Strategies for Deepening Your World’s Backstory with History, Mythology and Lore
If you’re like most experienced storytellers I know, you’ve already got maps, factions, family trees, and maybe even three dead empires with fancy names. That’s awesome—but let me ask you something: Do you know what those empires smelled like when they collapsed?
Or how their downfall shaped the stories people still whisper a thousand years later?
Great worldbuilding isn’t just about structure—it’s about memory. And memory is messy, biased, political, and emotional. That’s where history, mythology, and lore come in.
They don’t just explain your world; they give it depth, tension, and resonance.
In this article, I want to show you how to treat your world like a living, layered narrative.
Not just by dropping in backstory, but by thinking like an archaeologist, a cultural anthropologist, and maybe even a gossip columnist. We’re gonna dig up skeletons, decode legends, and make your world feel older than it looks.
How to Build History That Actually Shapes Your Story
Let’s talk about history—not just the dates and dynasties, but the narrative force that history carries in your fictional world.
Too often, I see world histories that are basically glorified timelines: “This war happened, this king ruled, this empire fell.” Okay, cool—but why does it matter to the people living now? How does that history get remembered, twisted, weaponized?
1. Think Like an Archaeologist, Not a Historian
Historians tell you what happened. Archaeologists tell you what we think might have happened based on broken stuff and weird patterns.
In fiction, that means leaning into the ambiguity. Have your characters disagree on what a ruin was for. Let a central myth be interpreted differently by three cultures. Real historical influence comes from how people remember things, not how they happened.
Take The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild—there’s a clear ancient calamity that shaped the entire world, but every region has a slightly different take on what really happened. That ambiguity is the storytelling. You feel the weight of history, even if the specifics are fuzzy.
2. Use History to Create Friction in the Present
If your world’s history isn’t making life harder for your characters, you’re missing an opportunity.
Let’s say you’ve got a city built atop the ruins of an old kingdom. Sure, that’s a cool visual—but now go deeper. Maybe the city’s nobles claim descent from the old kings, but the working class sees them as invaders. Or maybe a buried law still applies—like a forgotten treaty with a neighboring race that suddenly resurfaces.
History should be an active force, not just background noise. In The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, ancient oppression literally reshapes the present—old tech, forgotten knowledge, and buried trauma all resurface with consequences. That’s the kind of historical depth that drives plot, not just fills space.
3. Chronological Layering Adds Depth Instantly
This one’s simple but powerful. Don’t just create one layer of history. Create several—stack them. Think geological strata, where every era leaves behind artifacts, beliefs, scars.
Here’s how I do it:
- Create at least three distinct ages in your world: Prehistoric/Mythic, Imperial/Classic, Modern/Post-collapse.
- Assign each one a signature: a religion, a technology, a worldview.
- Then show how those layers conflict in the present.
A great example? The Witcher universe. You’ve got Elven ruins from the pre-human age, lost magical schools from the Conjunction of the Spheres, and current political tensions between kingdoms—all coexisting. The fact that people are literally living atop the bones of a dozen older worlds makes every interaction feel fraught with inherited tension.
4. Write Through Biased Eyes
One of the most powerful things you can do is write history as misremembered on purpose.
Maybe a great hero was actually a tyrant—but their version of events got turned into scripture. Or a massacre becomes a sacred origin myth for a culture that sees itself as victims.
This lets you plant thematic payoffs later—when the truth gets uncovered, or when someone questions the “official” version. Readers love those moments when the cracks start to show in what they thought was solid.
In A Song of Ice and Fire, the Targaryen dynasty is remembered very differently depending on who’s doing the remembering. Some see them as dragonlords with divine right; others as mad tyrants. And those conflicting versions fuel everything from rebellions to marriages to betrayals.
Bottom line?
If your history isn’t shaping how people talk, live, fight, and worship right now, it’s not pulling its weight. You want your world to feel like it has layers, not just lore dumps. Because in storytelling, the past isn’t past—it’s just a really persuasive ghost.
Mythology Gives Your World a Soul
If history is the spine of your world, then mythology is the soul—irrational, emotional, symbolic, sometimes contradictory. And honestly? That’s why it works so well. A good myth doesn’t need to be true. It just needs to feel true to someone.
The trick is to treat mythology not as fancy set dressing, but as a storytelling tool—one that reveals how a culture sees itself, where it thinks it came from, and what it fears becoming. These stories are not just about gods or monsters. They’re about values, trauma, identity. If history tells you what happened, mythology tells you why people care.
Let’s break it down by myth type and how each one can work with your story’s tone, plot, and character arcs.
1. Creation Myths: More Than Just Beginnings
Creation myths are everywhere—and not just in ancient cultures. Every civilization has a story about where they came from. But the real value here isn’t in cosmic origin. It’s in philosophy. A creation myth encodes a worldview.
Did the gods make the world out of love? Out of boredom? Out of violence?
That’s going to influence how your people view purpose and chaos.
Example: In Horizon Zero Dawn, the origin of the world (from the tribal characters’ perspective) is deeply spiritual—machines are seen as sacred. But from the player’s perspective, we slowly discover the truth: it’s AI and biotech. Two origin myths collide. That tension drives both the plot and character development.
2. Hero Myths: Living Templates and Cultural Mirrors
Every culture has its hero myths. But instead of just plopping one into your world, ask: What kind of person does this culture worship?
