Fiction Writing

How Worldbuilding Became My Pedagogy after I wrote “17 Things I Have Learned Teaching Anthropology and Cultural Diversity.”

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Via James Web Telescope

One of my most difficult days teaching college anthropology happened in the spring of 2017. We were discussing political systems. Tensions were high. Two students, one liberal, one conservative, stood up and started screaming at one another in the middle of class. I had to take both outside, separate them, and deescalate. Classrooms were growing increasingly contentious, a reflection of the escalating political climate of the United States.

In the fall of 2019 I wrote the article, 17 Things I Have Learned Teaching Anthropology and Cultural Diversity. If you haven’t stumbled on it before, it’s about insights I gained in my early days of lecturing. In this difficult political climate, I knew that these conversations about diversity and culture were more important than ever. So, after that shouting match in 2017, I began experimenting with different methods to teach anthropology and diversity.

As I was writing that article in 2019, I discussed how contentious the classroom had become with my soon to be co-author, Kyra Wellstrom. Both of us had been teaching anthropology for more than five years at that point, and had seen firsthand the changes in our classrooms with each passing semester.

Rethinking Worldbuilding

It wasn’t just the classrooms Kyra and I discussed. Both of us were frustrated with the inaccurate worldbuilding in fiction, films, and games. There were two books contributing to this problem, Sapiens and Guns, Germs, and Steel. Anthropologists have debunked both books, though they remain popular. Both sell an overly simplistic narrative about culture and history that doesn’t hold up to any real scrutiny.

Why did we care so much? Well, what we imagine matters. If your culture is constantly creating stories based on inaccurate information and stereotypes, that becomes part of the public consciousness. So, bad worldbuilding can actually reinforce biases and in some cases, bigotry. On the other end of the spectrum, good worldbuilding can help people have greater empathy, source possible solutions to real-world problems, and deconstruct stereotypes. Fictional settings are ideal for playing with ideas, especially if you’re a creative.

So, that fall, as I was writing the 17 things article, Kyra and I decided to write a book on how to use anthropology to worldbuild. That book, of course, became Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers.

As we began writing the book, we realized we could potentially help solve two problems at the same time. By writing an accessible text on anthropology for worldbuilding, we could help people write more accurate and immersive fiction. We also realized that we could use the book in our classrooms to approach contentious topics from a different direction.

Each of us took the model and experimented with it in different ways.

I tried several experiments in my classroom. The first was to have individuals build their own worlds. And while students seemed to enjoy this approach, it did nothing to address the tension in this classroom. If anything, students doubled down on their opinions. I quickly realized that having individual students do their own projects, isolated them from others. Unfortunately this further entrenched them in their own worldviews which was the opposite of my goal. It’s easy to become myopic when you’re in your own head.

What Changed Everything

After two semesters and some student surveys, I took a different approach. This time I tried group worldbuilding.

It changed everything.

Each student was assigned to a group of 3-5 people, and through three key projects throughout the term, they built fictional worlds together. Their final assignment was to present their fictional world creatively to teach the entire class. I encouraged them to use their own backgrounds, knowledge, and skills in their projects.

There were so many brilliant final projects. Some did plays (in full costumes), created videos, and built tabletop or board games. We had mock news reports and political campaigns, hilarious tourism brochures, original music, languages, recipes and so much more. Finals week became a space of play instead of stress.

While, no model is perfect, and there are some students who hate group work, it completely changed the conversations in class. Since I began the worldbuilding approach, I’ve never had another shouting match in my classroom. Instead, more students showed up to class ready to discuss. They understood that our in-class content and conversations helped them improve their fictional worlds. Instead of viewing a classmate with a different opinion as a challenge, suddenly their differences were fuel for building a more nuanced and holistic fictional world.

In these projects, they were practicing compromise and gaining experience finding common ground to work toward a mutual goal. They were rehearsing democracy, a skill we must always practice if we are to keep it.

But it wasn’t always easy. That’s kind of the point. Some groups had problems working together. One group project was derailed by a the collapse of a romantic relationship, and I had to work with the students to find a way to resolve things. Sometimes things didn’t get resolved, and a student dropped the class. Classrooms shouldn’t be uniform and tidy things. If they were, how could anyone learn? This whole human thing we do is complicated. That’s what anthropology is all about: trying to understand the complexity of the human experience.

Moving Beyond the Classroom

The success of this approach led to my 2021 Ted Talk, Anthropology, Our Imagination, and Understanding Difference. Then, after presenting at the Society for Applied Anthropology annual conference in 2022, I had several inquiries to write an academic article on the subject. Ultimately, I wrote a book chapter for an academic book detailing my model. The chapter was titled: Worldbuilding as Pedagogy: Teaching Anthropology and Diversity in Contentious Classrooms. That chapter came out in the summer of 2025.

The last 12 years, since I first began teaching, I’ve learned as much, if not more, than in all my coursework and field research in graduate school.

