I'm not an avid fantasy reader, but is it typical for fantasy authors to create their world with an extensive backstory, in the same vain as the Silmarillion? Published or otherwise.
It varies. Some writers to a lot of that. The modern trend seems to be only using as much as necessary for the story, even though the author has a lot more of it developed, and putting it in the story only when it comes up rather than doing an info dump of some kind in a prologue or elsewhere.
So most do write it (meaning everything from creation to the point where the novel starts) but never publish it?
My understanding is that writers tend to develop a lot more than they need so that the story world remains consistent, but I don’t know how much most of them go into it. I have a basic outline and timeline for my world but I work in new backstory as needed. I don’t think either way is necessarily right or wrong.
When I write fantasy I don't do much. I want to write about my characters so I need to know where they come from and what it's like there, but I don't need to know every detail of the damn history from the dawn of time onwards, or the details of the economic system or the patterns of feudal loyalty or the rest of it. I think some authors enjoy coming up with that stuff, and that's great, for them. But it's far from necessary, at least for some of us.
I agree with bayview - some people do enjoy writing about that kind of 'stuff'. I have been working on my wip for 5 years now, though I write on my days off. Moreso as something to do than anything else. So baring in mind I only do a few hours a week, I have developped in my opinion a rather extensive world in the last 5 years of my current wip. I have developped a fully fledged history, cultures and tried my hands into languages/dialects. I've detailed everything right down the the royal families and their line of succession for about 2000 years of history. I enjoy the process of creating things, a history of a fictional/fantasy world. But perhaps that is because I am a historian (focusing primarily on the sociology and warfare of pre-renaissance and post-roman european cultures). The fact that almost none of it will ever be published does not bother me. I do it because I enjoy the process of writing and creating as a nice distraction for day-to-day life and it is a nice relaxant for me and not for the sake of ever publishing it.
The reality of my "I'm writing fantasy? What?!" novel started with the protagonists and expanded out from them. There probably isn't a single world fact that I couldn't trace back to some specific plot or character whatsit, six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon style.
Fantasy books like The Silmarillion are know as milieu stories. They're like a travelogue about the world the author had created. There are also character based stories and idea driven stories and event driven stories. If you're writing a milieu story, then you can throw all of the world building you want in there and only have to worry enough about characters and events so far as to keep your novel readable. Character driven stories are the same but different, only throwing in enough milieu to make our characters understandable. I think the problem with over developing is not with developing too much, but rather shoving that world building into a story it doesn't fit into and where it isn't necessary. To me it's more of a focus thing and knowing what kind of story we're trying to tell.
Well, when you're writing fantasy (especially non-earth high fantasy) you're either going to concept a full, fleshed-out world up ahead of time or you're going to eventually build one without meaning to. Tolkien's world is one built before the story. Tolkien concepted most of his lore out and then implanted a story into it. Harry Potter, on the other hand, is a high fantasy world that started out relatively small and without much lore and eventually turned into a fully expanded universe after enough installments and random ideas were put into it.
But not everyone writes six books or whatever ended up being in the Harry Potter series. There's fantasy with a lot of world building, and fantasy without a lot of world building. I don't think it's destined that all fantasy writers will end up building a world beyond what's needed for the demands of their stories, and I also don't think all stories demand detailed world building.
If you write multiple installments of a fantasy canon, you're more than likely going to end up naturally expanding it even if you don't mean to. Harry Potter wasn't expanded so much because Rowling meant to do it. A lot of lore tidbits and things that fleshed out the world happened as off-comment things she came up with the exact moment she was writing them. It's not about whether a world demands a detailed world or anything, it's just about how people who are creative enough to build their own world will start fleshing it out (if they write about it enough) naturally over time. George R R Martin never intended to create quite as much stuff as he did for Song of Ice and Fire (all the multiple houses, a lot of the deeper backstory for the world's history, etc) but it just sort of happened as he wrote the books, as he'd add random thoughts into the narrative while writing the plot. Obviously if you only write a single installment of a fantasy canon, there's not going to be nearly as much natural world building, so one-off worlds don't exactly apply to what I was saying. Though this also applies to non-fantastical fiction, too. Even if your world exists in the real world with no fantasy elements, if you write enough installments of it, you'll probably have naturally expanded your story without ever having made a conscious effort to do it.
