Making Traditions for Your OCs and Their Worlds

Solar

13 Dec 2025 • 5 min read

Adding shine to your worlds with traditions!

With the winter holidays around the corner, now is a perfect time to think about traditions for your OCs! Whether for a holiday or another special event, creating unique traditions for your OCs can add more depth to their character and their world. But first, let’s define the word ‘tradition’: a tradition is a set of customs, beliefs, or practices passed down through generations. It can also be a consistent practice, like having a tradition of going out to a certain restaurant after winning a sports game, but this article will mostly be focusing on the first definition.

Real-life traditions include:

Decorating the home for specific holidays
Hosting a New Year’s party every year
Carving Halloween pumpkins with your family
Taco Tuesday ✨
Gifting gold jewelry to the bride for her wedding
A bride wearing white or red for her wedding

While you read this article, try to think about your own traditions. If you want to, you can even write them down! Try categorizing them by personal traditions, family traditions, and cultural or religious traditions.

Why Create Traditions?

Like I’ve talked about in previous articles, traditions are just one of those things that add more life and realism to your fictional world. It’s just something that people do, consciously or not; I'm sure you can think of a few traditions you’ve unintentionally made.

Traditions inform your audience about the world you’ve created and what is important to the people in it and you. It informs the reader about the everyday lives of the people you want them to get invested and interested in, and it might even surprise you as the creator with what you come up with.

Sometimes something silly you created as a throwaway gag could come back as a solid reason a character might act a certain way or do something specific you need for the plot to happen. While accidental, what you’ve done in that case is create foreshadowing. Obviously not every single tradition you add will be plot significant, but if you can use what you’ve created to your advantage, your audience will be happier for it.

*My family has always had a Christmas tree. In the future, I’ll probably have one too!*

How do Traditions Arise?

Traditions can stem from many different places and exist for many different reasons, such as:

Religious practices
Bonding with family or friends
Celebrating or remembering a specific event
Keeping cultural practices alive into the next generation
Passing down practical knowledge

When it comes to your OCs and their world, consider what previous generations found important to teach their children. Does your world have any historical or mythological events that could be honoured through traditions? What about ways of life and survival taught through a coming of age ceremony of sorts? Any reason will do as long as you (and your characters and their world) feel that it’s significant.

Heck, even if it’s not significant! Sometimes a tradition will be something like hanging wreaths made of a certain plant on the door to keep away evil spirits, and sometimes it will be rearranging all your plushies every year. A tradition doesn't necessarily have to begin with the previous generation; it just has to be consistent enough in a person’s life to be noticeable.

Example Traditions for your World

Here are a few example traditions you can use or adapt for your own world.

On a child’s 13th birthday, they get to summon a magical companion that will accompany them for the rest of their lives.
Every year in the autumn, the village celebrates a harvest festival dedicated to their local god. The biggest part of the festival is burning down an effigy of a goat made of straw as a sacrifice.
Whenever a new Royal is born, a tiny tiara is commissioned with their name emblazoned on it. It has a flower motif assigned by the child’s mother.
Whenever a person masters magic, they are given a ring to symbolize the weight of their power and responsibility.
Each experiment in a project is given the name of a constellation to represent the project’s lofty goals.

*Thanks for reading! Check out these worlds from the community!*

Wrap-Up

So, what have we learned? Traditions are practices repeated by people throughout time, often passed down through generations. They exist for a variety of reasons, and if you add traditions to your world it will become a bit richer.

Speaking of worlds, here are some worlds from the Unvale community! The world’s descriptions are italicized and in quotes, so if the creator’s words intrigue you, check out their world!

End World by racaral. “An enormous story about a depressed god trying to rebuild the world he once again destroyed with the help of some very colorful people, literally and in personality!”
In Harmony by hawkfurze. “In Harmony is a queer horror webcomic following Pacific Cservak, a new student at the Winchester College of the Creative Arts in Aria, West Virginia. Pacific wants to focus on reconnecting with their friends and family, as well as their poetry. Their friends, old and new, want to include them into their newest venture; looking for monsters in Aria. Pacific thinks that they're pulling their leg, but their friends may know more than first impressions give, and a darker secret lurks just beneath the surface.”
Scavenge Humanity by Rambluz. “The Altered, people infected by the T’Seraaa parasite, who were forced to become cannibals to satisfy the alien creature that’s attached itself to their stomach. They built and harboured an Underground society with strict rules to keep their infection hidden for over a hundred years. After an incident that wasn’t contained, the Altered are discovered and hunted by police and mercenaries to purge them and their infection…”
Fusion by RedactedLite. “Fusion is a parody on the magical girl genre. The Fusion Fighters are a group of individuals who transform with the help of Spirits, magical creatures that have a specific theme. The host and Spirit each have their own theme that if the themes work together, the stronger the bond is. But if a person and Spirit bonds through trauma or force, it will corrupt both into a monstrous beast and only take the Spirit's theme. The story follows Joey and her balance of being a Fusion Fighter and the kid of one of the leaders of the city.”