How To Strengthen Lore With Loadbearing Details | Minecraft Lorecraft: How to Lore

So you have an idea for some lore you want to do on your server but just how do you go about building that idea into an actual story that people will enjoy i’m magic taser mt for short cinematic minecraft stories are my thing and today i’m going to teach you how to create

Successful lore using load-bearing details this is the second video in my how to lore series this video is going to assume that you have a bare-bones general idea of what kind of lore you’re doing so if you don’t have that start with the first video and then come back

Here that video will get you started on building a strong foundation for your lore i’ll put a link in the description for those who are interested so let’s get started to create effective lore you need load-bearing details these are details or story beats which the entire story centers around these

Load-bearing details are key to what kind of story you’re going to tell and will ultimately shape how your story develops without load-bearing details the story falls apart these are kind of like our support beams in our little house we’re building i know it’s minecraft and gravity’s kind of wonky

When it comes to things like wooden stones so support beams aren’t really necessary but play along with the analogy for me last time we brainstormed some ideas for lore and built the foundation of a story now let’s start figuring out what can grow from that foundation but first let’s talk about load bearing

Vs flavor details you can have lots of details in your lore that make the story engaging exciting and intriguing but sometimes those details are there to bring out the character or flavor of your lore or they’re more for fun and making your world more unique these flavor details don’t often have a

Huge impact on the shape of the story that’s what makes some flavor details we won’t discuss flavor details today we’re looking at the heart of lore at the moment those flavor details will come later so how do i figure out what my load-bearing details are well here’s how first ask yourself this question

What is your lore about is it a war story a story of exploration a story of family ties the fall of a civilization once you have your answer it’s time to turn the tables turn your answer into a how question that can itself be answered let me show

You say your lore is about how an ancient civilization fell into ruin now that we know what the story is about let’s turn it into a question how did this ancient civilization fall let’s do it again if my lore is about encrypted running around my server and

Making people paranoid then if that were a question it might be how did the server uncover the truth about the cryptid it could also be how did the server stop the cryptid from making them paranoid that’s the interesting thing about lore you can answer multiple questions and from there make different types of

Stories of the same foundation so if you don’t like the first question that came to mind you can always choose another one now that you have your how question let’s answer it the answer to your how question is going to be the key to the load-bearing details of your lore let’s

Answer the how question with three load-bearing details or an answer cut into three separate parts first but and finally let’s start with first because it’s first this part of the answer is important because it shows how things within your plot got set into motion not everything starts out in the middle

Of the action and it’s important to show how things began so we can see just how much the lore changes things over time it’s kind of the same idea as everything was normal until the moment something out of the ordinary happened that sparked the start of the

Plot that’s your first let’s see it in an example say our how question is how did this ancient civilization fall starting off we’ll say first a scout spotted an unknown army advancing from the south this is our first load-bearing detail the moment the world changed and it

Doesn’t have to be a change in the world it could be a realization by a character that spurs them into action the most important thing is that your first is an event of some kind that sparks change next let’s look at our butt answer this is where we can throw a wrench into

Things and show that not everything is as it seems this is your chance to add a little complexity to your lore and take it in a new direction let’s go back to our ancient civilization sure there’s a mysterious army advancing on them and that’s pretty curious most

People would expect it to be the army of a neighboring civilization who decided to attack but what if we do something that people don’t expect maybe the army isn’t made of real people but are actually illusions that are a distraction while someone else tries to grab power maybe the army is there at

The request of the king who’s been forging ties with an ancient enemy in secret maybe nobody believes the scout when they come back to report the army you could go any number of ways with this be creative have fun with it whatever you decide this will be your second

Load-bearing detail a twist in expectations the important thing to remember about this twist is that it should never make the situation simpler instead it should make things more complicated and even introduce some tension conflict or high stakes into the mix this can help keep your lore from feeling too basic or simplistic

Now let’s go on to finally this is where we get to the heart of our how question if you had to answer your how question in 10 words or less in the most simplistic way that’s here finally going back to our civilization we had our question how did this civilization

Fall if we had to answer that in 10 words or less it might look something like this the king accidentally summoned an evil army that destroyed everything that answer right there is a third load-bearing detail and it’s also the climax of our lore the point that the rest of the lore builds to

It’s also the perfect place for the big reveal of the most important secret of your lore like the fact that the army was summoned by the king the fact that this secret gets revealed now instead of earlier in the story gives it more of an emotional punch if a

Secret gets revealed too soon it risks falling flat and you could end up losing the emotional impact of your story because of it so let’s put everything together we have our how question how did this civilization fall and we have our answer first a scout spotted an unknown army advancing from the south

But that army wasn’t human it was conjured by evil magic finally we learned that the army was accidentally summoned by the king but the army destroyed everything before it could be stopped and there we have it our load-bearing details and the climax of our lore but

We aren’t quite done yet you see there’s still space in between our load-bearing details that we have to fill in these are our supporting details or the walls of our little house here these supporting details are things that fill in the gaps between our load-bearing details you don’t just go straight from

