbalanced power structures? How can this technology contribute to the betterment or detriment of the world? 

Occupations

Occupations are an important part of living in a society. In order for civilization to operate, people need to be available to handle the creation and distribution of food, maintenance of shared spaces, government, and more. 

Obviously, you don’t have to list every single kind of job that a person could conceivably have in this world, but you should consider two things: what are the most important jobs, and what are the most unusual or unexpected jobs. 

The types of jobs that are considered important in a society will depend on many different factors, but in general, important jobs are those that achieve necessary or culturally significant outcomes. For example, a city that lives near the water may have built its economy around it. They could subsist on fish and have a robust import/export system utilizing trade ships. They may even power their technology using hydropower, such as with waterfalls, waves, and running streams. The important jobs here would include fishing, shipping, dock work, sailing, or maintaining tidal turbines and dams. Alternatively, an overtly religious society may place high importance on religious work, such as that of priests, shamans, and oracles.

Consider the different aspects of your fictional civilization: history, location, food, government, religion, natural resources, and more. What jobs would be required in order to obtain, create, or maintain important things based on those factors? What jobs would be required to run the government? What jobs would be required to ensure people live in safe and comfortable conditions? What jobs would drive the economy? Those are the jobs that are important.

But what about jobs people in our world have never heard of before? Jobs that are, perhaps, unusual or unexpected? In many fantasy settings, there will be occupations that do not exist in the world as we know it. If your fictional world includes jobs such as “alchemist” or “stardust collector,” then you should make note of those and ensure you have good descriptions of the details of those jobs. 

Currency

Money is often considered the basis of civilization, but what it looks like depends on where you are. 

You’re going to need to think about what the currency is like in your fictional world. Lucky for you, I have (you guessed it) an article on this topic already: Tips for Creating a Fictional Currency. You know the drill by now—I won’t waste time repeating myself here, so check out that article to get an idea of how to go about this. 

Keep in mind that currency is not likely to be universal. While you certainly can have a standardized system of currency that everyone in the world uses, it’s more likely that different countries or continents use different currencies. If you do decide to use multiple currencies in the world, you’ll have to decide where each currency is used, as well as what the exchange rate is between different currencies. 

Governments

An important part of civilization is how it operates politically. There are many different kinds of governments that you can apply to (or take inspiration for) your fictional civilizations. Remember that each region does not need to operate under the same kind of government—one country can exist under a strict monarchy, while its neighboring country is a free democracy. Or, the entire world could be under the command of a single dictator.

Which of your regions do you want to be governed by royalty? Which should have elected leaders? How do these societies operate, and what makes them different from one another?

Here are some examples of government structures and political organization strategies you could use:

• Anarchy
• Aristocracy
• Capitalism
• Communism
• Democracy
• Dictatorship
• Monarchy
• Oligarchy
• Republic
• Socialism
• Tribalism

Of course, you can also use a structure that is entirely fictional, like a hivemind or rule by a deity or other higher power. 

In addition to the structure of government, you should also consider if there are specialized departments within that government to handle different aspects of life. Make sure you write down what those departments are called, in case you have to refer to them at some point. 

Finally, you need to think about each country’s legal system. What are the laws of each region, and who enforces them? What are the consequences of breaking the law? 

Foreign Relations

Any time you’re dealing with multiple communities, whether neighboring towns or inhabited planets in the same solar system, you need to think about how those communities interact with one another. 

There are obviously many factors that go into establishing a network of foreign relations between all your fictional cities and nations, but here are a few questions to get you started.

• What are the political ideologies of each community? How do these ideologies clash with one another?
• How united or divided is each country? How united or divided is the entire world? 
• What are the commodities each community has an abundance of? Which commodities is each community lacking? 
• Which communities are newly established, and which communities were established long ago? 
• Is there a unified religion, or does each community have its own religion?
• How technologically advanced is each community? If there is a large disparity, why is this technology not shared? 
• What time period is the world based on? Technologically advanced worlds are more likely to be more unified due to access to global transportation, whereas medieval populations will be more divided. 

Once you get an idea of which nations could peacefully cooperate, ignore one another, or clash, you can start to consider what their relationships will be like. If a community is severely lacking in fresh produce due to poor soil conditions, and another country has an economy based around farming, it’s natural to have trade routes going between the two communities fairly regularly. If two communities disagree on religion, rights, or politics, they may go to war with one another, or (to a less dramatic degree) institute restrictions on trade and travel for citizens of the opposing community. 

Of course, international relations can get complicated. Two communities could be at war, yet both trading freely with the same third party. Multiple different communities can band together to form an alliance to hold each other to certain standards. Entire communities could be conquered by a different government. Allied communities could be called in to assist with a war effort.

Not to mention, these relationships can change over time. Two countries that were once allies may sever ties due to disagreements. Two warring nations could sign peace treaties and trade agreements to bring an end to the fighting. A country that used to exist may fall into obscurity, or a new country could gain independence. It may seem complicated, but just remember to keep your notes organized and you’ll be okay! 

History

History is probably the most daunting part of writing a fictional world, and honestly, it’s likely you’ll never actually finish this step if you obsess over figuring out everything that’s ever happened. Trying to write down every single event that has happened in an entire world over the course of its existence, which could be billions of years, is just flat-out impossible. 

Instead, you should focus only on the major events, as well as how those events helped to shape the world into what it is today. Major events are things like:

• The rise or fall of different civilizations
• Changes in government and power shifts
• Wars
• Natural disasters
• Major migrations
• Conquest
• Colonization
• Mass extinctions
• Pandemics
• Major scientific achievements (such as the first moon landing)
• The creation or deconstruction of a religion
• Major advancements in technology
• The deaths of major historical figures
• Major policy changes 
• Major economic recessions 
• Geographical changes

This is, of course, not an exhaustive list. This is just to get you thinking about what kinds of events will be important to keep good documentation of. If a historical event has an impact on the political, social, cultural, scientific, or biological advancement (or decline) of a civilization, or an event changes something about the world in a major way, that constitutes a major event. 

Over time, you can continue to fill in the gaps in history between major events. Doing so will make your world seem more established and complex, but again, this undertaking would likely never truly end. 

Religion

Religion is a major part of life in most communities. It often dictates fashion, food, culture, burial customs, politics, and more. When you throw in the possibility of deities being a real part of the world’s canon, then the role religion plays becomes even more important. 

Since religion is such a large topic, I covered this in a previous article: Creating a Fictional Religion for Your Story.

Regardless of whether you intend for this religion to be true history for the world or mere fiction invented by the people living in it, you should approach the creation of that religion in the same way. However, if you do intend to have gods and higher powers exist for real, you need to consider what role they play in the world. Do they simply observe the world, or do they interfere directly with it? Are they benevolent? Absent? Cruel? Indifferent? How does their involvement (or lack thereof) influence the way people view them? 

Keep in mind, when religions are subjective, there are only two groups of people: believers and nonbelievers. However, in a world where the existence of a deity is an indisputable fact, those groups change, since it is no longer a matter of believing in some unseen power. Those groups are worshippers and those who oppose or disagree with that deity. With both examples, neutrality is also a possibility. 

Magic and the Supernatural 

If your world contains magic or supernatural elements, then you’re going to need to figure out how it works. 

Since not every world is going to include magic, I decided to split this part of the article into its own dedicated post. You can find it here: How to Write About Magic. Check that out if you want to continue reading about how to create a unique magic system for your fictional world. 

Some Parting Tips

Creating a fully realized world is not something that is going to happen overnight. If you’re really serious about creating an entire fictional world, then it should be something you work on for years to come. You may never be completely finished with it, since your world can continue to evolve as you have more ideas and new stories to tell within it. There will always be aspects of your world that can be expanded—but that’s sort of a good thing, isn’t it?

Don’t get discouraged! I know it’s hard, but I believe in you! And trust me, it will be worth it.

Who doesn’t love a story with magic? Whether it’s a lighthearted tale with unicorns and fairies, or a dark and gritty story about witches and dragons, magic has captivated audiences since the dawn of storytelling. It’s no surprise that you’re interested in writing about magic yourself!

However, magic is only limited by imagination, so there are endless ways that it could manifest in your story. The magic in The Lord of the Rings is different from the magic in Avatar: The Last Airbender after all. Not only that, but magic encompasses a lot, from spells and magical environments to many fictional creatures and even deities.

If you’re going to include magic in some form in your story, there’s a lot you’ll need to consider—but worry not! This article will break down the most important aspects of writing about magic so you can take it one step at a time. 

Who Can Use Magic?

When it comes to writing about magic, one of the first things you should decide is who has the ability to control it. Is it something everyone possesses the ability to harness? Is it only available to a select few? Who are those few? Random “chosen ones,” the elite, or soldiers? Is it something anyone can learn, but they have to dedicate themselves to studying it? Is it an ability that some authority, like a government or deity, can bestow or take away based on a character’s behavior? Can only children use it?

Who Knows About Magic?

Another thing you should consider is whether or not magic is common knowledge in your world, or if it is kept a secret from nonmagical individuals. A major theme in the Harry Potter series is the fact that magic is kept hidden from the muggles (nonmagical people). However, in many traditional fantasy settings, magicians, wizards, and other magical individuals coexist openly with those who can’t use magic. 

If you decide to hide magic from those who don’t practice it, you also need to think about how it will be kept secret, as well as who will enforce that.

The Types of Magic

As mentioned above, magic can work in all sorts of ways, such as:

• Elemental Magic: magic that allows a person to command the elements. This is probably the most popular of the options, but there are still variations in how this will work. A wizard in D&D will have access to a range of different elemental spells at their disposal, but each character in Genshin Impact can only command one element (under most circumstances). The number of elements available can also vary. Avatar: The Last Airbender notoriously relies on earth, air, fire, and water, but other stories include electricity, plants, light, dark, or some unknown and mysterious (often space-themed) element. 
• Enhanced abilities: magic that involves enhancing a person’s regular abilities, like being able to see something small from miles away, running at the speed of sound, or being able to jump on top of buildings with a single leap. 
• Extrasensory abilities: magic that allows a person to do things that would ordinarily be impossible with the five senses. This includes things like telepathy, seeing the future, telekinesis, floating, seeing ghosts, speaking to plants or animals, and more.
• Necromancy: magic involving death, though it is often used to describe the process of bringing something or someone back to life (or at least making it move again… it may not be technically “alive”).
• Alchemy: magic that involves creation, transformation, or combination. This often includes the art of potion-making, turning materials into more precious materials (most famously turning cheap metals into gold), creating an elixir of life, and more. 
• Illusions: magic that imitates something real to manipulate someone’s senses. An illusion can often be heard or seen, but not touched (though there can be exceptions to this).
• Shapeshifting: magic that allows a person to alter their physical shape. This may mean a person can turn into an animal, stretch their limbs, make themself look like a different person, and more. This can be used similarly to illusion magic but is distinct in the sense that the person actually physically changes shape, as opposed to simply appearing that way. 
• Biological Manipulation/Health Manipulation: magic that allows a person to alter the biological state of something or someone else (or themself). This means a person may be able to heal someone, but it also means they may do the opposite. They may have the ability to seal wounds, cure the blind, repair scar tissue, and cure disease. Or, again, they may do the opposite: create wounds, inflict blindness, damage tissues, and cause disease. 

