: Re: Is it fine to write something that has no relation to my local life or language or culture? I am writing a novel (well, I have started to), with a fantasy middle ages and magic sort of

@LarsenBagley300

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It's fine to write about something from a language and culture very different from your own.

However, you might get warnings not to do it from some quarters because it is harder to do well than writing a language and culture you know well, especially if your intended readers are people who probably know more about that culture than you do.

For you to do well, it helps to read lots of fiction and nonfiction from and about the culture on which your world is based. You want to get an understanding of the people, worldview, language, and values of that culture so that your fictional version will ring true.

For example, you mention that your world is a medieval European fantasy world and that your characters have English and Greek names. Be careful with that; England and Greece are culturally rather different. Western readers will probably tolerate a fantasy world with a heroic peasant named Tom and a mystical sorcerer named Euripides. But we might chuckle at a world with a heroic peasant named Euripides and a mystical sorcerer named Tom— I, for one, wouldn't be able to stop thinking of Tim the Enchanter.

Reading some history books about medieval Europe will let you get a feel for the names that were common in different countries at different times and among different kinds of people. Doing this will also help you if you want to make up names; you'll develop an ear for what sounds and combinations of sounds were used in the languages these cultures spoke, and you won't name the princess of a country rather like Italy something like Klitschko or Liliuokalani.

You don't have to become a scholar of medieval European history. J.R.R. Tolkien spent years as a professor of Anglo-Saxon language, history, and culture before he wrote The Lord of the Rings, but you don't need quite that level of commitment. Just a few books for background is a good start. And you also don't have to imitate actual history slavishly. You just have to develop a feel for what's ridiculous or obviously wrong enough to break the reader's immersion.

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