- Is their greatest hero a trickster? Then maybe cleverness is prized.
- Is it a martyr? Maybe this society values sacrifice over strength.
- Is it a conqueror? That says something about power structures.
Here’s the real gem: You can use these myths as templates or foils for your main characters.
In The Stormlight Archive, Dalinar is constantly compared to mythic figures—and wrestles with not living up to them. He’s literally trying to rewrite his culture’s idea of what a hero should be.
That’s potent storytelling. The myth isn’t passive—it’s part of the character’s internal struggle.
3. Apocalypse Myths: Fear as World Memory
You want to raise the stakes? Sprinkle in some world-ending myths that feel just real enough.
End-times myths are fascinating because they reveal a culture’s deepest anxieties. Floods, fire, silence, darkness—pick your poison. The point isn’t just “something bad will happen,” it’s this is how we believe the world will punish us.
And here’s a move I love: Make your apocalypse myth seem like it’s coming true, even if it isn’t. Let characters panic. Let factions splinter. Let prophecies be misread.
Pro tip: Combine this with unreliable historical records and you’ve got instant tension.
4. Trickster Stories: Boundary Testing, Power Flipping
These are my personal favorite. Trickster figures let you explore the parts of a culture that people don’t want to admit exist: hypocrisy, taboo, desire.
They often cross lines—gender, morality, social order. And they usually don’t get punished. Why? Because deep down, we need them.
In a rigid empire, trickster myths can show that people long for freedom or subversion. In a utopia, they reveal the cracks. And in dystopias? They’re sometimes the only heroes left.
5. Myths of the Dead: Justice, Memory, and Identity
Death myths aren’t just about the afterlife. They’re about what we owe the dead, what we do with memory, and how societies try to process loss.
Create underworlds, yes—but also create rituals. What happens when someone dies? Who remembers them? What do they leave behind? Who do they become in myth?
In Coco, the entire plot is driven by remembrance and the power of myth to preserve or erase a person. That’s mythology working as emotional core.
Bottom line?
Use myths not to decorate your world, but to build emotional scaffolding. Good mythology helps you say things your characters can’t say. It gives shape to feeling, weight to history, and richness to your story’s inner logic.
Lore Is the Glue That Holds the World Together
Let’s talk lore—the gritty, messy, fascinating bits of a culture’s everyday storytelling. If history is the record and mythology is the soul, then lore is the gossip, graffiti, and half-remembered bedtime stories.
It’s the stuff that doesn’t get written down in official texts but absolutely shapes how people live, fight, love, and lie.
Lore is what gives your world texture. And when used well, it makes your setting feel lived in, not just looked at.
1. Big Lore vs. Small Lore
Let’s split lore into two buckets:
- Macro lore: World-shaping secrets. Lost magic systems. Forgotten pacts between gods and mortals. These influence major plot arcs.
- Micro lore: Street-level stuff. Local customs. Slang terms. Weird superstitions. These influence flavor, immersion, and authenticity.
Both matter—but micro lore is what makes your world feel real. If every tavern feels the same, you’re missing this.
2. Lore Is Best When It’s Fragmented
Here’s a rule I live by: If everyone agrees on a piece of lore, it’s probably boring.
Let different cultures interpret the same event wildly differently. Let two characters argue about what a symbol means. Let your protagonist misunderstand a story, then suffer the consequences.
This technique gives you two wins:
- It builds narrative tension (someone’s wrong… but who?).
- It builds cultural richness (truth becomes regional, political, personal).
Think of The Elder Scrolls series. There’s no definitive take on what the gods are, what happened in the past, or even how time works. But each race, religion, and scholar has a theory. That’s what makes the lore feel expansive and alive.
3. Use Lore as a Storytelling Lens
Instead of delivering exposition directly, try revealing world info through how people use lore.
- A soldier tells a ghost story to a recruit.
- A child plays a game based on an ancient legend.
- A criminal tattoos a sacred symbol without understanding its history.
These moments do so much work—they show how lore shapes behavior, not just belief.
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, you see folklore everywhere. Kyoshi warriors dress like a historic figure. The Moon Spirit has a legend. But more importantly, characters act on these beliefs. They fight for them, run from them, reinterpret them. That’s worldbuilding that moves the story.
4. Flavor Through Details: Your Micro Lore Toolkit
Here’s a go-to list I keep when I’m adding micro lore:
- Idioms and Sayings
“Don’t tickle the mountain’s beard” might mean “don’t provoke trouble” in a culture that fears volcanoes. - Rituals and Habits
Do they knock on stone before a journey? Wear red during storms? It doesn’t have to be explained—just there. - Mismatched Symbols
An old battle standard now used as a pub sign. An ancient goddess worshipped as a fertility idol, but she was once a war deity. - Regional Variations
In one town, a hero is a saint. In the next? A war criminal.
Every one of these adds texture without exposition. That’s gold.
Final Thoughts
So that’s it. We’ve talked about how to build layered history, emotionally charged mythology, and messy, beautiful lore. These aren’t just worldbuilding tools—they’re storytelling engines.
They give your characters legacy, your plot gravity, and your setting something that feels a lot like memory.
If you want your readers to believe your world existed before the first page and will keep changing long after the last, this is how you do it.
Let your world remember. Let it argue with itself. Let it whisper, and let your characters listen.