How do I balance lore and dense information with the actual faster paced story when writing a fantasy book
This story has been a passion project of mine for years, yet I’ve never put pen to paper to write it. It started as a game I made when I was 14, but I never got round to doing anything with it. It then became an idea for a book, so I just started thinking about it. And kept thinking about it.
The problem with me when it comes to fantasy is I really love the fantastical element. I’m someone who is very interested in many different things in the real world. And I can include all of them, altered in this book. I have countless notes and ideas detailing places, animals, plants, societies all in this fantasy world. I have entire histories of every town I create. The physical basis of reality is different, and the universe has its own laws of physics and higher truths. There are places I don’t even think I’ll mention in the book (or books) because there’s no need to. However, a lot of information is vital to explaining why this world is so different. And explaining why this world is so different is the most important thing about this story.
My dad always told me something, something which I now partially agree with and partially disagree with. Write what you know. Wanting to do the opposite of that was got me into fantasy. However, I have since realised that writing what you know is all you really can do. So all I can imagine is how my life and the life of others I know would be if it was in this fantasy world. I write my ideas of our world through a lens so detached from reality that anyone who reads it will not have a bias since it seems so obvious from an outside view, but it really mirrors the world we live in in all ways.
I have most of it figured out when it comes to lore about places and history. My issue is the complex physical reality and higher beings. I have ideas of multiple books, and only by the end the humans can see parts of the higher truth, and only at the very end is a vague truth explained. I don’t want to spoil anything because I think some of you may enjoy reading it when I write it. I know this is a weird comparison, but I don’t want it to be like Naruto in the sense that the ending that explains everything feels rushed and just made up at the end. I want the sparks of information to start from the start. The world is weird, and I really need parts of the deeper lore to explain half of the ideas I have for the first half of the first book.
Of course, your first thought might be to not explain right away. Let the reader be confused for a bit, and then have the explanation later. And that was my first thought too, and it’s something I’m incorporating into the storytelling. But there’s so much. I’ve just finished the layout of the first (small) section of the book. It doesn’t go into any of the lore beyond the recent history of the area and mentioning the most important areas in the continent. It explains the ongoing war and what the hero’s (narrator) journey is, or at least what it starts out as.
I know this is a very heavy post for such a simple question, but yeah.
TL;DR: How do I incorporate parts of mystical and scientific knowledge from my fantasy world into the first person story despite nobody at the time being able to understand or know anything about it, having their own religions and ideas far from the real truth?