Building on-going shared universes

[Voboy]

There's this: https://www.literotica.com/s/tales-of-leinyere-story-event

which nominally had shared lore, timeline, and magic system. It worked out surprisingly well.

There were only two events, but dozens of stories. There were some incongruities - I don't think that's avoidable when you have several authors working on separate stories at the same time.

I think the incongruities mainly stemmed from what the authors enjoyed from their fantasies. As a result, it became a conglomeration of light-hearted fairy-tales, Howard-esque dark epics, steam punk, and DnD adventures. So not very consistent aesthetically or canonically, but I liked it that way. The world felt 'lived in.'


You can follow the thread for how the lore and magic system was devised. If I remember correctly, the lead, @Nouh_Bdee, who doesn't seem to be active anymore, tracked everything through a shared googles doc and an online mapmaker. It was super fun.

Leinyere was fun.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Not to derail the thread too much, but how do you keep this sort of documentation organized and up to date?

I used a wiki for a while, and now Google Docs. They're both okay but neither makes it easy.

From the other thread. I use Word docs, personally. They live on my computer, they're backed up onto a small portable SSD, and they're accessible offline. I write on a very large monitor and being able to look at four pages of outline at once is nice.

 

[HelenL]

I love it when writers do this: have protagonists from one story turn up in the background of another. A great story can make you really invested in the central couple/characters, but often after the initial meet cute and seduction there's not much to say. (Okay, a writer could create artificial drama for the couple to struggle through (not a fan, personally) or, if it's a queer story, there may be coming out moments to look forward to.) But often stories end leaving me wanting... not a sequel exactly but just to find out what happens next. And I know there are hundreds of readers out there who feel the same.

Picking up on this (and thanks @THBGato for the nice comments), I will actively avoid romance novels with sequels. Sometimes it's done well but more often it's unnecessary drama which spoils an earlier HEA. I've avoided sequels myself. I have precisely one sequel here, and it was something I'd set up during the original story. (Rebirth/Reborn.) On the other hand, using characters / situations as background for other stories, or picking up a minor character and turning them into a protag, those I love. I really enjoyed the progression of @BrokenSpokes's Blue Girl Universe; not just the happy references to old friends, but to the stories that show tragic events in their lives. Events that may not have been worth a story in themselves, but that make the stories that include them more meaningful because they involve people we've grown close to in other places. (Thinking especially of @BrokenSpokes's standalone "The Bet".)

I stumbled into my "private universe" almost by accident. A character in Step-Something needed to flee her toxic church, and I happened to have a series that had a welcoming church as an important part of the story. I thought hey, it would be neat if I sent her there, and a good way of saying "everything will turn out well for her" without turning it into a whole boring digression. And then I thought it would be interesting to see the consequences anyway, so I wrote another story featuring another side character who had more to offer, and by the end of that I'd pulled a totally unrelated coffee shop into the mix, and...

Since there was zero plan, I started trying to figure out what could fit where, and I had a spreadsheet of schedules and ages, and nowadays I'll update the spreadsheet before I'm beyond the planning stage. There are inconsistencies I wish I could retcon, but overall I think the stories tie together fairly well.

The problem is, at this point it's not about the cameos, it's about the baggage they bring with them. I try to write each story so that it can stand apart from the universe, but each character has become so relevant to that universe that if you haven't read what else they've been involved in you're missing background which may or may not be important, but which would certainly make the writing more entertaining. I'm not sure what to do about that other than what I'm doing. From the story that was published today (Year's End): Rachel has appeared as a minor supporting character before now, and Michelle and Rose have been in too many stories to list here, but familiarity isn't essential. I think. If you like the story but want to learn more about the women, see the reading order for my Gabby's stories at my author page.

I was thrilled to borrow Samantha and Sarah from @THBGato (and Amanda, Carrie and Miriam by reference), which I guess means my universe isn't so private anymore, but I hope neither of us ever has to track the other's world to resolve conflicts. (And if anyone wants to continue the connection, I have a few characters / locations / bands I'd be happy to loan. Especially Alex and/or Ann of "They Were Roommates." I can't do much with them right now because of geography.)

 

[HelenL]

I think that's exactly the way to do it, not taking off with someone's canon without permission but running everything by the original author, getting permission and letting them read to make comments and have the ultimate say on if it's okay.

@THBGato let me know where my characterization of Samantha wasn't quite working for her, and I was thrilled when her suggestions made Samantha come alive for me in my own words. I think it's important to feel that you've done justice to the character, beyond not breaking the original writer's plans.

 

[HelenL]

@THBGato

From The Journey, Chapter 4

I had a feeling this was a reference when I read it, but no clue about its origin. I'll have to read these next.