Your story doesn’t have to include every type of magic, but it can. And of course, there are many, many, MANY types of magic, so this is far from an exhaustive list. After all, magic is limitless, so if you can dream of it, then you can write about it. 

The Source of Magic

Answering the question of why magic is present in the world at all can be an important step in understanding it as a whole. Where does magic come from? And how does one gain the ability to use it? 

One common way that magic is explained is to have it be as natural to the world as light or air. Magic exists in everything—but that still doesn’t answer the question of how a person can tap into that and use magic for themself. Do they have to draw magic out of trees? Can they channel it through meditation? Do they have to eat dirt? It’s up to you to decide. 

Another common theme is to have magic bestowed by gods or spirits. This can mean the god or gods brought magic into the world to begin with, or they are responsible for individually picking out people to bestow with magical powers. Other entities that could be responsible for magic could be dragons, fae, demons, aliens, or even the spirits of ancestors who bring magic with them from the afterlife. With this origin, magic can just as easily be taken away again. 

Another option is to have magic be inherent to some people, either because of their bloodline or otherwise. A person could be magical just because they were born that way, and the magic they harness comes from within the self. 

Finally, magic can be a byproduct of science—or, more specifically, science fiction. For example, the characters in Maximum Ride not only have wings with which to fly, but many of them possess additional magical abilities such as telepathy, breathing underwater, invisibility, and regrowing limbs, all of which are justified by the scientific experiments they were subjected to. You could also have magical mutations occur as a result of waste dumping, likely from chemical plants or scientific facilities. 

Whatever you decide, you should try to justify it to some degree.

How Does a Character Use Magical Powers?

The next thing you’ll need to figure out is how someone is supposed to use magic. Do they need a wand or staff of some kind? Are there material components to spells? Spoken incantations? How much does a person need to practice in order to gain proficiency in magic? Are there certain postures, moves, or forms required to cast a certain spell? What kinds of instructions would appear in a spellbook? Does magic take a physical toll on a person’s body or health? Does each spell have different requirements?

You should consider questions like those before you start really writing your story, since that will make it much easier to describe scenes in which someone is using magic. If you don’t even know how it works, how are you supposed to write about it anyway?

Laws Regarding Magic

Next, you should consider how magic is moderated. Are there certain magical skills that are looked down upon? Are there laws against specific spells? What about restrictions regarding who can use certain spells—or even any magic at all? What are the laws regarding curses and blessings (if those are possible in your magic system)? 

What are the justifications for these rules? Are some magical abilities dangerous? Do these laws benefit the elite or contribute to unbalanced power structures? Are some spells cruel or unjust? Do the gods arbitrarily decide who can and cannot use certain magic?

Remember, you also need to decide what the consequences are for breaking these rules, as well as whose job it is to enforce them. If a person curses someone and breaks a magical law, who is going to punish or correct them? What does that punishment look like, and who administers it? Gods? A magical law enforcement group? Individual mercenaries? 

Magic in the Environment

In many magical stories, it is not just the characters who possess otherworldly abilities. The setting can also play host to a variety of different magical landscapes. 

There are no real limits to the kinds of magical landscapes you can create, but here are some ideas to start with:

• A magical spring or other body of water with the ability to heal those who bathe in it. 
• A forest in which every single plant is part of a sentient hivemind, and can help, harm, or eject those who enter the forest.
• A city built on floating rocks or clouds in the sky.
• A passageway that acts as a portal to another place or dimension.
• A tree in which a fairy (or several) resides, that will bring a person bad luck if they cut it down. 
• A path or mountain range with large shards of rock that constantly shifts and moves around, often defying gravity. 
• An area in which nothing can grow or live due to cursed magical influence. Even the soil itself could appear gray or ashy, and spending time within this space could be bad for the characters’ health. 

Magical Creatures

In addition to the landscape itself being magical, it could also host many mythical and magical creatures, like dragons, chimeras, mermaids, talking animals, and more. Really, anything you can imagine can be made into a magical creature for your story. 

This is definitely easier if you include well-established mythical creatures like goblins and centaurs, but if you want to come up with your own fictional species to include in your magical world, you should check out The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Fictional Species. There, I break down the process of creating a new species into manageable steps, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting anything. 

Tips for Writing About Magic

Magic is inherently supposed to inspire wonder and creativity. It is meant to entertain, to transport readers away from reality, and expose them to something entirely new. Magic is a plot device that allows you to explore problems in a unique way, and to write about solutions in ways you couldn’t do otherwise. If your story can fundamentally exist without magic, you shouldn’t include magic in the first place. 

Additionally, magic has to have limits. If every problem could be solved with a snap of the fingers, there would be no conflict. Without conflict, a story has no soul or substance, and is, dare I say it, boring. If you’re writing about magic and it’s boring, you need to reconsider what magic is capable of, and what its shortcomings are.

Remember that not being able to use magic in a magical world can be a major source of internal conflict and motivation. One of my favorite tropes that appears in magical stories is the nonmagical best friend who is able to accomplish something the others can’t, due to their unique way of approaching problems. Having to work hard in a world where magic can solve most problems would give them a unique mindset that their magical friends would lack. Every character should have their own strengths, even if they aren’t obvious at first. 

Go out there and create something magical, writers!

Designing fictional plants is one of my favorite parts of worldbuilding. Plants are weird and wonderful things. They can be microscopic or hundreds of feet tall. Some can glow in the dark, some are carnivores, and some can explode. There are plants that smell like rotting meat, plants that bleed, and plants that are so toxic that even consuming the most trace amounts of it can be lethal. There are fruits, thorns, vines, flowers, spores, and so, so much more. In fact, it’s hard for fictional plants to compare to the weirdness that exists in the flora on earth.

With so much to consider, it’s no surprise if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. With a little direction, however, you’ll be able to populate a whole fictional ecosystem with flora! 

How to Design a Fictional Plant Species

To design a fictional plant, you have to answer four basic questions: What does it do, where does it exist, how does it reproduce, and what does it look like? 

What Does the Plant Do?

From a basic standpoint, you have to decide what you need this particular plant to do. Is it edible? Is it toxic? Does it have medicinal properties? Is it psychoactive? Does it just smell really good?

Keep in mind that a plant can fall into multiple different categories at once—it may be psychoactive and decorative, or used for both culinary and medicinal purposes. Also, different parts of the same plant may have different uses. A plant may have edible berries but poisonous leaves, or edible leaves and flowers that can be used for perfume. 

A plant may also be edible for certain species while being toxic to other species. Onions and garlic are delicious additions to any recipe, but they can be very dangerous to feed to your pets. Alternatively, you wouldn’t expect to see humans eating the toxic leaves of a eucalyptus plant, but koalas eat exclusively eucalyptus. Keep this in mind when designing your own fictional plant, and consider which animals or bugs may have adapted to eat it even if it’s toxic to people. 

If you need help populating your fictional world with some unique animal species to chow down on your new plants, you can check out The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Fictional Species!

It’s also possible, of course, that a plant just exists with no real application—it’s not toxic but it doesn’t taste good enough to eat, and has no important properties for humans. Sometimes, a plant can just look cool and that’s that.

Where Does the Plant Exist?

Once you have a basic idea of what the plant does, you need to determine what conditions it requires to grow.

Does it need a moist environment? A sandy soil? Does it only grow on the ceilings of caves? How about underwater? What temperature does it thrive in, and which parts of the world would provide the most suitable habitat for it? Where is the plant native to, and how widespread is it?

Another thing you should consider is whether or not the plant has been artificially introduced into a new environment, and if it has, how has it fared in this new environment? If it was brought over to a new part of the world to be cultivated, what unique challenges would farmers face that they wouldn’t if they were growing the plant in its natural habitat? Would that plant struggle to thrive, or would it invade this new environment and choke out the local flora? Would it be susceptible to new pests? Would it grow unrestrained? Would it poison a large group of animals that eat it, not knowing it’s toxic to them? An invasive species can overthrow the balance of an entire ecosystem if it isn’t kept under control. 

How Does the Plant Reproduce? 

Reproduction is often where plants get weird. Finding unique and effective ways of spreading seeds far and wide often results in some downright strange evolutions.

The primary ways for plants to spread their seeds are through air, water, animals, and expulsion. 

• Air: Plants like dandelions and cattails have tufted seeds, so when the wind blows, the seeds can catch the wind and be carried long distances.
• Water: Some plants, such as coconut trees, have buoyant seeds so that waves can disperse the seeds to new islands. Many underwater plants, such as seagrass, also have buoyant seeds, which are carried along the surface of the water for some time before sinking down to the sea floor and germinating. 
• Animals: Animals can help many species of plants spread their seeds. The most straightforward way this happens is when an animal eats fruit and excretes the seeds somewhere new. Other plants have sticky or spiky seeds that stick to animals’ fur and can be carried long distances before being dislodged. 
• Expulsion: Some plants have large seed pods that quite literally explode to send their seeds rocketing in all directions, such as violets and the aptly named “touch-me-nots.” 

With that said, seeds are not the only way plants can reproduce. Mushrooms notoriously spread by emitting spores into the air, which create an underground network of mycelium from which more mushrooms can grow. Many other plants, such as grass and aloe, spread by a process known as clonal growth, in which genetically identical clones of the plant will grow up from the same root system, creating a clonal colony. 

And of course, let’s not forget about magic. If you’re writing a story in which magic is rampant, then having plants that can only grow under magical circumstances is always an option. 

What Does the Plant Look Like?

Designing the appearance of a fictional plant is not as straightforward as it seems. Many of the decisions you made in the above sections will have an impact on what the plant ultimately looks like.

The choices you made in regard to the plant’s method of seed dispersion, the climate in which it grows, and the properties of the various parts of the plant will help guide you in the design phase.

