If you happen to be one of the first author to write about your culture for non-local readers, then you will be the one to decide which elements to use and how those elements in your story should be described. Even if you are writing your story based on historical fiction, worldbuilding is still a critical process you must go through. [ Click this link to watch the video that mirrors this post. ] You have to decide from scratch about which cultural symbol, architecture, or even practices you need to focus on to keep your story culturally authentic. Why is this important? Because if you want to create a 3-D character, you must create a 3-D space for her. For example, you cannot just show how emotions are expressed, you also have to show what belief and customs this expression is based on. In some culture, a man who says what he means is considered honest, but in another culture it is considered rude. This has nothing at all to do with how advanced, or how developed, or how sophisticat
If you have been following my posts, you would be familiar with my insistence that you only write what is familiar to you when you pick a genre, a theme or a backdrop to your story. I am not interested in all the silly word-for-word or ' lurus bendul ' argument that people will come up with, such as 'but I want to write about an immortal. Does this mean I can't because I am mortal." [ Click this link to watch the video that mirrors this post.] Even the idea that a female writer should only write about female protagonists and a male writer should write about a male protagonists makes little sense. This is because in this day and age, we now know that physical gender has nothing to do with courage, intelligence or emotion. It matters more that you get their attitude, temperament and motivation properly aligned. The only danger of writing about a character whose gender, race or religion is different from ours is our tendency to fall back on biases and assumptions.