How important is World Lore for your comic?

[Viron]

Let me specify, i do enjoy creating Lore to my World, it is a lifelong project (still in the beginning though), but people say too much Lore could be more of a problem bcuz it would limit my freedom in that world at the long run...
And also, I do create these Lores in excerts, should I ever publish it to the public?

[Chita]

I think that you could show a nugget of the lore at the beginning of your story as a sort of prologue or to introduce the plot and then try to mix it with the main action. If you feel like there’s more than you can show, you could post it as an extra feature of your comic. Hope that I could be of some help!

[nekhcore]

I've never heard anyone say that too much worldbuilding is limiting, honestly. It's always "too much worldbuilding is bad because you'll end up forgetting to write the story". So that's the trap. It's fun to worldbuild, not so much to write. You have to limit yourself so you actually write the story.

Whether or not to publish is up to you, but you might want to see if you have an audience for it first. Personally I have an online wiki that's more of a personal thing to help me keep track of my worldbuilding but I don't really share it.

[eristeine]

Pretty much what @nycanth said. But to add to it: I'm in the same boat. I have a loooot of shit I wrote specifically for lore, so I could get a feel for my character's environment better, see how they'd react to it. The best advice I've seen so far is to a) avoid lore dumping, which is similar to info dumping. Don't put in a giant paragraph of your lore in the first prologue. Instead, use your characters to let your readers experience that world beside them. There are two ways you can go about this: introduce a character who's completely alien to that world - ergo, you can naturally have other characters explain information to them. Example: Harry Potter, when he was first whisked away to the wizarding world. The other is trickier - use a character already acclimated to the world. Best example I can give is Fullmetal Alchemist - where they slowly introduced concepts bit by bit.

Anyways, good luck comic-making

[velldonnabarb]

As a reader, I'd like to add: 95% of the time, if the story starts with some exposition about the world's lore/history/gods etc, I skip it. In comics, I'll still look at the pictures but I'll skip the text.

When I start a story, I'm interested in the characters, not a history lesson or instructions on how magic works etc. But if I like a story, I might go back later and read the world lore page.

On the flip-side I do love learning about an interesting well thought out world. But "interesting" is the key word. Both the world and the way we learn about it must be interesting.

So make sure your lore is delivered in a fun and easily digestible way, dear creators!

[lunchtiiime12]

Nobody will care about your world 10% as much as you do. Write the characters -- the world will follow. That's what your audience will care about.

[Viron]

Ty a lot everyone, it helped a lot!

[insomniascrawl]

I think World Lore is important to my story just because it affects the characters, but I try not to write the story in a way where you have to totally understand the lore in order to enjoy the story. Originally the story was really lore heavy and I couldn't keep track of the story in the long run and it was getting confusing and I just took it down and started all over as (Semi) Super, otherwise you'd need a social studies text books to understand all of the culture and references and social political climate and nobody has patience for that not even me as a the creator.

Summarized: It's cool to make it important, don't overdo it and make the story tedious for yourself and the reader.

[joannekwan]

For me, world lore is only important to keep the story straight. I write it down so I have guidelines to build my plot and setting around, to stay consistent. I would only share it encyclopedia format if the interest was high enough.

[SleepingPoppy]

My comic is modern fantasy so I have the advantage that my lore is built off of existing systems. I do have way more details but the story drops in more info over time and as it becomes relevant.

I don’t think having a complex world is bad. Working within set rules and parameters can help some creators shine. Just be aware of not overloading your readers and don’t assume every detail you know is sonething they have to know. And often times if people fall in love with a story they’re more eager for details about that world, in which case extra material can be great. Just always remember the story, the characters, are the heart of what you’re making!

[ChanYE]

i love lore. i want to incorporate it as much as i can

[Luminosophy]

I really agree with this. I LOVE to know about a world's lore and all the world building the author did. But it really needs to revolve around the characters and the story naturally unfolding it all. Exposition is a massive turnoff. Show, don't tell.

[Scotty]

Usually the way I write (especially with my current comic) is I have extremely brief exposition at the beginning that hints at a much bigger and complex world, but I never really take it much further than that. The reader usually knows only as much as the main character does at any given time, with some exceptions. That way, the world is built more naturally as it is discovered through character experience as opposed to someone just outright telling you how everything works.

[hjfsdh2222]

My current story doesn’t have any. That isn’t to say I haven’t created a story with a lot of complicated lore.
I did make one. It was first one. I was very in love with it.
But then I had to destroy it. Because the lore made the story unusable. it took me a year to get over it.

In my opinion: Lore is for fans. Not for creators.

The focus should be on making a good quality story. Not a complicated and “original” story.

In the end that glorious muck of a story made me a better creator because I realized that I needed more discipline in my story making to make a quality story.