For example, plants that grow in hot and dry environments end up with thick and bulky shapes since they often have to store water for long periods of time. A plant that disperses its seeds via expulsion will have large seed pods, whereas a plant that disperses its seeds via the wind will likely have a fuzzy or winged appearance. Plants that are meant to attract animals or bugs may smell sweet or putrid, or they may be enticing shapes and colors. 

With that said, you still get a bit of freedom in designing the colors, size, and overall shape of the plant. Fruits and flowers also have a huge variety of colors and structures, so you can really have fun with this section. Strawberries look entirely different from pomegranates, bananas, and pineapples after all, and the same goes for flowers!

How to Name Your Fictional Plant Species

Remember that everything in your world needs to have a name. Common names for plants often describe the most iconic features or appearances of a plant, as is the case with morning glories (which only bloom in the morning) and blackberry bushes (named for the fruit it produces, which is in fact, a berry that is black). These names are often used locally, however, and different communities might have different names for different plants—even if they speak the same language.

If you really want to get in the weeds (haha), then you can consider the taxonomy of plants in your world to give your flora more standardized and scientific names. On Earth, scientific names for plants follow a strict pattern: the first part of the name indicates the genus (a category of genetically similar organisms), while the second part of the name indicates the specific species within that genus. These are often based on Greek or Latin words, such as “Helianthus annuus,” which is the scientific name for the common sunflower. “Helios” is the Greek name for the sun and “anthos” is the Greek word for flower, while “annuus” indicates the specific type of sunflower. There are roughly 70 types of sunflowers, so that distinction is important! 

Now obviously, your planet’s taxonomy doesn’t need to resemble what we use on Earth—especially since it wouldn’t make sense to use Greek or Latin words if those languages never existed on your fictional planet. Still, it can be fun to sort your plants into groups and utilize some kind of consistent naming system. Understanding taxonomy on earth can help you get a good idea of how to do this. 

Have fun, and get creative!

Currency is an important part of any developed society, so it isn’t an aspect you should ignore if you’re creating a world for your story. Sure, you could use the standard bronze, silver, and gold pieces, but that doesn’t really add anything special to your story. You can use the currency in your world to provide more context about the society it’s used in, instead of just adding it in as an afterthought.

Now, you’re probably wondering how a currency can tell you anything about society, so I’ll provide some examples to illustrate this. Consider a traditional fantasy world, where there are established societies of dwarves, elves, and humans. Each society uses a different currency, that reveals more about the resources they have available to them and what they specialize in. The dwarves use uniformly cut gemstones to trade for goods. The elves, on the other hand, use delicate silver coins pressed in the shape of different leaves. Meanwhile, the human society trades exclusively with rugged, misshapen bronze coins. 

Even if you don’t know anything else about the world, the currency that is used in each of those societies gives you a little bit of insight into how they operate. Dwarves are known to be miners and skilled craftsmen, so it wouldn’t be surprising that their currency is made up of precious stones. The elves, in this case, can be inferred to be careful artisans, with a reverence for nature. The human society in this example, however, is likely made up of simple farmers, who are perhaps just developing a new currency.

Stories thrive on details, so you should never neglect an opportunity to personalize an element of the setting. By taking the time to create a currency that is tailor-made for the society you’ve created, you can make your story even more immersive. 

The Characteristics of Currency

Now that you understand the importance of customizing your fictional society’s currency, you could probably use some guidelines to help you brainstorm ideas. 

There aren’t any rules that are necessarily set in stone when it comes to designing a currency, but there are certainly some common themes that appear in currencies from cultures all over the world. Most currency takes the form of metal coins, and there’s a good reason for that, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only option.

Metal coins are a common choice for currency because they tend to fit the following criteria for what works. The same goes for plastic or cotton bills. However, don’t feel pressured to conform to all of these criteria! They’re more like suggestions, not rules. 

Rarity

The material that the currency is made out of should be reasonably accessible, but not overly abundant. For example, think about gold coins. Gold is a material that is relatively common, but it is difficult to mine and it isn’t something common people would simply stumble upon.

For the dwarven example from the intro, the gemstones that they use for currency are common to them because they live in the mountainside, where the gems naturally form. However, each piece of currency can only be created with a significant amount of work mining and cutting the stones. 

If a society creates currency out of a limited material, that leaves no room to expand the economy if the society grows. However, if the currency is made out of a material that is abundant and worthless, then nothing would stop the citizens from creating their own counterfeit currency and damagingly inflating the economy. 

Durability

Another important aspect to consider when selecting a material for your fictional currency is durability. You need to select something that isn’t easily destroyed and can stand the test of time. That means it should be resistant to damage, water, erosion, and decay. If a piece of currency begins to degrade after only a few years, it could have disastrous effects on the economy and individuals’ wealth. 

I’ve seen several different stories that failed to meet this criterion with their currencies. One story had elves exchanging coins made of wood, which wouldn’t be a very durable option. Wood is susceptible to water damage and decay, and it is easily broken. The coins would begin to deteriorate within only a few months, even if they were treated with something. 

Another story used clay pieces for coins. That’s a little better than wood, but there are still some issues associated with that. Unglazed clay is extremely porous, so it would absorb water. Over time, the coins would begin to stink and would become discolored. And, if the clay wasn’t fired at a high temperature, the coins would be brittle and easy to chip and break. However, glazing the coins and firing them at an extremely high temperature could create a strong, nonporous surface that would make them more reasonable to use as currency. 

Whatever material you select, make sure that it is going to hold up in the long term. If not, then make sure you are prepared to address these issues at some point in the story for the sake of realism. 

Weight

Remember that the currency will be carried around on a regular basis, so it shouldn’t be needlessly cumbersome or heavy. Heavier materials, such as metals and gemstones, can work if they are small enough to make up for their weight, but other materials could do this job a bit better. No one wants to heft around a huge sack of heavy coins just to buy bread at the market, anyway. 

This is a large factor in why paper, cotton, or plastic bills are so popular. The weight of carrying around $100 in bills is significantly less than if you were carrying around the same amount in change, so it makes sense. That doesn’t mean that weight is the most important factor to consider for your fictional currency, but it is something you should keep in mind. 

Uniformity

Finally, you can stop thinking about the material your currency is made out of, and start thinking about how that currency is actually made. Coins have taken up the bulk of the examples so far, but there are countless other forms that currency can take. Coins themselves can even come in many different shapes besides just circles. They could have ridges, a hole in the center, or even be shaped like a leaf, like from the example of the elven society in the intro. 

Currency can take the form of gemstones, metal shapes, rings, digital credits, paper bills, and much more. However, whatever shape you select needs to be consistent. You cannot have a coin that is circular and another coin that is meant to represent the same value a wildly different shape. They need to be as uniform and consistent as possible, or it would be much easier for people to pass off counterfeit currency as legitimate. 

Divisibility

This goes without saying, but not everything is going to be in the same sort of price range. You wouldn’t spend anywhere near as much money on groceries as you would spend on a house, for example. If a character is paying for a house that costs 40,000 units of currency, then it isn’t realistic for them to drag out a bag of 40,000 copper pieces. This example highlights the need to have units of currency that represent larger values. 

Many fictional stories rely on the use of platinum, gold, silver, and bronze or copper coins. A platinum coin could be worth 100 gold coins, while a gold coin would be worth 100 silver coins. This ability to divide and stack currency will make it much more useful for people in the society to actually pay for things. However, the way you choose to divide the currency is very important. If each coin represents 1/100th of the next most valuable coin, and assuming you are using copper, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, then the conversion rate would be:

• Copper = 1 unit
• Bronze = 100 units
• Silver = 10,000 units
• Gold = 1,000,000 units
• Platinum = 100,000,000 units

Looking at those numbers, it doesn’t really seem practical. If a platinum coin is worth 100,000,000 copper coins, then your society either has an enormous wealth gap, or the economy is so inflated that anything smaller than a silver coin would be worthless. 

To make that system work reasonably for an average society, you could either cut down on the number of different coins they use, or you could change the conversion rate between coins. If each coin is worth 1/10th of the next most valuable coin, then the conversion rate would be:

• Copper = 1 unit
• Bronze = 10 units
• Silver = 100 units
• Gold = 1,000 units
• Platinum = 10,000 units

That seems like a more reasonable spread for converting coins. However, this doesn’t mean that each coin needs to represent exactly the same percentage of the next most valuable coin. That’s definitely the more simple way of doing this, but that isn’t how U.S. coins work. 1 dollar could be worth either 4 quarters, 10 dimes, 20 nickels, or 100 pennies.

Assign different values to different pieces of currency and play around with the numbers for a bit until you find a system you like.

Other Considerations for Currency

In some stories, currency can take vastly different forms. Some societies may depend on the use of energy, magic, or souls to fuel their economy. The currency could also take the form of dust or fluid, depending on the properties of those materials and society’s ability to contain them. 

If your story contains magical elements, then your options are practically limitless. Coins could be made of unicorn horns, or people could trade with dragon scales. Currency could be derived from emotions, like fear or joy. It could really be anything you can imagine, as long as you can justify it. 

However, unless your story revolves around the use of currency, you probably don’t want to distract your readers with something outlandish. If it isn’t important to your story, then you might want to keep it simple.

The currency that is used in your world is going to depend on the type of society that will be using it. For more information on how to create a fictional society, check out my other article: Creating a Fictional Culture, Step by Step.

Currency for Developing Societies

Just because your society has an official currency doesn’t mean everyone is going to use it. When a currency is brand new, it might not have had time to spread to everyone. In addition to that, some people may not have faith in it, and might choose to continue with their previous way of life for as long as possible. In these cases, societies likely rely heavily on a system of bartering instead of—or in addition to—the official currency.

Bartering allows individuals to trade goods and services for other goods and services without any money involved. A fisherman could trade fish for grains from a farmer, while a beekeeper could trade a jar of honey for a basket of eggs. People could choose to continue to barter with one another for some time after a currency has been widely distributed. In fact, including units of currency in these trades could help introduce the new system into common usage.

Another situation in which people may choose to barter is if the wealth gap makes it impossible for them to live otherwise. If society is firmly divided between the rich and the poor, the poor could revert back to a system of bartering to ensure that they are able to eat. Making money would become just a rich man’s errand, while the poor create an economy around what they each contribute to society. 

Naming Your Fictional Currency

In my experience, coming up with names for things is the hardest part. Maybe that’s not an issue for you, but I find it difficult to come up with names that are simple and appropriate. Sure, you could lean back on whatever the currency is made of, such as “gold pieces” or “rubies,” and that probably wouldn’t hurt your story much. It might, however, make all the work you did to create the currency go to waste since the name isn’t memorable enough. 

