Lore, LoRe, LORE!
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Often when ingesting advice for reading I will come across the common suggestion to be wary about how much time you spend as an author on creating the lore for your books. I have heard over and over again not to let yourself get sucked down the rabbit hole of creating backstories and background lore, that you can find yourself not working on writing actual prose, and instead you’re just hemming away at all of these details and ancestries. Speaking for myself, I’ve never found myself stuck within such a rabbit hole. However, I do find it a fascinating point and predicament as a writer.
How much time SHOULD you spend on writing lore for your novels?
That is a very curious question, isn’t it. I’ve never spent months at a time or really even weeks writing lore at any point in my writing career. Of course I have written a ton of lore over the years to compliment both of the universes I write in, and I will continue to do so, but I’ve always just kind of known when to pull back out of that and to keep on with writing prose. I only find myself called back to writing lore when the novel at hand demands that more from the past be dredged up, or when I discover a blank spot in the past of one of my characters or settings, or of course when a new novel is going to explore a new setting or characters I’ve yet to introduce or write about yet. It may just come down to writing styles, personality types, timeframes, deadlines, things like that with how easily you can phase in and out of writing lore. If you are a perfectionist, a completist, or someone who just enjoys writing lore, this type of thing may trip you up more than it has me, and I can sympathize with your plight. But for me I enjoy writing prose more than anything else, lore is like a necessary drug I have to take in order to feel well enough to continue writing my stories. Without it, without a really solid foundation of information, some of my stories and aspects of my worlds would fall flat.
What Parts of Writing Lore I Like and Dislike
I really enjoy digging into a specific character’s background and history, or the play by play and inception of a pivotal event or organization. What I am not so fond of is the building of family ancestries. I know, I know, this is one of fantasy’s most popular flavors as of late, but I just never have been too enthusiastic about writing or reading it. Which king or queen came before who, and who gave birth to who going back centuries is the definition of tedium in my eyes. And if there is one thing that can send me down a rabbit hole of being uninspired, it’s feeling as if I am trapped within a sphere of tedium. I need spontaneity, danger, stakes, thrill, forward momentum in order to stay feeling excited about whatever it is I am working on.
Timelines
Now, timelines are somewhat of a grey area for me. I do enjoy working on my master document of the timelines for my stories, but again, I often feel as I am knitting a quilt out of black and white scenes from the past, when I could be saturating myself with explosions of color from the present and future. All in all, crafting lore of any kind is an important and necessary element of writing fantasy stories, especially when the worlds they inhabit are broad, robust, and full of life and history. There is an element of pride and accomplishment seeing my timelines filling up with important dates and events, it makes me feel like my stories and characters are being validated and given just a little more anchoring to the real world. They’re getting histories, memories, and anything that makes my characters and settings feel more real, more like real people and places rather than just words on a page, I’ll gladly spend the time in order to ensure that continues happening.
You are threaded within the fabric of my appreciation and determination, spools of inspiration and desire. Thank you for reading.
JMB
