Settings & worlds · Tip 43 of 82 · 5 min read
Festivals, Food and Funny Laws: Bring Your World to Life
Invent celebrations, dinners and strange rules so your story world feels lived in.
Think about the things your family does every year: birthdays, holidays, special meals, maybe a funny tradition nobody remembers starting. Every real place has these. When your made-up world has them too, it suddenly feels like real people live there.
Invent a festival
What does your world celebrate? The first snow? The longest day? The night the dragons fly south? Decide what happens on that day: what people wear, eat, sing or do.
On Lantern Night, every child in Hollowmere carried a paper lantern to the river and wrote one worry on its side. When the lanterns floated away, so did the worries. Wren had written hers in very small letters, so nobody else could read it.
Cook up some food
Food tells you a lot about a place. A cold mountain town might live on thick stews, while sea people munch on crunchy seaweed crisps. Give your world at least one special dish, and decide whether your character loves it or hates it.
Make some funny laws
Strange rules are a great source of story ideas, especially when somebody breaks them.
- No whistling after sunset (it wakes the hill giants).
- Every new baby must be introduced to the bees.
- Anyone who finds a blue egg must return it within a day.
- On Fridays, everybody walks backwards.
Show it, don't explain it
Okay 😐
In this land there was a custom where people gave each other bread when they met. It was a very old custom.
Wow! 🤩
The stranger held out a warm bread roll. Tam hesitated. Everyone knew that if you didn't take a bite straight away, you were saying you didn't trust them.
The second version shows the custom in action, and it creates tension. Will Tam take a bite?