However, a name can add an additional touch of personalization to your world, especially if you are going to use a more traditional form of currency. The Harry Potter wizarding society uses traditional bronze, silver, and gold coins, but by naming them Knuts, Sickles, and Galleons, that provides just one more immersive detail for fans of the series to enjoy. 

When coming up with a name for your currency, you should consider what the entire currency is called, as well as what all the different parts are called as well. You could, however, refer to different pieces of currency by the same name, but with different descriptors. If your currency is called “Corts,” (see, I told you I’m not good at naming things) then the different types of Corts could be Bronze Corts, Silver Corts, and Gold Corts. That can be a lot easier than coming up with unique names for each type, and it won’t negatively affect your story to take this route. The naming conventions you choose can just be a matter of preference. 

Best of luck with worldbuilding! I know you can create something great.

If you’ve created a fictional society, species, or even an entire world, then you’re probably looking for ways to make it seem more authentic. One of the ways to add a little life to your fictional society is to add a religion and system of beliefs for them to subscribe to. Religion is, after all, a large part of cultural identity. 

Religion is a universal concept across human cultures. Even though religion isn’t the same everywhere, the notions of respecting a higher power or believing in something greater than what can be experienced are things that define human nature. These ideas can, of course, be applied to other sapient creatures besides humans. 

(Psst… If you haven’t created your own species yet, you should try it! I wrote a really in-depth guide to help you out with it, too: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Fictional Species. Check it out!)

Any intelligent species is bound to search for answers to the meaning of life or the creation of the world as they know it. Attempts to explain the unexplainable result in religion, at least in its most basic conception. It is much easier for a society—especially an early society—to blame rain on a deity instead of understanding the natural processes of the water cycle. 

If you want to enrich your fictional society’s culture with a unique religion, then read on for a step-by-step guide to creating a fictional religion. 

What to Consider when Creating a Fictional Religion

The first step in creating a fictional religion is deciding what you want the religion to be, and what you want it to do. In some fantasy worlds, the religion that the culture believes in could be real, and it could have actual, real gods that look over the world. There could be a real divine realm separate from the living world where gods and deceased souls reside. Or, the religion could be completely bogus and fabricated by a political organization to maintain power over the common people. 

In other words, you need to decide why your world needs a religion. Was it planted by those in power to keep people complacent and obedient? Does it describe the real magical forces in the world? Is it based on superstition and fear? Or, was it devised as a way of explaining natural processes without any scientific understanding?

These are just some questions to get your gears turning. Hopefully by now, you at least have some vague idea of what you want to achieve with your religion, so you can move on to the specifics. 

How to Create Structure for the Fictional Religion

Religions come in many shapes and sizes, so you can find a unique structure that fits the plan you have in mind. This step will lay down the foundation, on which you will be able to build out the rest of the religion. 

First and foremost, religions can be categorized by what they consider to be divine. The three most basic categories are:

• Polytheism: the belief in many gods.
• Monotheism: the belief in a single, all-powerful god.
• Atheism: the belief in no gods. This is typically associated more with a lack of religion, however, a belief in nothing is still a belief.

There are many other ways to structure a religion, however. Divinity can come from plants, animals, objects, and connections between family members and friends. Your people may worship their deceased ancestors, artists, or even an invading alien species. There are no limits to the things you can have your people worship, but they need to worship something. They could even worship themselves and their own bodily existence. 

In addition to those categories, it is also a good idea to create a hierarchy for the religion. Are all living beings made equal? Is there a god that rules over the people? Is there a pantheon of gods, above which is a god of gods? Additionally, are there individuals in the society that are revered as religious leaders or chosen by the gods? Are there preachers, spiritual leaders, or prophets? Consider how the religion creates a hierarchy, either among those that believe or the entirety of the society. 

How to Create Powerful Beings for Your Story’s Religion

This is the fun part. If your religion is based around a god or gods, whether real or fabricated, this is the part where you get to create them. If the religion you are designing won’t be based around a god, you can skip to the next section. 

First of all, your god will need a name, and potentially a title that explains their association (for example: “Savina, the Goddess of the Sun”). Of course, if your religion is based around a single deity, they could just be referred to as “God” or “All-Powerful” or something along those lines. Then, once you have a name, you can add some specific characteristics to the god to make them unique. 

Consider the alignment of the deity you’ve just created. Are they good, evil, or neutral? Are they a trickster, chaotic, or orderly? A good deity might be celebrated and honored with feasts and parties, or revered in serious prayer and strict moral conduct. A trickster god may be avoided at all costs, unless absolutely necessary. Even if your religion only has one god, it is important to decide how that god behaves, and whether they are vengeful or merciful.

Some deities are evil, and rather than worship them, people might attempt to appease them in order to avoid their wrath. This could mean offering sacrifices, fasting, or holding a festival to honor the god despite the fear they invoke. To go back to our example, Savina, the Goddess of the Sun, could be characterized as a selfish goddess. People may offer sacrifices to her out of fear that she would not raise the sun and leave the world in darkness. A culture that thinks like this could be petrified at the sight of a solar eclipse. 

Now, our example Sun Goddess might have other jobs besides raising the sun each day. She could also be associated with personal strength and independence. She might have some characteristics that are more favorable than others, and she may represent good behaviors even if she is overall an evil deity. She may bring good luck to those she favors, or she may smite the people that insult her. Depending on how divided the religion is, she may even be considered a good deity by a different sect of the religion. 

You should also have a basic idea for how the god is represented by the people following the religion. You don’t need to know exactly what the deity looks like, but you should have some idea of what they are visually associated with. A goddess like Savina might be associated with a tigress, for her fiery temper and solitary nature. Other gods could be associated with other animals, plants, symbols, or concepts, and those symbols should decorate anything used to worship them, such as temples and artifacts. 

Once you have one deity, you simply repeat the process to make more. Then, you can decide how the gods and goddesses all relate to each other, or if they do at all. In the Greek pantheon, many of the gods were biologically related to one another, but your gods might simply materialize from nothing or have come into existence at the same time. Their relationships with each other could be based purely on their jobs. For example, the God of the Moon might interact with the Goddess of the Ocean, since the moon’s gravitational pull on the ocean changes the tides. 

Finally, don’t forget about lesser religious beings, such as demigods, angels, demons, and other figures like that. These aren’t strictly required, but they can add another dimension to the pantheon. 

How to Write a Creation Story

One of the biggest questions that religions answer is how the world began. Creation stories can be simple, like in the Christian Genesis: God simply speaks, and it is so. He claims that there should be light, and there is light, and so on and so forth. This is an example of an Ex Nihilo creation story, where the world is made out of absolutely nothing. However, there are many other common themes that you can draw inspiration from if you are having trouble coming up with something:

• Creatio Ex Nihilo: Before the world, there was nothing. No space, no air, no universe, no time—just nothing. And then, a deity, or deities, simply create the world out of that nothing, simply by willing it to be. 
• Creation from Chaos: Before the world, there is simply an expanse of an endless, formless void that is chaotic and unpredictable. It lacks form, mass, and dimension, and it is beyond mortal comprehension. A deity, or deities, create the world out of that chaos, symbolically bringing order to chaos. 
• Primal Couple: The ground and the sky are personified, and the world is brought into existence by being born from this primal couple. Often times, this couple must split up for the world to survive, since the sky and earth must remain apart. This can be handy for explaining natural disasters, since those could be seen as the deities’ misery at being separated. 
• World Parent: Before the world, there was a god that sacrificed their life to create that world out of their physical body. Their flesh becomes the dirt, their hair becomes the plants, their tears become the waters, their blood becomes the animals, and so on. This type of myth is often associated with a religion that holds the world and everything on it to be inherently divine since it is all part of the body of the god.
• Emergence: Before the current world, there was another planet, in which the world germinates for some time. After that period of time is over, the new world emerges, signaling a new beginning. This type of creation myth is deliberately comparable to giving birth, and there is even usually a (female) deity to act as a midwife in the process. However, the earth could also emerge from a god instead of another planet.
• Earth-Diver: Before the world, there is nothing but a vast expanse, often likened to an endless ocean or outer space. A deity then sends an animal, spirit, or lesser deity out to find debris to construct a new world in this space. In many of these stories, the Earth-Diver is unsuccessful several times before a viable planet is created.

Creation stories should also involve some sort of explanation for how humans (or whatever species you’re working with) came to be. The first people could have evolved over time, emerged from the dirt, or been created in any number of absurd ways. However you choose to describe it, you need to make sure that it makes sense with the rest of the creation myth that you’ve laid out. If you’ve selected the World Parent option, or created something similar to it, then you already have an answer to this: they were created when the world was, from the body of the god. 

Often times, creation myths also contain some explanation of how the world will eventually end. Sometimes, this contains a timeframe (such as Satan’s return after a millennium underground), but other times, the story contains only a vague hint about what will happen. Other stories, such as Ragnarök, predict the end of the world and the emergence of a new one. An apocalypse could be the end of everything, or the start of a new beginning. 

Now of course, if you are working in a fantasy setting, then this creation myth could very well be the actual, correct, canon story of how the world was created. But if you have multiple species or societies with conflicting stories, you should probably find a solution that works for everyone (such as the god of elves, the god of dwarves, and the god of humans coming together to create the world). 

Writing About The Afterlife

One of the other big topics that religions address is what happens after a person dies. People have historically always wondered about what happens after death, but different religions disagree on what the afterlife has in store for their dearly departed.

Despite the disagreement on the details, there are two prevailing theories that consistently appear throughout different cultures and religions. Those two theories are:

• Spiritual Realms: Whether it’s Heaven and Hell, Hades, Valhalla, or The Summerland, this theory is the idea that a person’s consciousness lives on after death in some sort of realm. That realm could imitate the physical world, or it could be purely spiritual. Typically, though not always, this realm serves to either punish or reward a person for their behavior when they were alive. 
• Reincarnation: This is the idea that after death, a person’s soul is simply reborn into the world. They usually have no recollection of their previous life, but their soul is able to live on for generations in this way. In some religions, a soul might eventually reach a spiritual realm, or the soul may rest for a while in a spiritual realm before rebirth. 

The two categories are not completely separate, and often overlap in many religions. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to limit yourself to just those two ideas. There are many other ways that you could craft an afterlife story for your religion. Here are some suggestions I just came up with off the top of my head:

• Souls become part of the world after death, as soil, plants, or water.
• The deceased ascend to godhood in order to watch over their descendants. 
• The deceased soul is carried by their living descendants, so they live on as long as their bloodline remains intact. 
• The soul as a self or consciousness no longer exists, but their memories exist forever in the mind of their god.
• The deceased each becomes a star, potentially with their own solar systems.
• The world that people see in their dreams is the afterlife, and that is where they go after death so that they can still visit their loved ones while they sleep.

