Lore
Lore is all the background of a fictional world: the myths, histories, family lines and events that happened before the story begins.
Worldbuilding is the work of making a world. Lore is what you end up with: the founding myth, the war three hundred years ago, the prophecy, the family trees, the reason two houses won’t speak to each other. It’s there whether or not the plot needs it, and a lot of fans love a series’ lore even more than its plot.
It reaches you in bits and pieces: in dialogue, in quotes at the start of chapters, in appendices, in companion books and short stories, and in author interviews that are half canon and half guesswork. A “lore drop” is when the story pauses and hands you a big chunk of it all at once.
Lore is also where fan wikis do the most damage. A page about a character or a house is written with every book in mind, so the paragraph about who someone is in book one sits right above the one about what they do in book five. You can’t read one without catching the other.
In BookBubble
BookBubble ties lore to your reading progress, so when you look up a name you only see what the story has told you so far.
Lore: common questions
What is the difference between lore and worldbuilding?
Worldbuilding is the process of creating a setting. Lore is the background material that comes out of it, like histories, myths, family lines and past events.
Why do fan wikis spoil books?
Because the pages are written with the whole series in mind. A character page covers everything they ever do, so checking who someone is in chapter four can show you what happens to them in book five.