[indigodrawing]

It's very much dependant on the type of story you're creating. The Lord of the Rings needs far more world building than Hannah Montanna, for example.

[Rhonder]

I feel like if your comic lends itself to lore, it can be helpful to think about, certainly! Just knowing how little things work is useful, but the more in depth you go with current and past political situations, cultures of varying areas, religions, etc the more elements you potentially have to play around with.

As others have said, it's totally possible to go overboard with that though. If some aspects just aren't useful for your story, it's possibly not worth working out in-depth. Or perhaps you can piece together the histories of places as they come up. As long as you're not breaking any of your set in stone rules, nothing says you can elaborate as you go!

Lastly I'll reiterate the word of caution about "info/lore dumping". Do try to avoid this in the main story as much as possible. I know a lot of creators feel "Oh crap, if I don't let the reader in on some of these key elements, they'll totally be lost (or lose interest or wev)!" But really, as long as the characters and/or plot is interesting, you can go a long ways on just their experience alone. Lore dumps are frankly a pretty boring way to get this information.

Most of the time when I look at one I think "It feels as though this info could have been brought up later alongside the time the info is actually relevant. Don't tell me that there are 3 races at war with one another arbitrarily, show me them fighting. Don't explain that this city is overrun with pickpocket orphans, let's see something get stolen, etc. @erinsteine pointed out some cool ways to do this: if you follow an outsider, they'll learn about the world as they go by necessity. If you follow someone who belongs, the story's action/conflict will probably be what presents vital info to both the character and readers. Something to think about.

Perhaps the hardest type to swallow is a lore dump right at the beginning though. Comics and other visual media can sometimes get away with this if they provide a visual hook for the reader. The key in these cases is to keep it as brief as possible and make sure it's effective. Sometimes people slip in world building as part of a bedtime story for a child or something at the beginning, for example. In these cases you gotta think about it from like a kid's point of view: the story's probably not going to be told 1-to-1 with how it actually went down, but a shorter, idealized version, like a fairy tale.

I look to the Legend of Zelda games for a place where this is done pretty well: sometimes (such as in Wind Waker) they'll tell a quick and dirty version of the legend with some interesting visuals in the BG to prime you on the basics, but quickly get you to the main game and let the current situation's details unfold from there. Ocarina of Time does it interestingly where it gives you the "hook" right away (lets you wander around the town/first dungeon right off the bat) then it hits you with some world building (ala the goddesses, etc) afterwards. Lets you get invested with the character(s) first.

Sometimes it can't (or is hard) to avoid though xD I'm drawing a one-shot currently, and althouogh I tried to avoid as much info dumping as possible, I do have 1 "sinful" page where I spend the whole page explaining the basics of how magic works in this world (framed as a dialogue between the MC and his friend). However I pushed it out to page 8, after the "prologue" so everyone has some time to get a feel for the characters, and in this case it's kind of necessary (story's only like 65 pages long and I need to establish why the MC is so bad at magic xD). I probably could have done it differently, but I've accepted it. 3 panels of info isn't too too terrible... I hope x__x

[spadesart]

SPIRE | Tapas

mine relies more on species lore than world lore, the setting does have a set timeline of events and an explanation as to why the aesthetic is how it is but otherwise it's pretty loose and i like to play around with it a lot

i do species lore infodumps as bonus episodes though and people seem to like them

[Im_moron]

I do have some considerable world lore in my comic, but it is actually not very important, I only take advantage of certain aspects to add dynamics to physical conflicts
"you can't use magic A unless prerequisite B is met" for example...

[scythe]

When I write my first draft, I unconsciously drop in plenty of lore. Then I leave that script and come back to it in a few months time and trim it down. Then I come back to it when it's time to lay out a page and most of the time I drop 90-95% of it.

All the silly names I came up with for stuff, all the explanations, I just drop em. Usually I'll exchange it all for a more relatable and scenario-appropriate comment about how that unsaid lore is effecting the characters in the here and now.

Of course it should be touched on at some point, but piecemeal, and anyway, it's better if you keep the mystery going for as long as possible.

One idea I've been floating in the back of my mind is to do a series of short comics, or even short stories that expound on the lore of my main comic as a side project for the future. Kind of like having my own extended universe. That way, readers who are into that sort of thing can delve into all that goodness, and the ones who aren't don't get bored and stop reading.

[nekhcore]

The thing is, even if people don't see your lore it helps to worldbuild, because eventually it will show in tiny details that you've thought up and the readers will be able to see how much thought you've put into the world, be it something like subtle differences in regional slang or dialect or a preference for a certain meat based on religion. You just have to make sure you aren't procrastinating working on the actual story/comic by worldbuilding.