Those are just some ideas; feel free to take them! The point is that there is an infinite number of ways that you could come up with a story about the afterlife, and once you come up with something unique, you can make it even more special with the details that you add to it.

The most important thing to keep in mind about afterlife stories is how they impact the burial customs of the society. Consider the ancient Egyptian society, and how much their belief in the afterlife impacted how they buried the dead. It was believed that a soul could only get to the afterlife if their body was properly embalmed and placed in a sarcophagus. Other religions forbid the practice of cremation, because of the belief in a bodily resurrection. Some religions even encourage cannibalizing their deceased loved ones. Think about the religion you’ve created so far, and try to think of how the dead would be treated within that context. 

Creating Traditions and Rituals for a Fictional Religion

Religions influence culture in a number of ways, but the most prominent influence they have is with traditions and rituals. This is a wide scope of a topic, and it has a tremendous impact on the way the religion is experienced, perceived, and celebrated. There are many traditions and rituals that you can include to really make your religion come to life, including:

• Celebrating holidays, usually on the anniversary of a notable event in the religion’s history
• Celebrating coming of age in a specific way, such as with a parade, a festival, a feast, or even a sacrifice
• Ritualistic scarring or body modification
• Only eating, or avoiding, specific types of foods at specific times
• How a family is structured
• Attend a ceremony or gathering regularly
• Celebrating milestones in life
• Going on a journey for a religious mission
• Fasting

Think of these traditions as a way for you to add believable complexity to your fictional religion, and to make it truly memorable. 

In addition to those behavioral traditions, consider the items and symbols that are significant to the religion. For many religions, there is a sacred book that represents the teachings of their god or gods. Symbols are ways that religions can identify and differentiate themselves and communicate broad ideas about their beliefs. For example, hands are a common symbol in many religions, because of how they can symbolize comfort and protection. 

Creating Ethics for Your Fictional Religion

Religion plays a huge part in a society’s perceptions of right and wrong. Some behaviors would be encouraged or discouraged, depending on what the religion teaches. This influence could have a positive impact on survival if those ideas are along the lines of “don’t kill your neighbor,” but it could just as easily do the opposite and encourage sacrifice or justify murder. 

On a less dramatic scale, the religion could have superstitions about otherwise harmless or arbitrary behaviors. For example, it may be considered a fatal crime to eat a specific food, or to dress in a certain way. These behaviors are neither helpful or detrimental to the survival of the society, but are nonetheless dictated and controlled by the religion.

The Origin of Your Fictional Religion

By now, you should have a pretty complete religion, with moral standards, structure, traditions, and specific beliefs. Now, you need to come up with a story to justify how the religion began.

In many religions, their origin story relates to a single prophet that gained a group of followers until the ideas were widespread enough to be considered a religion. Other religions began by deviating from an existing one. In other cases, religions could get their start because of a scheming dictator, by evolving from an old folktale, or even being influenced by other cultures around the society. 

You don’t need to write out the entire history and evolution of your religion, but you should at least have some idea of how it got started and how it was spread to the public. 

Who Believes in the Fictional Religion?

There are just a few more aspects to consider before you can call your religion complete. One of those aspects is how widespread the religion is in the society. 

What percentage of the population believes in this religion? Is there another dominant religion in the area? Of the people that believe, how strongly to they believe in the religious teachings, and how likely are they to attend every gathering and obey every arbitrary custom? Are there religious fanatics, and if so, how many? In addition to those questions, you should also consider how life would be different for those that believe and those that don’t. Which group seems happier, safer, or in a higher social class? 

This part could get a little muddied if the religion you’ve created is true in the world you’ve created. It would be harder to justify someone not believing in a god that has been proven to be real in one way or another. However, you could have a person or group be skeptical of the goodness of a god, or express faith in a different god. Nonbelievers could also dismiss the godly status of that god altogether.

How to Create Variations of the Religion

Any religion that has existed for any span of time is bound to have people who disagree on how it should be experienced or expressed. Sacred texts could be interpreted in different ways, other aspects of culture could influence how traditions are celebrated, and leadership could dissuade behaviors outside of the scope of the religion. These situations can result in entirely new variations of the same religion, such as the distinct variations to catholicism: Oriental, Orthodox, Roman, Protestant, and several others. Sometimes, variations can be fundamentally different, but other times, they can be as simple as referring to a god by a different name or wearing a different kind of religious attire. 

This part can be difficult, and it is not strictly required to have a good fictional religion. However, it can be a fun way to add some additional complexity to your fictional world.

The Religion’s Impacts on Society

Finally, as you prepare to tie the final ribbon to your new fictional religion, it’s time to add some fun last-minute touches. Take some time to consider how religion has had an influence on the history of the society as a whole, such as wars, laws, government, and more. How much power have religious leaders had throughout history? Is society structured around a religious hierarchy?

In addition to the history and politics, you should think about what kind of influence the religion has had on the arts. What is the architecture of holy places like? What kind of impact has it had on music, paintings, sculptures, poetry, and more? Does it influence the way individuals decorate their homes and public spaces? 

If you want some more guidance on creating an entire culture, then check out my other article: Creating a Fictional Culture: Step by Step.

Go out there and be creative, I know you can make something great!

Creating a fictional culture is something that almost all fiction and fantasy writers will have to do at some point. Whether you need a culture for a society of humans in an alternate world or the future, or you need to bring your fictional species to life with a vibrant culture of their own, you’re going to need to make sure you are thorough. Making a culture for humans might be easier, because you can draw on real history for inspiration. However, nothing is more gratifying than putting the final touches on your own alien or fantasy creatures by creating their entirely unique way of life. 

For tips on creating your own fictional species from scratch, check out this article first: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Fictional Species.

Society and Family in the Fictional Culture

The first place you should start when creating a fictional culture is with family and relationships. How an individual in a society interacts with those around them is a huge indicator of how the societal norms evolve over time. After all, families are important communities, and they form the building blocks of the society as a whole.

The Structure of Family Relationships in the Fictional Society

Most human societies are (or were) based on a patriarchal family structure. Families consisted of a father, a mother, and their direct (or adopted) offspring. The father was the head of the household, and made all or most of the financial decisions. You may have heard this referred to as the “Nuclear Family.” However, changing viewpoints and the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage has expanded that definition to include families with two fathers or two mothers. 

If you only think about the nuclear family structure, that way of thinking doesn’t account for the many other possible family structures that you could apply to your society. Your society doesn’t have to follow that formula. It doesn’t have to be even close to it. Here are some examples of different family structures for you to consider:

• A matriarchal structure (the mother rules the household instead of the father)
• Tribes or clans of multiple biological families living together
• More than two parents present in the family
• Extended family such as cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews are included
• Single-parent households
• Children are left alone to fend for themselves (really only works if the society isn’t human, and the species’ biology allows for this)
• Children are sent to one place to be raised together by adults who aren’t their parents
• Only the first child is raised by the parents; subsequent children are passed down to their older siblings to be raised
• Children are handed off to grandparents to be raised so the younger and more able-bodied parents can do more work for society

There are many more options for family dynamics and structures available than just what you see around you. Think about the possible options, and try them out for size. See which ones work for your species and story. In the end, you may still settle on a nuclear structure, and that’s fine—as long as you don’t see it as the only option.

How Advanced is the Society?

Another thing to consider is how advanced this particular society is. This includes things such as tools, technology, knowledge, medicine, and much more. Are they comparatively more or less advanced than the other societies around them? Do they specialize in one thing, such as technology, but have a lesser understanding of medicine? Are they particularly skilled in the arts? Architecture? Mathematics? How have they evolved over time, and what do they still need to learn?

This question is usually quite important if your story takes place in an intergalactic setting. Has this species progressed to the point where space exploration is possible for them, or are they lagging behind the rest of the galaxy? 

Design the Society’s Cultural Clothing and Accessories

Clothing is a huge part of expressing one’s culture. The colors, patterns, and styles of clothing across cultures are vastly unique, and it is a great opportunity to further set your society apart. What is considered normal dress for individuals in the society? Is the expectation different for males and females? What about children? Does the society subscribe to notions of modesty? These are all questions you should keep in mind while designing the culture’s apparel. 

Here are some additional questions to help you generate ideas:

• What is considered an acceptable length for skirts/pants/kilts/etc?
• Are there distinct patterns unique to the culture?
• Do they wear jewelry? Piercings? Do they have a preferred type of metal for this jewelry?
• Do they have cultural tattoos or scars? Or are those things nonexistent, or forms of personal expression?
• Is it customary for them to have specific haircuts or styles?
• Are there laws restricting what can and cannot be worn? What about religious restrictions?
• Are any colors significant to the culture?
• Do they have a preferred type of fabric, such as sheer, thick, soft, leather, or fur?
• How does their environment and climate impact what they can and cannot wear?
• Do they have any traditional headpieces or hats? 
• Do they have more than one distinct style of clothing?
• How do rich individuals dress in comparison to poor individuals? What accessories are considered luxurious or prized?

Designing outfits is clearly much easier if you can draw, but don’t feel discouraged if you aren’t comfortable doing that. If you can envision what it looks like, simply write it out in as much detail as possible and reference back to that whenever you need to. Remember to keep separate notes for different styles to keep things organized.

What does Cultural Music Sound Like in the Fictional Society?

Music is another important part of culture, and it can have purposes ranging from religious ceremonies to entertainment, and more. 

The first step in deciding what music they would make is to decide what instruments they actually have. Are they stringed instruments, or woodwinds? Do they mostly use percussion instruments? What do these instruments look like, and do they bear any resemblance to instruments your readers would be familiar with? Once you know the objects your society uses to make sound, you can use that to determine what their music would sound like.

Of course, there’s a lot more to music than just the instruments used to make it. You should also consider things such as tempo, minor vs major keys, vocals, and overall genre. Try to come up with a good description that sets your society’s music apart from other cultures. 

What do People in the Society do for Fun?

Recreation is a pretty big deal for most intelligent species. However, the way an individual chooses to spend their free time can depend a lot on the culture they were raised in. Some cultures focus on the arts, while others could spend more free time dueling or beating the snot out of each other. The options for recreation depend on the general temperament of the society, but in general, they include things such as games, sports, and shows.  

What a society chooses to entertain themselves with depends on other aspects of their culture. Medieval knights subscribed to a code of chivalry that encouraged fighting for glory and their kings, so it was only natural that one of the most popular forms of entertainment was the violent (and often quite gory) practice of jousting. Gladiator battles in Ancient Rome is another example of a rather violent form of entertainment. Alternatively, plays, poems, and music were all the rage in Shakespearean times. In modern times, people are more interested in video games, movies, and professional sports, instead of live performances. 

