Dollars and Sense: Making Fictional Money Seem Real (2024)

For certain types of fiction, strong characters drive the story — in fact, authentic and powerful fictional characters should be the backbone of nearly every story. However, some stories will require much more and need to help the readers understand the world those characters live in. This way, it is also easier to understand their motives for reacting to the things around them the way that they do.

If you are going to write in the realm of sci-fi, fantasy, dystopia, and many other genres, you will be creating your own worlds, largely with their own rules. While many things remain consistent with the world we know, or at least relatable, there are others that are completely foreign. How you introduce and explain those things plays an important role in the suspension of disbelief and the elimination of confusion in the mind of the reader.

One of the most important of these things is currency. When Han Solo talks about “credits” in the first Star Wars movie, we assume this is like dollars in our world, and as we learn more about Imperial Credits and what they mean through other movies and especially the related books, we get to know and better understand the currency and character’s relationship to it.

How do we create real, believable money in a fictional world? Here are some important tips.

You can’t just compare a coin or an amount to U.S. dollars. Your readers would immediately question how those in your fictional world would know about it and how to make a conversion to it. However, there are ways you can relate your fictional money to things readers do know and recognize. For example:

• A Loaf of Bread: What does a loaf of bread cost in your world? The prices of clothing, food items, and even a drink or a meal help readers relate your currency to money they understand.
• Income and Poverty: What makes a person rich or poor in your world? How much do people make a week, a day, or even an hour? Revealing this (through your characters and showing, not telling) helps readers relate to money and the social structure it creates within your story.
• Housing: What does it cost a person for a place to live? Rent, ownership, and its relationship to work reveal what money is really worth.

How do you determine this? Simple. Make a currency converter of your own, or use the equivalent of a modern currency as a guide. Use common budget knowledge to determine different costs. For instance, housing should cost a person around 30–35 percent of their income. If they are poor, it might be a higher percentage, but don’t make housing something that is achievable.

Don’t forget about debt and how that works as well. If money fosters inequality in your world similarly to the way it does in ours, help readers understand how that affects characters and the society around them. Are their debtors’ prisons? Are there classes of people who are economically repressed? Show readers that world, and they will empathize and, most importantly, keep reading.

Just like in real life, money can be a huge motivator or distraction in your fictional world, so creating the right system can have huge benefits for your story.

The two surest things in real life and fiction are death and taxes (thanks for the first one, George R.R. Martin). If money is being made or exchanged, whatever government is in your world is going to want a piece of the action. Showing how taxes and government work is a huge part of world building. It is all about how you want your world to look.

For instance, do you want your government to be seen as benevolent or evil? A benevolent government will use taxes to build infrastructure, take care of its people, and even wage war on their behalf. An evil government will keep citizens in poverty and use taxes to further their own ends (think dictators like Kim Jong-un).

Taxes can also be collected voluntarily or under duress. They can be in the form of money, crops, livestock, or even more creatively, work. Taxes must also relate to your currency. If there are different kinds in your world, how is each of them taxed? A good way to look at this is how the development of cryptocurrency in our world has changed tax law.

The more you pattern your world after the world we know, the more easily readers will understand and follow it, and taxation is a big part of that picture.

Speaking of digital currency, what about worlds like that of many sci-fi series that have either only digital money or in some cases, no money at all? This is the picture of essentially an all-communist society where the concept of ownership is much different than it is in ours. However, there are some advantages to this type of system and ways you can relate it to our world.

A good example of this is the economy in Star Trek, described in some detail in the book “Trekonomics.” Simplified, in the Star Trek world it is clear that the Federation does not have money as we think of money. The reason is that every major need and even want of humans is provided for them in a communal setting. Pleasure can be had on the holodeck at no cost, food comes from replicators, and clothing is provided, as is lodging and even privacy.

This is much like Isaac Asimov’s concept of robots and the world they create. When human labor no longer has monetary value, humans are freed for more noble pursuits, and the need for money diminishes or goes away. Unfortunately, this is true of more dystopian worlds as well, where the government takeover of the welfare of its citizens also results in loss of freedom and autonomy.

Making the money in your fictional world seem real is important to moving your story forward. There are many ways to develop this part of your world, but much like your characters, it must be authentic and powerful in order to make us believe. Readers are taking an imaginary journey with you. Just make sure they have the money they need to arrive at the end.