Wri Wednesdays: The importance of background information

Hi all,

It’s time to discuss the importance of background information. As a writer, especially a fantasy writer, you create an entire world, filled with people, places and all sorts of events both past and present (sometimes future too, but this is rather pointless in most cases). In order to make such a fictional world believable, you need to know every detail. When your characters enter a city, you need to know what it looks like, who lives there and which significant events made it what it is today. I personally like to think about the way that city was first founded as well, but I may be going too far with these things.
As far as characters are concerned, you need to know them inside and out. Who are they and how did they get to be this way? Which life-events shaped their personalities? What kind of life do they come from? How do they react to certain situations?
Of course, creating a lot of background information while the story isn’t finished means some things won’t make it to the final product.
For the Power of Six, I created a back-story for Lana. It involved her parents being highly religious, which interfered with her desire to go to the Temple. I created the religion her parents were part of, including Bible-like stories they could reference. Lana’s back-story changed and the religion will now go unused.
Kym used to be a lesbian, including past romances (every one of the main character’s love lives has been described). She is now straight and her past lovers have been erased from memory.
Nothing else has changed much so far, but the possibility is always there. This can mean I’m doing work now that’ll prove to be fruitless, but I’d rather have that than a half-finished world. After all, telling a story is mostly about it being believable. If people don’t believe in it, they won’t care. So for now, I’m building up the back-story as much as possible.

TTFN.