Writing in a Shared World Panel at the Nebulas
At the Nebulas award weekend, I attended a TON of panels, but I spoke on one panel about Writing in a Shared World, with M. Darusha Wehm, Vanessa MacLaren-Wray, and Noah K. Sturtevant. We each had a variety of levels of involvement in shared world projects, from publishers and organizers of all the pieces to those who just enjoy collaborating with other writers in a shared world, and everything in between.
We talked a bit about the way that writing in the shared worlds we’re involved in works–some projects have a sort of application process, while others are done by invitation only. We also talked about how we keep track of all of the pieces of the shared world, with some of us working in slightly more flexible worlds that can allow for slight contradictions, while others work in worlds where they need to have many things standardized (particularly technology and currency for a sci-fi setting).
I also talked about the fact that if I were starting a new shared world project, there would be a part of me that would want to get all the ground rules of that world laid down in advance, but I’ve also seen how nicely it CAN work when the world is formed somewhat more organically. Ultimately, something in between is probably a better model, where much groundwork is laid at the start, but every detail doesn’t need to be there–just the gist of things.
We also talked a little about working in established intellectual properties (IPs), though most of the panel was focused on shared worlds that we have had more of a hand in shaping. (There was also another panel about writing for established IPs, which I attended, and we didn’t retread much of that same ground.)
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