If you’re struggling with character motivations, sometimes it helps to go back. Waaaay back.

I don’t mean to that character’s childhood: even farther back. Back to the absolute beginning of time.

This may seem like overkill, especially if you’re not writing speculative fiction. But if your characters grew up in any culture at all—and I hope they did, unless they were born and matured inside of test tubes in an off-planet laboratory, in which case, you’d better be prepared to write about the psychological implications of that mess—then their culture will have some sort of explanation for how their world started.

And the story of that creation myth will have shaped a great deal of your character’s culture, from morality to ethics to social behavior.

For a contemporary example, all you have to do is look at an “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” protest sign to see how creation myths still have a very real impact on modern life.

Not all creation myths need to be weaponized by those intending to do harm to others, of course, but it certainly does happen. And if you are writing speculative fiction, and you’re creating new worlds from whole cloth, it’s even more important to think through the implications of the political, religious, social, and economic systems you’re creating. If you don’t, you risk both writing a world that feels incomplete and, more importantly, potentially doing harm to real people.

How? I think some speculative authors are wont to take the lazy way to making “diverse” worlds, and cultures into their books that are thinly-veiled analogues to real-world peoples. One of the problems with this approach, of course, is that these analogues tend to reduce those “other” cultures to stereotypes, and frankly, it’s 2021 and we should all move past stereotypes in our writing.

Plus, as I say above, creation myths can help you work through your character’s motivations by exploring the foundations of their moral system.

Plus, it’s fun.

(That last one might be subjective.)

What Even Is a Creation Myth?

Creation myths are symbolic narratives of how the world began, and they are super important to how your characters view themselves and their roles in the world. Characters don’t need to be religious to be affected by creation myths; they don’t have to believe them as truth, or even think about them at all. But even if faith does not play an important role in your character’s life, which is completely valid, their worldview will be shaped by the beliefs of those that surround them. Characters can choose to reject the worldview they were raised with, or work within it, but something’s going to exist there whether they like it or not.

How Did It All Begin?

In your character’s culture, how do people (I’m going to use “people” in this post, but replace with fae, orcs, or whatever) believe they came into existence? Who was The First Person?

You’ve got Adam and Eve.

You’ve got Rangi and Papa.

You’ve got Vishnu and Lakshmi.

You’ve got the Sumerian debate between sheep and grain.

You’ve got earth mothers and spider women.

Find your fantasy culture’s creation myth. If you’re already far along in your worldbuilding/writing, work backwards. What kind of creation story would a tribe of Norse-inspired raiders have? (Hopefully there’s krakens.)

Do You Have a World Tree or a Spinning Black Hole of Chaos?

Even more esoteric: in the beginning was—what? The Word? The Way? Chaos? The abyss? If you like typologies, anthropologists like Marta Weigle have proposed several over the years that you can find through a quick Google.

Some common motifs include:

• Secretion: Humans are created from the emissions of gods, such as Spider Grandmother.
• Earth-diver: A diver, such as a bird or amphibian, plunges through a primordial ocean and brings up sand or mud from the seabed, which becomes the terrestrial world.
• Emergence: People leave a cramped, womb-like world for a wider, well-lit world, such as in Diné Bahaneʼ.
• Ex nihilo: Creation out of nothing. Central to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but also to some Sumerian, Egyptian, and Babylonian myths.

I don’t like typologies except as the barest of jumping-off points, so once I have a vague idea of a culture, I like to just play around in my head until I land on something that feels right.

Pro tip: Because cultures are not monolithic, most civilizations had several versions of creation myths. Why not make up a couple for your story? What happens when believers of the different myths clash?

Once you’ve settled on a typology for your world, start thinking about how that typology might affect your characters. Some examples:

• If some of your characters believe that an omniscient being created the world ex nihilo, might they also believe that said omniscient being is the only one that could destroy their world? How might that affect these characters’ ability to fight a terrestrial Big Bad intent on destroying their world?
• What might a coming-of-age ceremony look like in a culture that teaches humans emerged from a primordial ocean?
• What sort of governing structures might be more likely to take shape in a civilization that believes their world came from the triumph of order over chaos? Might there be factions that would prefer a return to chaos?

Why bother with creation myths?

You may never actually write the creation myth in your book. But allow me, if you will, to quote the illustrious and infallible journal Wikipedia: “An origin myth often functions to justify the current state of affairs.”

Think about examples in your own culture where creation myths have been trotted out to prove a modern point. I’m sure you can think of at least one.

Questions to consider about your creation myths:

1. How do these origin myths inform the current state of affairs in your world? Is the monarch supposedly descended from a deity? Or was your tribal confederation created from the body parts of a goddess? (I’m not saying these are the only things that make sense in these cases. Try to upend expectations!)
2. How do the origin myths of different cultures clash? What happens when the monarchy tries to impose themselves on the tribal confederation? (I will note here to consider, even if you’re “creating” a culture, the real-world influences you’re drawing from and to sit with whether you are the right person to be telling this culture’s story. Don’t hurt real people.)
3. How much of the origin myth is history? How much is fact? How much is pure mythological wish fulfillment? How has the story been altered or exploited by current affairs?
4. Is there a culture that has a concept of evolution? How does that affect those who cling to the creation myth?

Creation stories have an impact on how your characters conceive of their places in the world. Is there a lot of Chosen One mythology in their background? What if there’s not, but your story requires a Chosen One?

Have you developed a creation myth for your story? Let me know in the comments!