 

[dirk2024]

This is gonna sound ridiculous but... I have a spreadsheet with age formulas. When I set a new story, I assign it a date that outputs the age of the characters. It helps me manage continuity over the timeline, so I’m not tripping over age references or implausibilities. It’s been helpful for the themed contests. And helpful when I need to pivot and shift events along the timeline.

That's not ridiculous. I have a spreadsheet for my characters, and have a column for their ages. Mostly this is for my benefit and not always part of the story. I had not thought about tracking it so much over time, even though I have a couple of WIP's where this would be helpful.

 

[iwatchus]

I think a range of tools can make sense in maintaining continuity in a world (even in a novella length isolated story they can help).

Some tools come with more overhead but make later work easier. I try to stay as simple as I can until It'sbecoming unwieldy. A handful of simple text files have been enough for me so far.I suspect if I ws writing a ten volume epic fantasy series, I would for much more. At least a wiki that allowed cross referencable pages. I actually use much less tooling than I did writing my dissertation or a text book decades ago.

 

[Voboy]

I don't use dates, really, at all; I don't refer to current events, except in a very general way. The stories I wrote for the Covid challenges are about the only ones that MUST take place during a specific timeframe. Otherwise, they all more or less take place in some random "present," all within a few years of each other. If there's a need to make things happen explicitly before or after other things, I'll do a "series" within the universe.

I do worry slightly that eventually, if I write long enough, the stories will seem dated as technology advances. Hence, I decided early on that I shouldn't mention FB or Twitter or anything else with "baggage," nor with changing capabilities that might someday jar a reader out of the story. Instead, I invented my own social media app (Pixboox) that does everything my characters need it to do.

 

[dirk2024]

I don't use dates, really, at all; I don't refer to current events, except in a very general way. The stories I wrote for the Covid challenges are about the only ones that MUST take place during a specific timeframe. Otherwise, they all more or less take place in some random "present," all within a few years of each other. If there's a need to make things happen explicitly before or after other things, I'll do a "series" within the universe.

I do worry slightly that eventually, if I write long enough, the stories will seem dated as technology advances. Hence, I decided early on that I shouldn't mention FB or Twitter or anything else with "baggage," nor with changing capabilities that might someday jar a reader out of the story. Instead, I invented my own social media app (Pixboox) that does everything my characters need it to do.

You better trademark that badboy before someone scoops it out from under you and uses it in their story.

 

[Voboy]

You better trademark that badboy before someone scoops it out from under you and uses it in their story.

Actually, I'm not sure I'd care all that much. I'm generally very much against using another writer's IP, but that's the kind of thing where I think it'd be fun if it spread.

I'd prefer it, though, if other writers came up with their own app name. The idea of a fake SM app that "does everything" is probably not something I invented, anyway.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

The term 'app' was never used but both Clarke and Asimov described similar devices to our mobiles and tablets in the 1940s.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I chose the east coast of Florida as my 'universe', specifically the Cocoa Beach to Melbourne area. Pretty much any setting I could want is possible there short of snow.
Having said that, I have branched out quite a bit the last year, doing a lot of worldbuilding.

 

[jsmiam]

This is my big chance to make a blanket statement here since I swore off of replying again this time around in the 750 word thread: (and let me clarify, this is a general statement not directed at anyone in particular):

So: to any universers contemplating a 750 word event entry: if words written elsewhere complement, supplement, or take the place of needing to describe something in your 750 word story, it means your 750 word story really wasn’t really told in 750 words.

Technically though, this is just me pointing out a “how it should be” wish. The guidelines as written for the 750 word challenge were finally tweaked to say chapters don’t meet the spirit of the challenge, but they still don’t explicitly address the sequel and shared universe way of loopholing around the spirit of the challenge.

Anyway. I guess this is me seeking out loopholes too! Carry on. Back on topic for you all.

 

[taytay4eva]

Describe how much sharing you do? Are they the same characters, the same locales? If its sci/fi or fantasy, shared tech or shared magic system?
I have seen all these things from writes here.

How do you track all the cross-overs, timelines, etc across multiple stories?

Every story I write is, ultimately, part of the same multi-verse. Every story I write on Literotica takes place in my "USAmericana" setting. My big epic fantasy adventure trilogy that is not published yet takes place on a parallel world. Generally speaking my christmas stories will take place around the time that magic "came back". My not superhero stories take place in the days or months after magic came back. My superhero stories take place in the years afterward.

All of my setting share the same ORIGIN of magic (magic flows from the soul, you have to be "awakened" to have the ability to cast magic, everything living has a soul, living does not just mean biological, but it gets complicated beyond biological life), but the way that its expressed and used depends on the universe because of how people understand the way it works. A character from my pure-magic setting would look at Captain Power and think that he's a Divine Champion, while Raggedy would be a mage using his magic in a way that they'd never seen before.

I have detailed google docs to remind me of all the info from my stories.