Worldbuilding religion: beliefs your characters act on

A religion in a story does one job: it gives characters something to believe and act on. Build it from four parts, an explanation of the world, powerful beings or forces, rules for how to live and rituals for the moments that matter, then decide how true it is, who follows it and what it costs them. If religion is only background in your book, a few gods, a shared oath and a temple in the city description are enough.

Religion is one of four layers of a society, with worldbuilding culture, worldbuilding politics and government and worldbuilding economy. For the overall question of how much world to build, see worldbuilding for novelists.

First, does your story need one?

Maybe not. In answer to a reader's question, a Mythcreants editor says you will probably be fine making up a religion from scratch or leaving one out. Many fantasy worlds lack any organised church, and most readers do not notice. The examples given are The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, The Name of the Wind and Star Wars, none of which has a commonly observed religion in the way we think of one. The warning is about half measures. The editor says The Wheel of Time has no church but has the Children of the Light, who act like the militant arm of a church that does not exist, and asks where they get their recruits from.

The same editor suggests that if you want a religion without much work, borrow a pattern. Gods can be tied to parts of human society, such as war, farming or knowledge. They can be animals of the region, or natural forces like storm, fire and ocean. You can have a plain monotheistic god, called "the Creator" or "the Redeemer." Mention that not everyone follows the same faith, and readers will not ask for a comparative theology course unless it is part of the plot. If religion is not a driver, this is enough, and a commenter on the same page notes that you can add flavour with an oath, or a temple in a description.

If religion matters to the story, build it deeper.

The four parts of a belief system

Mythcreants' guide to creating religions and belief systems says beliefs generally include one or more of these:

• Explanations for existence. How the world began and how it will end. In low-tech societies, they may also explain storms, tides or sickness.
• Powerful beings. Gods, spirits or great beasts, or something like the Force in Star Wars, a collective consciousness. The belief may explain what the powers want from people and what they can do for them.
• Ethical standards. Cultural values and how people should behave, including roles and duties for members of a family or group.
• Rituals. Ceremonies for weddings, funerals and coming of age, or rituals to win favour, ward off spirits or seek information.

The guide also says belief systems need not involve gods at all. Confucianism, its example, does not involve divine or mystical beings.

Tie it to the society that holds it

Belief systems arise from circumstances, the guide says, and so tend to include guidelines that do three things:

1. Justify existing social systems. In a strongly hierarchical culture the religion explains why some people have more power: the king was chosen by the gods, or the lowest caste descends from traitors.
2. Encourage health and survival. A rule may forbid drinking from a lake because its water makes people sick, and the rule can outlast the knowledge behind it. A related Mythcreants piece on taboos gives the example of pre-Christian Rome, where burials and cremations were forbidden during the day or within city walls: framed as keeping a boundary between the spirits of the living and the dead, it also reduced exposure to disease.
3. Reinforce the belief system itself. If a faith has lasted, it likely promises rewards to the devoted, such as enlightenment, powers or life after death, and punishment for those who undermine it.

History matters too. Ask how it began and who founded it. There is a good chance it caused, or was caused by, a social upheaval. It might have started as the faith of outcasts or conquerors. And belief systems do not have to clash: in ancient China, Confucianism, Buddhism and Shenism coexisted peacefully, the guide notes, perhaps because they were so different in nature.

Decide how true it is

Speculative fiction lets you choose whether the belief is accurate. The Mythcreants guide's example is a village that believes its mountains are the ridges of a sleeping beast. The belief can be:

• Literally true: a giant creature is asleep underground.
• Metaphorically true: the beast stands for the magma beneath, and watching it means watching volcanoes.
• Partly true: the beast is real but long dead, and its skeleton shapes the hills.
• Completely false: someone powerful planted the story so nobody questions rumbles caused by her experiments.

Then ask how well the truth is known. If it is literally true, can the culture prove it to skeptics or must it be taken on faith? Everyone could also mistake a literal threat for a metaphor. The choice interacts with your magic system: a religion whose miracles visibly work is a different religion from one that depends on faith. See how to create a magic system.

