Today’s #worldbuildingMonday post is all about the creation of your world’s civilizations.
If your story world takes place on a planetary scale in one form or another, that world is likely to be populated by numerous civilizations. It’s fine of course if that’s not the case, today’s advice just wouldn’t be the focus of your worldbuilding in those cases.
The main factor when designing the lore of your civilizations is to remove yourself from the trope of each civilization representing a certain concept. You don’t want to end up with one civilization being the “edgy villains” and another being the moral, upstanding forces of objective goodness. Similarly, you don’t want a civilization that’s only equated with science and another religion or honor/treachery etc. That type of story not only has been told before, but robs your world of the potential of being well-rounded. There are shades of gray everywhere in life – remember that when designing your civilizations!
Each civilization needs its “good guys” and “bad guys”, & everything in-between as well as a unique, colorful history. Don’t sell your world short by compromising for anything less!