A to b to c after all you need to fill out the body of your lore this is everything that happens between your load-bearing points let’s go back a second and look at the answer we just gave we have our first but and finally but what happens in between

Let’s take a look at our answers first the army is spotted by a scout but none of the soldiers are human and they were conjured by evil magic how do we get from that moment the army is spotted to the realization that the army is not what it seems there’s stuff

That needs to go in there probably things like the scout reporting the army the king and advisors deciding what to do about the army preparing for potential war things like that it’s up to you to fill in the gaps just remember that everything has to lead up to your third

Load-bearing detail and in terms of pacing you want to have about as much detail in between your first and second answers as you do between your second and third answers so have your first load-bearing detail at the very start of your lore the second right in the middle

And the third towards the very end of course there’s always the aftermath of the third detail and the build up to the first but in general that should be roughly the structure you’re going for and the fun thing is too remember when i said you could answer multiple questions

From the same foundation if you wanted to have a very long lore series or lore that spans a very long time you can use the aftermath of your finally answer as your starting point for a new question so if we go back to our civilization a civilization that is now dead we could

Create a new question from that something like how do the descendants of the fallen civilization learn the truth about what happened to their ancestors in that circumstance the world’s centuries or millennia after the fallen civilization becomes our new normal and everything was normal until someone discovered an artifact that

Suggested an ancient civilization once lived on the continent and there’s our new first load-bearing detail theoretically you could go on as long as you wanted using this method but we’re not quite done yet let’s talk about emotional impact and connecting with your audience i mentioned emotional impact earlier in

The video but what is it and why is it important well emotional impact and connecting with your audience are kind of the same thing it’s a measure of how well you make your audience feel for your characters and relate to the situation you’re presenting them with it’s an incredibly important thing to consider

When making lore because if your audience doesn’t connect with your lore then it won’t be interesting to them and they won’t want to consume it in terms of characters it boils down to this make them likable and or make them relatable i’m not saying your characters have to be absolutely perfect and right

All the time in fact absolutely the opposite failure is relatable because well we’re all human every one of us has made a mistake at some point and to see characters doing so can make them incredibly relatable when i say likable that doesn’t have to mean good it could mean entertaining or compelling in

Different ways i’ll go more into detail on this in an upcoming video where i go into how to create character lore for backstory but for now just keep it in mind the reason i’m bringing this point up is because very rarely do you see plot happening without characters involved in fact

Characters themselves are load-bearing details especially quote-unquote main characters who have strong involvement in how the story develops if you have spot on plot but characters that just fall short of interesting your lore won’t succeed as much and creating strong emotional impact and connecting with your audience will help these load-bearing details become strong

Reasons for your audience to keep consuming your lore so how do you weave in these new character details into the three load-bearing details we just talked about well this is where you have to consider character choice you can have the same structure for your plot but the overall story path might

Look different based on the choices your characters make and who they are within the story think of your load-bearing details like signposts some people might walk straight between all three of them but some people might meander and explore or get distracted along the way going back to our ancient civilization

Maybe your main character is the scout who first discovers the advancing army well maybe they get frustrated with all the bureaucracy happening and lack of action in the face of impending doom so they decide to do something about it and go to spy on the army and steal their

Battle plans and when they get close enough they realize that this army isn’t quite human and there you have it this character just discovered our second load-bearing detail this character is playing within the confines of the plot you set for them but it’s their choices that are shaping

The how of how the story progresses in a natural way in certain situations like on large servers with many people involved in plot you can’t always account for character choices especially if you’re involved with the public or strangers remember that laura is not the same as writing a story in this case

With everyone acting at the whims of one scriptwriter everyone needs to have control over the actions of their own characters and have a voice in their own destiny that’s part of what makes lore lore and that’s why those three original load-bearing details are so important they provide the framework for your lore while

Allowing character choices to shift the path of the story itself and if you’re in a situation where lore isn’t discussed beforehand between players keep in mind that the planned ending to your lore might be completely different than what you expect but hey that’s the fun bit playing with spontaneity

And in terms of making your plot have an emotional impact outside of character details my advice would be to just keep in mind which emotions you might evoke in different scenarios maybe you’re thinking up all this lore about an ancient civilization but on your server all you’re really doing is building

Ruins with notebooks in them in this case you can use visual storytelling to evoke an emotional response show how horrible the attack was and how badly your structures were ripped apart show how much beauty was lost in the attack by building only fragments of gorgeous builds include little clues

About who the people who lived in the civilization were using not only notebooks but details within the build as well even a single placed item can tell a story i hope by this point you have three load-bearing details and some ideas for structural details and emotional impact as well

Our lore is coming together nicely but we’re not quite done next time we’ll talk about filling in the gaps and bringing it all together by building the roof of our little base in the meantime let those ideas ruminate and see what connections you can build if you enjoyed this video or found it

Helpful be sure to like comment and subscribe if you haven’t already so you don’t miss any of my content best of luck in crafting your lore and see you out there supercell