The last time I said "lore is not narrative" I had to turn my social media off for a week afterwards because I got so many weirdos rocking up to tell me I didn't know what I was talking about. One insisted I read a short story with no people in it, as an example of how good a description of a place could be.
@joningold Is it fair to say that in the way you use these words, lore refers to the rules of the world's evolution (i.e. the rules that allow you do predict what will happen if you know ~everything about the current state of the world) and narrative is the description of the particular evolution that's happening during the time period (and spatial area) the piece of fiction describes? (Where we understand "state of the world" at the level of detail/precision that the reader is expected to.)
I'm curious what you'd think about the boundary between lore and backstory in fiction that goes way deeper than usual on the "precision of the world's description" axis (for example, Clockwork Rocket that has the characters discover their world's physics): is it shifted towards putting things that would ordinarily be in lore into backstory or not.
@robryk interesting question! So like, if a Star Trek episodes plot hinges on a detail of how warp drives work, does that detail get “elevated” from lore into backstory/narrative? Or if it relies on a detail about something Sisko’s mother did?
I’m not sure, off hand: but it’s certainly true that a core feature of backstory over lore if it’s discovery usually alters the core story; it’s active relevant past information, as opposed to ambient information.
@robryk So I think that’s the test for this way of looking at things: is the detail moving? How turbolifts work might affect the plot of an episode directly but that information still didn’t move (it’s lore); the secret level hidden between decks 8&9 that no one knew about is discovered (it’s back story).
Does that hit your question?
I'm not sure I see the difference: in both cases (how turbolifts work vs. existence of secret level) the statement of fact remained true, only the knowledge of characters and reader changed. In both examples the knowledge of the reader _does_ change. Do you mean to have the piece of information in the turbolift example the information is ~generally known to the characters? If not, I don't get the concept of the detail moving/not moving.
If yes, then would having the story be partially about characters discovering that detail change things?
@robryk it's about narrative force. The way a turbolift shapes what the characters do but it doesn't drive them to do anything. The secret level drives them to make new decisions. It's not even about what they know, it's about what causes change
@joningold So if a character is driven to discover physics (because they observe its effects and are puzzled), physics becomes backstory?
@robryk nah, i don't think everything has to slot into these three boxes. If you make a story about an obsessive mountain climber, the mountain's just a mountain. If her father died on the slopes, that's backstory. If there's a lost civilisation up there that's left interesting ruins they can shelter in, that's lore.