~ Fantasy Fiction Back story ~

Most people don't really have the luxury to do this. You can write your story and make up the relevant parts as you go. An entire poem about Beren and Luthien for the characters to sing at night? Not going to make or break your story. It's a luxury that probably won't be fully appreciated, even though it's immensely cool for the lore-junkies to piece together. I'd personally write the story first and flesh out the world later. The back-stories will come to you, if they're still relevant.

Obviously, in a perfect world, we'd have time to do this and craft the richest story possible, but it's just not efficient to write backstory first unless you're collecting it in something like the Silmarillion. (And even then, it's likely that nobody would care about the Silmarillion if Tolkien hadn't written the Lord of the Rings afterwards.)

Eric Long said:

Is this something you guys have done or thought about? Maybe even regret not doing in the first place? Is it something that may or may not be vital to have set up before actually starting the main story-line? Thoughts!

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All of my current stories are in the same multiverse and there is a lot of background information. Almost none of it appears in the books as they are now, but I have 5-10 notebooks filled with folklore and stories of the Gods and laws of the world and detailed back stories of every character no matter how often you see them. I'm of the opinion that if you know that stuff then it seeps into your story without you realising it, but, as said before, not everyone has the luxury or time to craft a world that intensely.

World building is one of my favourite things to do and I often find myself stuck on thinking about the history of the world instead of actually writing the book. I suppose, much like anything else, it's all about balance.

Eric Long said:

right now its the first book and happens to be just... immense.

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Thank you. And I know that feeling all too well. My first book in the series started off as a writing exercise to get a feel of the history. It then spiralled out of control, turned into a series inside a multiverse. The joys of detailed history.

Eric Long said:

... Is it something that may or may not be vital to have set up before actually starting the main story-line? Thoughts!

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If I have a character with a goal and something opposing him/her, I start writing. I work out details as I need them. If I have a scene and know very little about it, I'll think about mechanical aspects of the world - the logical consistency of the magic, for example (in one case this required me to come up with a 'canon' of scripture and some 'apocrypha', and to write a small amount of the text of each) that would affect the kind of choices that the characters can make. For me there would be little point of doing the kind of thing you describe and I would avoid it.

Fantasy Fiction? So, there's Fantasy Nonfiction? Why wasn't I told - I've been living in this danged magicless nonfiction world for too long!

Seriously, if this is something you want to do, go ahead and do it. Knowing the background stuff can help with worldbuilding and consistency. Just beware of getting so caught up writing the backstory that you forget to write the story itself... (We're not all Tolkien, remember - the odds of the general public ever being interested in the encyclopedic backstories of our fantasy worlds are rather slim. They're even slimmer if you never finish the story that's supposed to whet their appetite for said backstory.) It's also easy to overwhelm yourself by coming up with so much history, so many "before" tales that ultimately don't affect the story you're trying to write.

What brightdreamer said.

Personally, if there's some part of the backstory that I think is really important to making the characters who they are, I'll stop and make note of it in one of my side documents. I get down the basic details of the backstory that are important to the main story and then I move back to the actual story.

The only time I've done more than that is with this one short story I work of from time to time about how two of the important characters from the main story met and fell in love. But the only reason I've let myself do that much with that particular backstory is because how those two characters met is actually super important to how they became who they are in the main story, and the way that they became who they are affects their choices in the main story. Also, I really like that couple's love story and writing it helps me get to know them better and practice my writing skills, so why not?

Much like others have said. There is nothing wrong with creating that detailed backstory that set the foundation a thousand years before the main storyline. Even referencing back to it where appropriate for proper context and depths of story works.

For my fantasy series (and even my SF series) I have the basics of main events and their sequence, but I don't have minute details, other than what's referenced directly in one of the novels. So I have the structure there, sort of the tree where the ornaments can be hung and displayed for the readers, but I don't have stories or detailed outlines and timelines and lists of people and places.

Eric Long said:

Haha, good point. But I could say the same thing about the ever famous science fiction, is there a science nonfiction that I missed out on?

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Actually, yes, there is science nonfiction. It's generally shelved under Science. (Or Heathen Devil Lies, depending on where you are...)

I think it's extremely important that your main story be able to stand on its own. Once you're done with that you'll be able to do numerous things with the untold stories. You could make them separate entities altogether (many authors have short stories or novellas set in their fantasy worlds), or you could intersperse them throughout your book, or maybe even have each one as a prologue for each of your main story books.

Also: science nonfiction is just science

I write tons of stuff that doesn't make it into the final story drafts. Some of that is even complete-ish "stories" of various sorts.

That's my style of world-building/writing. Others do it differently, and there are many workable ways.

Y'all talk about science nonfiction, but nobody's pointed to a book about building a time machine. I am disappointed.

Perhaps I'm strange in this, but i tend to make background stories for all of my characters, for one important reason; no matter who they are or what they are doing, how they react to what is going on in the scene is often a direct result of what has happened to them in the past. As soon as I create a character I write out everything about that person that could be relevant, including the backstory. It doesn't necessarily have to be in great detail (though you can detail it out later if you wish to put it in the story), but the essence of past events, for me at least, always has to be there. This way, I know how a character is likely to act to a given situation. Many of these backstories never reach the readers eyes, but by knowing them myself I can see how the character acts in a certain way and why. There is a danger in this however. You have to make sure that you leave enough information in your story that the reader can understand, to a point at least, the characters reasoning as well. Otherwise you run the risk of you character being unrelatable.
As for histories of past events outside of the characters, I generally tend to write enough that the story is understandable. the further back in history you go, the less and less detailed that information becomes, on the simple basis that generally only the main points behind the story are carried on into the current time, and the characters you are writing about (unless they are immortal and were alive for them) won't know them any more than the reader would. Once you go back far enough, generally past events would only have a small impact on the story you are writing. The less important details are to your story, the less you need to write about them.