You don’t have to pick only one form of entertainment, but there are usually one or two major forms that define an era, culture, or group. Try to find that iconic game, sport, or show that is representative of the culture, and have some fun with making it really unique. 

The Religion and History of the Culture

Once you have some of the basic information down, you can move on to the deeper and more complex aspects of the culture. These are going to be bigger topics, such as history, religion, traditions, and the likes. By fleshing out these topics, you will be able to create a rich and exciting culture that makes the society unique and interesting to your readers. 

Write their Cultural History

History is a hugely important determining factor for the development of a culture. The outcomes of wars, dynasties, eras, kingdoms, tragedies, migrations, and thousands of other historical factors each leave a significant mark in the identity of a society. For example, think of any of the wars throughout human history. How would society have changed and culture been altered if the outcome had been different? 

Writing out the history of an entirely fictional society or species (or an entire planet) could definitely seem overwhelming. But don’t give up so soon—you don’t need to write out every single notable event throughout the entirety of their history. That would be ridiculous! 

You should, however, have a pretty good idea of some of the most important things to have happened. There could have been a huge war or famine that forever changed the way people had to live their lives. Alternatively, a good trade deal with another society, nation, or planet could have provided the financial stability to pull the society out of a recession. Whatever you decide is important, you should put enough thought into it to be able to string together a coherent timeline of events. This will help you with plot and storytelling, and can add depth to the struggles the society could be facing at the time of the story. 

Once you have a decent history pieced together, take some time to think about the impact each event would have on the culture. Have wars left them jaded and distrusting of other cultures? Have they established a reputation for being a specific way? Did they host a celebration after a notable event, that has become a tradition to repeat every year on the same day? Think about the ways in which humans in different cultures mourn or celebrate events from history, and draw inspiration from that.

Create a Fictional Religion for the Culture

A society’s beliefs can have a huge impact on how individuals interact, how laws are constructed, and how social norms are established. However, creating an entire religion from scratch can be a big undertaking. There’s so much to think about, from ceremonies, customs, deities, forms of worship, and much more. So where do you get started?

Well, the first thing you need to decide is the structure of the religion. Is it based around a single god or many? Are they benevolent or vengeful gods? Is the concept of a god even applicable? Does the society have faith in nature, space, or their own souls instead? Figuring out what you want to base the religion around is the first step. If you don’t know what is being worshipped, then you don’t know what the religion is about. 

Once you’ve settled on what the religion is based on, you need to develop some main ideas. All religions have beliefs and expectations for every person following the religion. Those expectations should be commonly taught in sermons and enforced by older peers. Expectations could be to do things such as: 

• Pray a certain number of times a day
• Fast periodically
• Attend religious gatherings
• Ritually sacrifice animals or individuals
• Dress a certain way
• Abstain from certain behaviors
• Embark on spiritual journeys or missions
• Dispose of the dead in a specific way
• Do things that ordinarily would be avoided
• Help and care for others
• Use ceremonial intoxicants
• Sing regularly 
• Or any other behavior that the religion dictates 

You should also decide how widespread the faith is. Is it universal, or even synonymous to the culture? Or is it falling out of favor with younger generations? Is it merely part of their legacy, and not even practiced anymore except by a select few who still cling to the old beliefs? Is there a rift between believers and nonbelievers? How does each side formulate their arguments against the other?

Now that you have established the basis of their beliefs and the prevalence of it in the society, there’s only one thing left to do. You need to explain how the religion got started. For some religions, a prophet claimed to have received a divine message, and the religion was built around that. Alternatively, it could be the result of a totalitarian dictatorship that manipulated people into believing something. Religion, after all, can be used to enforce moral conduct and control behavior with the promise of rewards and punishments. 

However, there are a ton of other ways a system of beliefs could spawn, from catastrophic events to unbelievable occurrences. Historically, religion has been a way for people to explain the unexplainable. Ancient humans would use religion to explain everything from the weather, the changing of the seasons, the rising of the sun, life, and death. Gods were believed to change tides, bring rain, and work miracles. Or, just maybe, the religion of the culture is based around a real deity in their world. 

For a more in-depth explanation of how to create a fictional religion for your culture, take a look at my article: Creating a Fictional Religion.

Decide on Cultural Traditions

Traditions are another thing that could influence the behavior of a culture as a whole. These traditions could be religious, such as holidays, or they can be used to celebrate a landmark in an individual or couple’s life, such as coming of age, getting married, and having a child. They can be ceremonies, festivals, celebrations, rituals, and any other event that the society, as a collective, has decided to participate in regularly or predictably.

Traditions do not always need to make sense, nor should they always benefit a society’s survival. Traditions tend to be symbolic, superstitious, or religious, and they can often end up being something that individuals do not really look forward to. For example, not every culture is going to celebrate something as lighthearted as birthdays, or winter solstice. A tradition for a society could be to hold a sacrifice for their god, to go on a difficult journey, or commit to a life-changing decision. 

Some examples of cultural traditions are:

• Celebrating birth, birthdays, and coming of age
• Symbolic scarring, tattooing, or piercing
• Festivals, parades, and parties
• Annually celebrating something significant, such as religious holidays 
• Sacrificing a person or animal in the wake of a natural disaster
• Serving specific types of foods at specific times of day or year

One instance in which traditions are particularly important is with regard to the deceased. Dealing with death is historically difficult for most cultures to come to terms with, so it is highly likely that your culture has determined a respectful way to deal with the dead. For some, that could mean burial. For others, it could mean mummification. For others, that could mean sending them out to sea, burning the bodies, or even shooting them into space. Whatever you decide, having a way to justify why they do things that way could help keep that believable element to your story. 

Cultural Taboos and Superstitions

Similar to traditions, taboos and superstitions are related to religion and history. Some things could be considered bad luck or rude manners, even if there is no real bearing to support those claims. 

Superstitions are a powerful thing that can result in a large amount of fear directed towards a relatively harmless idea or thing. People could believe that it is unlucky to write someone’s name in red ink, to spill salt, to stay single after a certain age, or to deviate from a path if a certain type of flower is present. In addition to those superstitions, some numbers, words, colors, symbols, or items can be considered unlucky—or even evil—to use, look at, or speak aloud. These things are usually no different from other numbers, colors, and so forth, but they are believed to be unlucky as a result of historical beliefs, religious connotations, or correlations to terrible things. 

Taboos are a little different from superstitions, but still related. Taboos are typically behaviors that break social norms or deviate from what is traditionally accepted in the society. For some societies, it could be taboo to have a specific kind of family, such as one with two mothers or a single father. Other taboos could be types of relationships, diets, topics, problems, or behaviors. Of course, in order to deviate from social norms, you have to know what those are too. Take the time to make notes on what is acceptable in a society, what is unacceptable, and what falls into the gray area in between. 

The Politics and Economy of the Culture

Once a culture has achieved a level of structure and intelligence, politics and economics are never far behind. A culture typically has a large influence on the type of government that evolves, but other factors such as war, powerful individuals, natural disasters, and international/intergalactic relations can have an influence as well. An established government is also likely to influence the culture that created it, especially if it is a particularly controlling one. 

Creating a governmental structure for your society is the next step in making a believable and realistic culture with structure and consistency. 

Create a Structure of Government for the Fictional Society

There are countless ways to structure the government of your society. However, to draw inspiration from real history, you should understand some basic terms to describe different governments. That way, you can not only understand what type of government you want to employ, but you can know what to call it and how to describe it. 

• Monarchy: Society is ruled by a single leader from a royal family. The actual power of the monarch could be absolute or symbolic, or something in the middle.
• Republic: Leaders are elected by the people being governed, and laws are also often passed in a similar manner. Nothing becomes law unless the public votes for it.
• Oligarchy: Society is ruled by a class of people that are considered to be superior. This could mean the rich, the smart, the creative, the religious, or the skilled. 
• Anarchy: There is no publicly enforced government, authority, or hierarchy. Society operates on groups of individuals who volunteer to help those in need. It encourages cooperation to achieve anything, and no individual or group is seen as superior over another. 
• Aristocracy: This is a type of oligarchy in which society is ruled by nobility that claim to be of higher birth than the rest of society. This claim of superiority could have religious connotations, but it is usually a result of being born into a family of a high social or political class. 
• Theocracy: This is a type of oligarchy in which society is ruled by the religious elite, such as priests, prophets, and other religious leaders. Church and state are seen as a singular entity. 
• Democracy: Representatives are elected to represent the masses, and can often represent a number of different political parties. These representatives then elect government leaders based on the political party that gains the most leverage. Sometimes, autocracies and oligarchies pretend to be democracies to trick their populations into believing their vote can make a difference. 
• Autocracy: Society is governed by a single individual or group with absolute power over laws and legal decisions.
• Junta: This is a type of autocracy in which society is governed by a military group that seized control by force. 
• Dictatorship: This is a type of autocracy in which society is governed by one individual with absolute control over the military and population. 
• Confederacy: Society is made up of a collection of individual states that work together to pool resources and manage larger societal problems that lone states would have difficulty managing.
• Federation: Society is made up of a collection of individual states that work together like with a confederacy, but the individual states retain some rights and government control outside of the federal government. 
• Socialism: Also known as “Social Democracy.” Individuals in society are entitled to rights through government intervention, such as medical care, public transportation, and education. 
• Communism: This is a type of socialist society in which all resources and means of production are collectively owned. Individuals work according to their abilities and get paid according to their needs. 
• Capitalism: Resources and means of production are owned by private companies, and society operates on a for-profit basis. Corporations generally get to keep whatever capital they make, so long as they pay their employees for labor. 
• Tribalism: A small group of individuals is governed by a single chief, who may have varying degrees of power. This type of government is typically decentralized and characterized by extreme loyalty to one’s own tribe. Different tribes may exist in the same space, but would have distinct cultures.  

There are, of course, plenty of other options for political organization and government structure. In fact, you do not even need to select one of the options above; you could make up a structure, or use a type of government from other fictional stories. Some examples of fictional governments are hive minds, wizard councils, and rule by a higher power. Whatever you choose, make sure you understand it completely before you implement it into your story, otherwise, it could be difficult for your readers to understand. 

Creating Laws for a Fictional Society

Laws and regulations and natural consequences of trying to govern a population. Usually, laws emerge to protect civilians, protect government secrets, and keep society operating in a way that is sustainable, safe, and fair. Laws can also be a result of religious beliefs and taboos, control of the masses, government ideology, or public protest. 

