Create a Culture Clinic

Could all your characters fit right in at your local mall? Even if you’ve set them in 10th century Italy or modern-day Russia…or on another planet? Need some help giving your characters the diverse backgrounds REAL people have? Pro novelist Holly Lisle walks you through her quick, fun, and practical system for developing cultures that feel real. You’ll learn to create religions, philosophies, governments and lifestyles different than your own to add compelling conflict and an I want to go there feel to your stories. Holly Lisle’s Create A Culture Clinic is a funny, relaxed, and comprehensive start-to-finish course with a step-by-step process that includes worksheets, examples, and how-to advice for writers of every genre, and for every experience level—from absolute beginner with no idea how cultures work, to published pro wanting to add depth and beauty to a book. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Holly Lisle fell in love with the mystery and complexity of cultures as a kid traipsing around the world in the wake of religion-swapping parents–she discovered barter and open-air markets, Mayan temples and Spanish haciendas, moose steaks, kayaks, life that didn’t include electricity or plumbing, and the grim reality of food that arrived once a year by barge. Deeply grateful for advanced civilization, she has nonetheless sold more than 30 novels to major publishers in the US and around the world, many of these novels set in cultures from other times, other worlds, or other dimensions where plumbing is merely wishful thinking, electricity is what you avoid during storms, and open-air markets are a full of flies and thieves as the versions that so fascinated her when she was young. She is active online, teaching what she has discovered about writing fiction via courses, her writing diary, and her website, HollyLisle.com.