Give it costs and cracks

The same guide quotes Sanderson's Second Law: limitations are greater than powers. Storytelling thrives on conflict, so costs are more interesting than benefits. Do members have to cut ties with their families, give up wealth or stay silent? Think about all the rules and how often they are broken, because if there were no disobedience there would be no rules. Is the breach acknowledged or denied, and is the punishment a public execution or a private slap on the wrist?

Followers are not one mass. They differ in:

• level of devotion, since few communities are all fanatics or all moderates
• reasons for participating, from family tradition to salvation to having no choice
• interpretation, including how literally the beliefs are taken and how they react to new knowledge
• benefits and burdens, which rarely fall evenly

Large or small, written or sung

How the faith is organised changes the story. A large, tightly organised one has levels of leadership, specialists such as priests, scholars, healers or seers, and may threaten secular rulers. A decentralised one varies from community to community. Every organised faith has a canon, and the guide notes it need not be a book: it can be oral stories, songs, art or dance. A canon that only a few can read gives priests power over what everyone believes. Spread works the same way: from parents to children, by recruiters or by mandatory participation, as in a theocracy, which the guide describes as a kingdom run by the faith's authority figures or by an absolute power that supports it. Worldbuilding politics and government takes that further.

Do not borrow a caricature

If you draw from real religions, do the research. Writer's Digest published a piece on myths about three major religions, warning that distortions of a faith take away nuance and that stereotypes are easy to fall into. Its examples: a fatwa is not a death sentence but a formal announcement that clarifies a matter the law does not settle, and not every Jew keeps kosher, so dietary rules depend on a person's own level of observance. The point carries to invented faiths modelled on real ones. Mythcreants, in its piece on taboos, cautions against imitating whole aspects of other cultures, since it risks turning your culture into a caricature of real people. Let the beliefs grow from the geography, history and threats of your world instead.

Show it in scenes

Readers meet religion in moments. Worldbuilding questions groups questions by what a character is doing, and one set covers what happens when a character believes, swears or grieves. A useful short list:

• the oath a character swears when startled
• the funeral, and who is allowed to touch the body
• the food that is forbidden, and what happens to someone who eats it
• the person who keeps the rules and the person who quietly breaks them

Mythcreants says taboos are rules backed by fear, usually with a supernatural reason, and that tolerance of a taboo can be nearly as bad as the offence. That gives a character a strong reason to avoid the behaviour, or to punish a sympathetic person against their will.

Frequently asked questions

Does a fantasy world need a religion?

No. A Mythcreants editor says you can leave it out and many fantasy worlds do. If the story depends on a church or an order, build it so those groups make sense.

How do I create a religion for a fantasy world?

Give it an explanation of existence, powerful beings, ethical standards and rituals, tie them to the society that holds it, and decide how true it is.

Should a fictional religion be real in the story?

You choose. Mythcreants lists literally true, metaphorically true, partly true and completely false, and suggests deciding how well the truth is known.

How many gods should I have?

As many as the culture needs. Mythcreants says a plain monotheistic god, or a handful of gods tied to society, nature or animals, is enough for a background religion.

How do I avoid stereotypes?

Research real religions properly and let your beliefs grow from your world's geography, history and threats.

Where Musael fits

A writer who gives a faith its costs and its cracks is a writer whose characters surprise them in a good way. In Musael's world and characters codex, a religion, an order or a ritual can each be an entry, with relations to the people who practise it and the places where it is kept. Continuity checks let you turn a rule that matters, for example who may touch the dead, into a check against your manuscript.

Sources

• Mythcreants, "Creating Religions & Belief Systems": mythcreants.com
• Mythcreants, "Do I Need Religion in My Fantasy World?": mythcreants.com
• Mythcreants, "Using Taboos in a Culture": mythcreants.com
• Writer's Digest, "Getting the Details Right: Myths and Facts About Three Major Religions": writersdigest.com