Writing Advice: Lore Chapters

I’m sure we've all read them before, an entire chapter dedicated to just lore, they aren’t normally fun to get through and you might even skip them (don’t worry, I won’t tell). However, despite the hatred for these chapters, why are they common? I think these chapters are common because we writers tend to get stuck in our lore and we forget what's important, and what's made just for us.

You see when creating a new story, there’s gonna be a lot of lore. However, much of the lore which gets created isn’t needed for the reader and trying to figure that out is a bit challenging. This all depends on how much of a world-builder you are. If world-building comes naturally, then you could create everything from the flora to the weather system which will help determine what your islands look like.

If world-building isn’t something you enjoy, then the lore you create might just be enough for your story but that’s it, however, there’s still gonna be lore that’s not necessary even if world-building isn’t your forte.

You’ll need beta reader's help to determine which part of the lore feels necessary and which feels filler but let’s continue.

Lore chapters are most of the time created as an afterthought. When a writer forgets to add in some lore, and they go back to a spot where it’ll be prevalent, stick it in the book and move on. You can figure out when this happened because if you skip these chapters, you won’t miss much. If you, the writer forgot to mention some lore, and none of your beta readers are confused, you probably don’t need to add in the lore if no one else asked for it.

Lore chapters also aren’t what people tend to care about when reading your story. In fact, from my point of view, people only start to care about the lore at certain points. One, if there are blatant lore mistakes. While reading a story for the first time, the reader will get a basic understanding of the lore. Just enough to follow the story, but not so much where they’re an expert. If there’s an obvious plot hole within the lore, they’ll notice and care about the lore a bit more as even from their basic understanding, some parts of it aren’t making sense.

Two, when they’re invested in your story. If you have dedicated fans, who read each of your books, talk about your books, make fan-fiction, art, etc. Those fans will start paying more attention to your story's lore. These fans are great, but sadly, don't make up the majority of your reader's base. These fans might not mind the lore dump chapters as they’re already invested so if you want to write for them, go all for it. If you still want to keep your average reader engaged you might want to change a few things and I got a few things you could try.

Spreading out your lore: This will take practice because it’s also easy to figure out when the author adds a paragraph of lore that can be easily skipped through. However, having lore sprinkled throughout your story will do a better job of keeping your readers engaged with your world, instead of having it all in one chapter.

Try to avoid big paragraphs of text: If you have a paragraph that takes nearly half of the page if not more, a lot of readers, myself included will probably skip over it. I’m not dyslexic, but I need separations in my paragraphs. Reading a wall of text does tend to make me start to blend words together and I won’t absorb anything. While there’s no rule on how big a paragraph should be, I’d try not to make mine no more than four sentences long, keep in mind a sentence can be as short as three words, or twenty.

(Now for a wall of text after I said I try to avoid them).

Try and explain the lore over multiple chapters: If it’s important to know the history of your story, and world, don’t put all of that history in one chapter, spread it out, and even retell it a few times to make sure there’s a better chance your readers will know what’s going on. While it’s the reader's fault, if they skip over sections of your story and get confused. They won’t blame themselves for what they did as they’ll believe they were justified in skipping parts of your story. I’m not saying you need to change how you write to appease these readers, but try having the lore be told in a few chapters might help. The best thing about this method is even for readers who don’t skip over lore chapters and would've read the same lore a few times now. They can skip over a section they already know and won’t have to worry about missing anything important because they already know it. This kind of writing is a bit more advanced as you have to juggle between people who skip lore chapters and people who don’t. Beta readers are great at figuring out where to cut or add your lore.

Make those chapters interesting: This might seem a bit harsh, but lore is history, and not everyone likes history. When they read lore, they're reading history and not what’s going on in the story. It doesn’t matter what kind of lore you have, or how important it is, if it feels dry compared to every other aspect of your story, people will skip it. Not to mention if it feels like the plot of your story gets halted in these chapters, people will skip them because they want to continue with the story. Beta readers are a great way to figure out where the lull is coming from and tell you what they found exciting leading up to the lore dump. You can figure out where to go from there. What I normally do is have character growth in between those lore chapters. Have the characters discover something about themselves, have a relationship grow, or even have it break during these sections. Just add something in the background to keep the reader engaged, but make it where they can’t skip over the lore because if they do that, they might skip something else.

Try not to have lore chapters near the end of your story: If your story is building up to fighting the big evil, and there’s a lore chapter just slapped in the middle...yeah, that's not great. Even if it’s really important. If the readers are gearing up for a fight, or whatever the ending is and it gets paused...readers won't be happy with it. These lore chapters are normally important because it’s where the main character will discover something that’ll change the outcome of the climax of the story...but if it’s halting the buildup, it doesn’t matter how important it is, people will skip. Think of it like riding a roller coaster, if the coaster is slowly reaching its highest point, you don’t want it to stop just before it gets there and have it explain to you the history of said coaster.

Overall, there are multiple ways of dealing with lore-heavy chapters, and again, beta readers are your friends. If you’re unsure if the lore chapter you have is needed or not, send out different versions of your text, one without the lore-heavy chapter and one without and see what the reaction you get. If the people who didn’t have the lore-heavy chapter were able to follow along just fine, but those who did have the lore chapter said they skipped over it and were still able to follow along, unless you really want to keep the lore, you probably don’t need it.