Watching our country lean more and more toward authoritarianism and away from democracy in the last decade, it’s been my classroom that’s given me hope. Because I saw firsthand that how you approach these contentious issues is almost as important as the topic itself. I’ve learned that no matter how difficult the discussion is, there is a way to get most people to learn to see humanity in one another.

If I were to add anything to my old 17 Things article, it would be this: You cannot find meaning out in the world, you have to create it. Sure, you can always let other people create meaning for you, but if you do that, you’ll be stuck in a life that’s not your own. If we want to build a better world for our descendants, if we want to be good ancestors to future generations, then we have to create meaning together to build a better world.

Are you experimenting with worldbuilding, pedagogy, or collaborative learning in your own work? I’m always interested in learning about different approaches or helping others to actualize theirs. Feel free to reach out with your thoughts or questions. I also occasionally host worldbuilding Q&A sessions over on YouTube for creatives.

Adding Diversity to your Writing (Panel Discussion Cosine Comic-Con 2023 in Colorado Springs)

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This last weekend I had a great time at Cosine Comic-con. I was on several panels as both participant and moderator and sat in on a number of great discussions. As always, I try to record some of the panels that I think might be helpful for writing or a good resource for people. You can find the recording of, Adding Diversity to your Writing, below. This panel included myself and the following panelists:

Betsy Dornbusch

Betsy Dornbusch writes epic fantasy, and has dabbled in science fiction, thrillers, and erotica. Her short fiction has appeared in over twenty magazines and anthologies, and she’s the author of three novellas. Her first fantasy novel came out in 2012 and her latest trilogy, Books of the Seven Eyes, wrapped up with Enemy in 2017. The Silver Scar, a standalone future fantasy novel, was called “a spellbinding saga” by Publisher’s Weekly.


Thea Hutcheson (Moderator)

Thea Hutcheson explores far away lands full of magic and science with one hand holding hope and the other full of wonder while she burns up pages with lust, leather, and latex, brimming over with juicy bits. She lives in an economically depressed, unscenic, nearly historic small city in Colorado. She is a factotum when she is filling the time between bouts at the computer.

Martha Wells

Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, The Death of the Necromancer, the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries series, media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, and Locus Awards, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her books have been published in twenty-two languages.

World Building Part 4: Six Things To Think About When Constructing Myth In Fiction

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Fantasy, Goddess, Mystic, Serpent, Snake, Woman, Myth

Want a much expanded book on worldbuilding and anthropology? Check out Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers, now available on Kindle!

Myths are fascinating and interesting arenas within cultures. Every culture has some kind of myth story (but not all cultures have creation myths i.e. the Piraha) that helps us to understand what in the world we are supposed to be doing as human beings.

But here’s the thing. There are a lot of video games and fiction out there that just throw in cute myth story for no apparent reason. The myth is fascinating but doesn’t have any weight in the character’s lives. The culture gives it a nod here and there and it holds no real consequences in the society. This is a major problem. This is where many fictional worlds go wrong. So here is a list of things about myths that you should consider in order to create better cultures and better worlds.

Note: You may want to check out Worldbuilding parts 1-3 over here

1. Myths aren’t just about religion. They aren’t all false. They are repositories of knowledge a culture uses to interpret reality.

Every country has a myth about it’s creation. In the United States we tell a story of the Founding Fathers, a group of men who fought for liberty against the tyranny of the King of England and ultimately won out. Upon the granting of our independence, a sacred document was penned to replace the faulty Articles of Confederation that tenuously held the colonies together. This document is called the Constitution.

Every American grows up hearing this. We interpret these stories and this document over and over when new ideas, technologies, court battles, as they come into our culture. That document and it’s amendments structure the values of our society and so, there are endless debates and interpretations of what those men wrote. This is a very active and powerful myth structure.

When you create your myth structure, be it religious or secular in nature, what impact does it have in society? How do people debate the meaning of those myths? Are their other myth structures at odds with the dominant one? For example, how do the Christian myth structures support or conflict with that of the Founding Fathers and the formation of our country? We see constant debates on laws and rights based on these two competing (and sometimes overlapping) myths. This is an arena in fiction that is rife with making authentic and interesting conversations that your characters and cultures have.

2. Myths structure our idea of purity

Mythology also tells us what good and bad things are in society. Not all myths are concerned with simple binaries (regardless of what structuralists might think). But many of them identify what things are good and bad to have in a culture or give prescriptions for the kind of mind, body, or spirit to cultivate.

Returning to the American example, the political myth of our country includes a number of concepts about what kinds of governments are good and bad. Who should have the right to vote (which has changed over time) and with the Bill of Rights, attempts to map out the rights of citizens that are required to keep maintain a working political system.