When thinking about making laws for the culture, don’t just think about what is illegal. Try to think about what pushed the society or leaders to make that act illegal. Religious societies may outlaw practicing a different religion. Orderly societies may have serious penalties for distubing the peace. Dictatorships could outlaw anyone with negative sentiment towards their leader.

 You don’t need to think up of a huge list of laws, but you should come up with a few solid ones to add some restrictions to the things individuals can get away with. 

Creating a Fictional Currency

Currency is usually a pretty quick and easy element of society to figure out. Obviously, if your story is based on reality, then you can stick with dollars, credit, and bitcoins. However, if your society is vastly different from reality, or if it is based on a custom species, then you should come up with a different type of currency to accommodate the different culture. 

Some societies operate with a bartering system, in which goods and services are exchanged for other goods and services. An individual may go to a market and buy a jar of honey with a dozen eggs, or they could get a drink at a pub for cleaning tables for an hour. This type of currency is usually associated with less-sophisticated societies, but I think it could be interesting to apply it to a developed society. 

Other times, the common currency is just a system of coins, usually made of semi-precious metals, but of no objectively true value. Usually, there are different values of coins that can be traded up for more valuable coins. For example, ten bronze coins could get you a silver coin, while ten silver coins could get you a gold coin. This is how most currencies develop after a society has stopped using a bartering system. 

The next step in the currency process is with credit and borrowed money. Computers count arbitrary numbers up and down to determine an individual’s wealth, which can be used to buy goods and services in place of physical money. You could also utilize a credit system as a way of rewarding good citizens with currency to buy extra goods and services, which could be an interesting twist to an otherwise entirely communist society. 

Really, the currency in your culture doesn’t even need to be money or products. The only real requirements are that it has value, either socially or objectively, and that it can be traded. So really, knowledge could be the currency. Magical energy could be currency. Even physical affection could qualify. As long as you can justify it in the context of the culture, then anything is fair game. 

For a more in-depth explanation about making a currency for your world, check out my other article: Tips for Creating a Fictional Currency.

Creating Weapons and Tools for the Fictional Society

This section is arguably not as important as some of the others, but I thought it should be included nonetheless. Some species or societies, namely in fantasy, often have iconic tools and weapons that their people specialize in. Dwarves are traditionally seen as skilled smelters and weaponsmiths, while elves are almost always depicted with a bow and arrows. These tools and specialties are often a result of the overarching culture, but they could also result from physical advantages, such as a dwarf’s stature or an elf’s vision. 

Consider your society, and species, if that is applicable. If they could collectively specialize in or be recognized for one skill, what would it be? Do they use unique tools to accomplish different goals? How does their anatomy and biology influence the tools that they use and design? Do these tools or weapons become symbolic of the culture as a whole? 

What are the Social Problems in the Fictional Society?

No society is perfect. If you want to create a realistic culture, then you need to add some social problems to spice it up a bit. To make it believable, however, you need to base the problems on the other things that you would have decided above, such as the religion, history, type of government, and economic situation. 

Some examples of problems that could arise in a society are:

• Civil war
• Rebellion
• Inequality on the basis of inherent biological factors
• Economic inequality
• Prejudice and discrimination
• Abuse of political power
• Unjust laws
• Homelessness
• Slavery
• Drug abuse
• Starvation
• Violence and crime
• Pollution

The problems in the society could be minor inconveniences for most individuals, or they could be huge issues that disrupt normal life for everyone. The degree to which you decide to take the society’s flaws will depend on the story you are writing and the temperament of the people in the society. 

How is this Fictional Culture Stereotyped?

Finally, it is important to consider an outside perspective looking into the culture you have created. What kind of reputation does this culture have with other cultures in their world? How would other cultures or species stereotype them based on their beliefs, history, attitudes, or traditions? Are they regarded highly, or often mocked? If other cultures were to describe them, what would they say about them first? What negatives and positives would they point out? What really stands out about the culture?

By assuming the position of a fictional third-party, you could also end up getting some insight into how your actual readers might perceive them. Use this to your advantage to make any adjustments as needed before you solidify the concept. 

A Parting Word of Advice for Creating a Fictional Culture

Before we come to a close, I just wanted to make a suggestion. If you are drawing from personal experience or other real cultures to create your fictional society, you could end up creating something that is not only stale but potentially offensive. The last thing you want is to create a society that seems to be an imitation of a real culture. This can be done well, of course, but tread carefully if you choose that path.

If you go against expectations and really get creative, you’re going to end up with a culture that feels unique and interesting. You could end up creating something so fascinating and memorable that your readers will think about it long after they finish your story. If you really want to immerse your readers, you need to put in the extra work to make the culture stand out as something truly unlike anything they’ve ever seen before.

Go out there and create something incredible. I know you can do it.  

So you want to make a fictional species. Maybe you want something unique to spice up your fantasy world. Maybe you don’t want to play by the books in Dungeons and Dragons. Or maybe, you just thought it would be fun to create a species to draw or share with your friends. Whatever your reasons for wanting to create a fictional species, the process is the same. 

When creating a species, it’s important to keep a couple of things in mind. The first thing is that it’s okay that you won’t get the species completely figured out in one day. Living things are complicated, and if you try to rush through the process, you might not be happy with the result. The next thing to keep in mind is that you should start with an idea. You should have some shred of a concept to build off of to get you started. Your idea can be something as small as just knowing what the color scheme will be, or the area they will live in. But start with something, and it’ll be easier to actually start. 

You can use the table of contents below as a checklist to keep track of what you’ve done so far. Take a second to jot the headings down, so you can have the satisfaction of crossing them off the list when you complete one. 

How to Design a Fictional Species

The first place you need to start is with the design of the species. You don’t need to figure everything out now, but if you know you want to make a humanoid, or a canine sort of creature, then that’s a great place to start! Make notes of all the features you want to include, and all the ideas you have had thus far. Even if all you have is a vague idea right now, you can develop them more later on. 

If you can draw, that’s awesome! Sketch out some design ideas and try to find one you like the best. Once you’ve settled on a design, draw a diagram and make notes about features that might not be as visually obvious. If you aren’t comfortable drawing, then make a list of all the traits you want your species to have. Try to envision them in your mind, and describe them in as much detail as you can. Regardless of which option you pick, make sure you save all your notes! You might need to reference them later.

A word of advice: avoid starting with a template species. If you set out to make a character “kind of like a…” then you are going to end up limiting yourself. Don’t base a creature on something else that already exists in another story if you truly want to make something entirely yours. If you start completely from scratch, you’ll end up with a much more unique species that fits the story you are writing, and doesn’t have any odd quirks or leftovers from being “sort of like” any other existing species. If your species ends up being similar to something that already exists, then that’s fine—if that’s exactly how you want them to be. All that really matters is that you like the species you’ve created.

Features

Be mindful when you are deciding what features to include in your species. Real creatures do not evolve randomly, and each feature they have evolved to serve a purpose. Every feature you add should fall into one of three categories: an evolutionary benefit, a vestigial remnant from the species’ ancestors, or—depending on the story—the result of a curse.

So let’s break that down. 

1. An evolutionary benefit is something that is important for a creature’s survival. It can be a large feature like the wings that allow birds to fly, or it can be a smaller feature like the shape of a dog’s ears. Tails on monkeys allow them to climb more easily and keep their balance while in a tree. The long tongue of an anteater allows it to get to a food that doesn’t have much competition. The horns on a ram allow it to… ram into things, to compete for a mate and defend itself from predators. These are the traits that allow an animal to survive within a niche.
2. A vestigial remnant is an evolutionary leftover that is no longer useful. For example, humans have vestigial teeth as a result of our diet changing over time. Depending on how your species has evolved, they could have many features that used to serve a purpose, but now no longer do. That’s a great way of justifying features that you like visually without worrying as much about how they impact the species.
3. Although less applicable in some settings, a species or set of features could have come about as a result of some magical or demonic influence, like a curse that is carried down for generations. Take a look at the Tiefling race in Dungeons and Dragons for an example. In this case, you can usually go wild since biological factors and evolution play little to no part in the design. Of course, it won’t work for every story, but it is something to consider.

Some examples of features that you could add to your species are:

• Wings
• Gills
• Fins
• Hooved feet
• Horns
• Tails
• Extra limbs
• Strange eyes
• Extra eyes
• Claws
• Large ears
• Antennae
• Feathers
• Scales
• Fur
• Exoskeletons
• Additional or backwards joints
• Long tongues

There are endless possibilities for ways to differentiate your species, so don’t feel as though that is an exhaustive list. If you ever need ideas for what you can add to your species, you can find a huge resource for inspiration in nature. Heck, you could probably find some good ideas just googling “cool animals.” 

Coloration and Patterns

Coloration and patterns are related to the heading above, but it deserved to be its own section. That’s because color and pattern can play a huge part in the identity of your species, especially if they are humanoid or resemble another species. 

Colors and patterns don’t always have as clear of a purpose as other features. Sure, a creature that camouflages well with their environment uses their color and pattern to their advantage. That can make it easier for them to hunt for food, and makes them less likely to become food themselves. But not all designs make that much sense. 

For example, many birds have evolved to be brightly colored as a result of natural selection—the brightest males were able to mate and pass on their genes, while the dull-colored birds were unable to. This does not give birds a distinct advantage, and in fact, can make them more visible to things that would want to eat them. However, creatures like sea slugs use bright colors to communicate that they are poisonous and therefore inedible. A creature may also get a different color depending on its diet. Flamingos are not naturally pink, and get their color as a result of the pink shrimp that they eat. 

As long as you can justify it in some way, you can pretty much make your species whatever color you want. The same goes for patterns on their skin, fur, scales, horns, and whatever else they might have. Just try to keep all your decisions deliberate.

Height and Weight

Other important factors to consider are the proportions and overall size of your species. How tall are they? How wide are they? How is their weight distributed throughout their bodies? What would they look like beside a human? If they do not exist in the same world as humans, how does their size compare to the other creatures around them? 

What is the reasonable margin of size variation for the species? Not all humans are the same height or weight after all, so what is considered the normal range for your species? How often do individuals fall outside the range of what is considered average? If they were to put on excess weight, where would this weight be stored? What would they look like overly muscular or thin? Try to think about the different body types and how that would affect the overall shape and proportions of your species.

A note about size: if you are going to make a gigantic species, such as a dragon, then you need to consider how they are able to get the sustenance that they need to survive. Remember that every feature must be justifiable from an evolutionary standpoint. If a creature is extremely large, it must have something equally large to eat so that it does not deplete the environment around it. Herbivores would require enormous plants to eat, while the presence of huge omnivores or carnivores would suggest the presence of gigantic prey to feed the large predators. You can, however, get around this if there is a huge abundance of a smaller creature, like how whales eat plankton.