Sort of? I mean I didn't explicitly say "if you write multiple installments you'll eventually come out with a more fleshed-out world than you intended", I said you'd eventually end up building one even without meaning to. I noticed you wrote some novels that take place in a fantasy setting and I'm totally sure that within those stories, there's at least a couple examples of you naturally expanding your lore through random tidbits, even if you never meant to come up with or include any of them in the world when you originally came up with it. A creative mind in motion tends to keep being creative, which is how a fantasy canon naturally fleshes itself out as someone continues working on it. This isn't to say that a fantasy canon demands an expanded world (I never said that) or that you have to expand your original concept. I'm just saying that most people, probably even all people, who write any kind of fiction will end up naturally expanding their world through random thoughts and ideas they have while writing it. If you only write a single book, this will likely only amount to a couple of random off-hand lore pieces. If you write an entire series, this will probably mean you've created significant pieces of an entire universe. So the purpose is kind of "Don't worry about making your world bigger". It'll happen whether you want it to happen or not, and you don't have to worry about creating a long, intricate lore-base for your writing (not every fantasy story needs it and not everyone wants it). If you end up making a deep lore-base, it'll probably be a natural occurrence once you write out some stuff and then go back through and connect dots and flesh out story pieces and a lot of the things you create kind of "fall into place" as the world becomes fuller.
I had to go look... you're the same guy who kind of got into this with Chickenfreak, where she reacted to the words you wrote and you then said the words you wrote meant something else, and... it wasn't pretty, and I'm not going to duplicate the experience. But as the same situation has arisen twice in less than a week, maybe you could be a bit more careful about what you're writing, and try to make sure you're willing to stand behind it? (Or legitimately change your mind - that's great, too.)
Erhm, no. Not quite. Not to go back to that debacle or anything, but ChickenFreak was making an entirely erroneous argument concerning how I used the word 'exactly'. They went so far as to deliberately misquote me by taking a single line out of context. So, yeah. There's a certain point where it's the reader's responsibility to not entirely misconstrue what someone said. I will always say, "Hey, maybe I could have made what I said a little clearer", but that doesn't absolve someone from misinterpreting something even though the point was stated fairly clearly. Well as far as I know, while you did kind of put some words in my mouth (suggesting I said 'fantasy canons need/demand an expanded world'), you're not blatantly cherrypicking what I said and removing it from context to support an erroneous argument, so it's not really the same situation. I should be more careful about what I'm writing (and I always stand behind it, for the record- unless I find out I'm actually wrong or mistaken). At the same time, maybe you could be more careful about how you interpret things? It's fine if one of us doesn't explain themselves as clearly as possible and it's fine if someone gets the wrong message, this is just an internet forum. You'll notice, though, that when you misinterpreted what I said, I merely stated my point clearer and explained it further. I didn't throw derailing accusations at you for not reading what I said the right way. What's the point of doing that over minor misunderstandings? It's not hard for us both to accept we could have said, and taken, things more clearly.
So... are you trying to use this as an excuse to get the last word and then when I make a response, condescendingly tell me "hey, buddy, didn't you hear what I said?" That's... very, very petty of you. You could have simply made no response at all, if your true intentions were not to duplicate an argument. But, okay then.
Is it weird that I really like Tolkien's worldbuilding/histories but don't like the actual LoTR books?
I find Tolkien's style of prose deeply boring, and very much of it's time in terms of both what information is conveyed, and how it is. That being that much, much more information is told than is needed for the reader go understand the plot, and that much of it is simply thrown at the reader and not given a narrative voice, or is just irrelevant.
A lot of Tolkien's descriptions of the land and what it looked like drag way, way, way too long and a lot of the time it gets to the point where he's not really describing as much as he's literally just listing off features (albeit in at least a somewhat poetic prose). I will admit that his description of the glistening caves at Helm's Deep was very beautifully written, though. It caught me off guard because up to that point, everything he'd written about the environments had been a really painful slog to read through and then all of a sudden, here I am, reading something that is actually very vivid. I can see why some people who are more in-tune with his style find the writing so great.
I think it depends, I remember reading somewhere that readers these days prefer the depth of characters over the rules of the world, because fantasy is quite common now. But I don't have any stats on that or anything, it could be total bullshit I'm currently going through quite the world build journey, including the history of the world and the laws of the realm and how it affects the public. To be honest without it, I never would have created the plot that I have now. It's fun though, I've made up old tales of the world and written bios for previous Kings and Queens. The heavy world building isn't essential but it can be fun if you get creative I'd recommend doing a little to avoid loop holes, that's for sure.