Myths may or may not include the following

  • What things are we supposed to eat/avoid
  • What are good/bad/ideal sexual relationships or practices
  • Marriage patterns
  • Clean and dirty parts of the body and when or why you should wash
  • Important dates
  • Important people
  • How we mark or think about time
  • What kinds of intelligences are there (does nature have a will of it’s own? Is there an all-knowing being in the sky? Does a fox have human intelligence? ect.)
  • How many genders are there? Which one is in charge or are they equal? Are there more than two genders (recall part 2’s conversation about the Native American Two-Spirited system with up to five genders)
  • How was the world created?
  • Will it be destroyed? When? How?
  • What about disease? Is there germ theory? Is, like in the middle ages in Europe, smell associated with disease?
  • How about the question of suffering? Is there a being that makes suffering? Is suffering from ignorance? Is suffering a thing at all?
  • Is there free will?
  • How many lives do we have?
  • What words are sacred/dangerous?
  • Is there a certain style of dress or attire or tattoo or body modification that is considered sacred or taboo?
  • What is reality? Are we living in a giant theater performance? Do we live in a simulation like in the Matrix? Is there a better place to go when we die? A worse one? How do physics/magic/will structure reality?

You don’t have to include all of the above but you should at least consider them and their ramifications. Lots of tension and conflict in fiction can, like in the real world, arise for competing myth structures or provide interesting limitations that characters have to work with.

3. Myth legitimizes the present social order and system of power

Myth often offers an explanation for why people have the life conditions they do. In Hinduism for example, the Hindu caste system, and the breakdown of wealth and poverty is addressed in numerous Hindu texts. People are born into certain conditions because of consequences of their past lives. In Christian Europe it became popular for Kings to claim that they had a Divine right to be in their throne. In China, an emperor was thought to have a “Mandate of Heaven.” These are a mix of religious and political myth structures that allow those in power to continue to consolidate their power and claim a legitimate right to their station. Similarly in the United States we have the bootstraps myth, the idea that with hard work, you too can one day be wealthy and that often, the poor are lazy and unworthy of success. This myth goes back to Benjamin Franklin. (Check out this podcast “Poverty Myths Busted” on why it’s more complicated than the bootstraps myth suggests and also as an interesting study in myth-making and consequences.)

Your fictional world should include myths that have consequences related to power. Manifest Destiny was the myth structure that justified the Europeans conquerors actions during the 15th – 19th century. It claimed that God wanted Europeans to civilize the world and spend Christianity far and wide. That had some really deep and pretty awful consequences for non-Christians and non-Europeans. Empires always spread their myths. Even the Mongol empire which had freedom of religion and a secular state, still spread it’s myth about the mighty Genghis Khan and the legitimacy of their power.

4. Myths Explain The Nature of Reality

Myths can sometimes act as a kind of proto-science, that provides explanations for the state of reality. In the absence of scientific investigation (and even with it) Myths can provide us with the story of where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. They can explain why man has two legs, why some creatures have different kinds of tales, what are good morals and values to have and provide limitations on what can/can’t do or can/can’t know. Myths can be flexible and empirical, based on the observation of individuals and experience, but they can also be fanciful and strange or even non-nonsensical to outsiders.

In writing your fiction, remember that even in a secular state, there are many competing myths. We still have creationists in the United States who argue the world is only 6,000 years old, along side scientific evidence that the world is 4.5 billion years old. Which leads me to…

5. Myths mark In Groups vs Out Groups and for the In Group bring Unity

Myths not only structure the way that people see the world and the elements above, but they also make clear cultural distinctions about who is a part of a group and who isn’t. Sometimes this can be as simple as, hey, I subscribe to that belief so I am part of the group. Sometimes, it can something like, in my mythology this particular group of people has different color skin because they are punished by god(s) (yes that’s a real myth story and has some obvious and very dangerous consequences). Myths can tell us, who is allowed to join in the community and who is a pollutant (back to that purity stuff) and a danger to the society. Thus, in your fiction, it can be a source of conflict. Perhaps the origin story of one group states that another group was created by an evil being hell bent on taking over the world. Enter your main character who suddenly finds themselves working with a person who they thought were inherently evil their whole life because of the myth structure they were raised on. Again, myths are a lens from which people see the world and how they order society.

And one final thing…

6. Myths are not monolithic

If you write a world where you have hundreds of thousands or millions of elves and they only have one myth story… you’ve got a serious problem. If you write an alien planet that has only one religion/language/myth/culture… you’ve also got a serious problem. Look around at all the myths in your own culture. How many religions are in the world? How many flavors of each of those religions that use different myth stories to justify their existence? If your cultures only have one myth and everyone agrees on it… that’s lazy and bad writing… unless you do it on purpose. If you do this, you will have to justify why you did it. Maybe there was some event in the past that forced everyone to agree on the same thing? But that has to be one hell of a justification. There are currently 42,000 denominations of Christianity in the world and some of them are very different from the days following the death of Jesus. Over the course of time, myth and politics and religions change. If you are doing one myth as social commentary, or a purposeful reason, make sure you have a good reason for doing it, otherwise it will just come of as lazy and/or bad writing.

If you are going to spend a lot of time creating a myth for your fictional world, make sure it has consequences. Nothing shows poor writing more then an amazingly well built myth structure that doesn’t impact your characters lives or adventures. Myths have weight. They are another arena to build good tension. Use them wisely.

Happy Writing!

Oh and Also, if you like sci-fi check out my books!