How to Create Natural Variations for Your Species

Once you have a distinct species, you should decide on if there will be regional variations for that species, and what those variations will look like. Would it result in different sizes, colors, or features? Would they look mostly similar, but consume a different diet? Or do they look entirely different, like different kinds of mantises? 

In general, there are two primary ways that you can justify these variations, depending on how distinct you want the variations to be. Those two options are subspecies and race.

Subspecies is a way of classifying versions of the same species that are biologically different enough to be distinct. As an example, think of how many different subspecies of tigers there are: Bengal Tigers, Siberian Tigers, Indo-Chinese Tigers, Sumatran Tigers, Malayan Tigers, and all the subspecies that have since gone extinct. They are all still tigers, but they are not the same.

Despite what popular fantasy would have us believe, different subspecies are not capable of breeding with each other without a significant biological compromise. Cross-breeds can definitely exist (though not in nature), but they are incapable of reproducing and tend to suffer a host of health problems that contribute to an early death. Different subspecies may even look quite similar to one another, but they are biologically distinct enough to be incompatible. 

Race, on the other hand, is more of a sociological concept based on geographic location, culture, and appearance. Those of different races are not biologically distinct enough to be considered different subspecies and can interbreed without consequence. Occasionally, visual differences can occur as a result of adapting to different environments, but that does not change their subspecies. 

Humans are the best example of the race phenomenon. People that are condensed around the equator tend to have darker skin than those that live near the poles. The reason for this is the different climates in which the populations reside, and the varied amount of UV radiation from the sun that the regions receive. Near the equator there is much more exposure to the sun, so native people survived better with darker skin to block some of that UV radiation. Farther away from the equator, the sun’s rays are not as direct, so people needed to adapt to absorb more of its radiation. That resulted in populations having lighter skin closer to the poles, and darker skin closer to the equator.

Despite the difference in melanin in the different populations’ skin, they can still mingle and reproduce. Offspring are still healthy and are not significantly different from either parent. However, if distinct populations were completely isolated from one another for long enough, they would eventually evolve into different subspecies.

Dungeons and Dragons has created misinformation about the difference between race and species. They refer to different species as “races,” and to different races as “subraces.” Subraces do not exist in real life; it is a fantasy concept. I am not going to try to dictate what you choose to call the variations in your species. If you are making a species for D&D then you will probably use their terminology, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you should at least be aware of the scientific terms.

How the Species’s Environment Influences their Design

A creature’s design can tell you a lot about where they live, and the type of environment that they will thrive in. In fact, because the features of their design exist to serve a purpose, at this point you probably already have a pretty decent idea of what you want their environment to look like. From a basic standpoint, you know whether they are fit to live in the mountains, the desert, the snow, or whatever you had in mind to begin with. All you have to do now is to find the places on a map, whether real or fictional, that meet the necessary criteria and pick a place for them to live. 

However, it is important to keep in mind that just because a species is suited for a particular environment doesn’t mean that they will live in that environment. There are a couple of things that can influence where a species actually resides. Aside from natural migration, there are a lot of ways that a species can be displaced from their natural habitat. They could be driven out by a species that competes for the same resources, or they could have been forced to abandon their home in order to escape a threat. If the species is naturally part of a fantasy world, they could get displaced by a dragon moving into their mountain, or a conquering army. In most realistic settings, humans are usually the cause of species being displaced from their homes. 

If your species resides in a modern world, then it’s important to consider their proximity to human cities and the impact that will have on their way of life. Are humans aware of their existence? What is their relationship with those humans? Are they civil, hunters, or hunted? Are they legends, that some humans have seen but never proven the existence of? If they exist in a fantasy or alien world, then you need to consider their relationship with other creatures around them.

How to Explain the Species’s Biology

The next step in creating a fictional species is to work out the aspects of their biology that go beyond their visual design. This includes things like what they eat, how they reproduce, and more. You can, of course, use magic or fantasy elements to help you out here if that works for your story, but you should put some real thought into this part regardless. If your species is supposed to be in a realistic story, then justifying how their biology works (at least briefly) can make the species seem more believable, and therefore more lovable, frightening, or whatever else you want them to achieve. 

Diet

Diet is an important part of a species’ life and culture. At a basic level, you should at least decide if the species is herbivorous, omnivorous, or carnivorous. Once you’ve determined that they only eat plants, meat, or both, then you need to decide on the specifics. 

Humans have been known to consume just about any edible thing on the planet, and that could be true for your species as well. However, some creatures have much more particular diets.  Koalas, for example, are herbivores, but they eat mostly eucalyptus leaves. Your species could be a carnivore, but only eat frogs and fish, or some other specific fictional creature that exists in their world. 

When trying to decide what your species should eat, look at their design for ideas. If they have sharp incisors or large fangs, then they probably eat a diet of mostly meat. Flatter teeth with more molars would indicate a diet of fibrous plants. If your species eats meat but isn’t a particularly good hunter, then they probably would have adapted to eat something easier to catch or with less competition. They might also be scavengers or even parasites. 

What you decide depends on the role they play in your fantasy world, their design, and their environment. 

Reproduction

Although not the most glamorous topic, you need to think of how your species reproduces. I’ll keep it brief, but you should take the time to consider each of these questions:

• Do they mate for life, or have different partners each time?
• Do they give live birth, or do they lay eggs?
• How long does it take the embryo to develop?
• How many babies or eggs would they have at one time?
• Do they care for their young like humans, or simply send them off into the world like fish?
• What role does each parent play in child-rearing?
• How long does it take for babies to reach maturity? 
• How many children is one parent likely to have in a lifetime? 

With that said, some fantasy creatures do not reproduce in any normal biological way. Mythological creatures across cultures have been known to sprout from trees, emerge from the mud, or be manifestations of light. If you want to apply that to your species, then you should try to explain the conditions that result in this type of birth. Does a tree spirit emerge after a tree dies? Does another type of creature erupt from the dirt months after a special seed is planted there? Do creatures made of light get created by a higher power? Justify your choice, and create some sort of process to explain when and how it happens. 

Advantages

If your species is well-established, then that means that they beat out the competition in their particular niche. Your species survived, while others like them died off throughout history. What makes your species different? What gave them the competitive edge over other creatures vying for the same resources? How did your species specialize in something that allowed them to survive?

Every species that persists is able to do so for a reason. For some creatures, that means evolving to have a bigger brain and more complex reasoning skills. For other creatures, that means having the ability to hold their breath for a much longer period of time than other creatures. Other creatures are able to run fast, swim, or fly. 

There should be some advantage that your species has, whether that’s a skill, a feature, a habit, or something else that could possibly give them an edge. And if all else fails, and a species is small, helpless, and at the absolute bottom of the food chain, they’ll likely stick around by reproducing in huge numbers or staying in large packs. 

Weaknesses

In addition to considering your species’ evolutionary advantages, you should also consider the things that your species cannot do. This adds an interesting complexity to the species, but it also makes them more realistic. Penguins cannot fly, despite being birds. Fish cannot leave the water. These creatures are restricted to specific environments and ways of life because of their biological design. Although that might seem obvious, it is still important to consider so you can  avoid making a species that’s too powerful or “perfect.”

This is even true for fictional creatures. Vampires are hard to kill, sure, but they are sensitive to the sun. In some stories, that can even kill them. Other creatures are weak to certain plants, minerals, or elements. Keep this in mind when creating your own fictional species, and try to give them weaknesses that make sense for them.

How does Your Fictional Species Communicate?

Depending on your story, your creatures could speak English, or whatever language is considered “common” for the region in which they live. D&D makes this easy by giving each different species its own language, usually named after the species itself. However, in some cases, like with aliens, your species is going to have its own language unlike anything else. 

If you’re thinking about the language your creatures will speak, you don’t need to get intimidated. You don’t have to create an entire language (though you can if you want to). You should, however, consider some things about how easy it is to translate, learn, speak, and write. If it has a special script, then sketch out some ideas about what that script would look like.

Alternatively, you could have your species communicate in a nonverbal way. Maybe they communicate telepathically by projecting thoughts into others’ heads. Maybe they use a series of clicks and other noises. Or they could communicate with body language or a type of sign language. You don’t have to hold yourself back by forcing them to speak a verbal language if you don’t think it fits. 

How to Create a Culture for Your Species

If your species is intelligent, then they are going to have a unique culture based on their history, beliefs, and customs. This is going to include things like their society, government, prejudices, religion, and traditions, and it might not always make sense for survival. Maybe they make sacrifices to their god or have self-harming practices in the name of faith or tradition. Maybe they fast or feast on different holidays, and avoid arbitrary numbers, ideas, foods, and other things as a result of their traditions.

This is going to become representative of who they are as a society, and not just as an individual species. If they are a society focused on conquering land or fighting for sport, then that is going to be represented in every aspect of their lives. Alternatively, if they are known for rich cultural traditions and bright festivals, then they will likely be perceived more favorably by outsiders. Other creatures are going to make assumptions about your species based on their reputation. 

If your species exists in multiple places in the world, their culture may differ significantly depending on the location. Think about how cultures are different for humans across the world, and keep that in mind as you are creating societies in different colonies, cities, and continents. 

For more guidance on creating a fully unique culture for your new species, check out my articles:

Creating a Fictional Culture: Step by Step

Creating a Fictional Religion.

How to Name a Fictional Species

Finally, it’s time for the moment of truth: giving the species a name. This part doesn’t really have to come last, but in my experience, it tends to come about naturally midway or most of the way through the process. Naming your species is a big deal after all, so you’ll want to make sure you take your time coming up with it. 

Unfortunately, there is no perfect formula for coming up with species names. Some people use other languages to come up with something, while other people stick to basic descriptions (ie: Giant Bugs or Flying Mermaids). I personally like to mash the keyboard at random, then pick out or add letters as I see fit. Sometimes I have to do this several times before I find a suitable name. Once you have a nonsense word that you like, that really rolls off the tongue and communicates the feeling you want the species to convey, I recommend looking it up on google just to make sure it isn’t already in use for a company or another species. 

In addition to a proper name, you could think about if the species has any nicknames. Just because your species has a real name isn’t going to stop people from referring to it as “bog monsters” or something. The nickname could be offensive (like “bloodsucker” for vampires), the result of ignorance or fear (“killer whales” for orcas), or a regional variant (“quill pig” for porcupines). It’s not required, but it can be a fun exercise at the very least. 

Good luck!