Shared World - Foundation
Who is in charge, and of what? This was a key starting question for our collaboration. We eventually settled on a system that works really well.
As I’m the worldbuilder, whenever anyone needs to know something about the world, I need to answer. If I don’t know, I need to create it. I’m also generally in charge of documenting things that everyone needs to know, so I write a lot of content that only the rest of the team will see. If you’re the worldbuilder, you need to be comfortable with that. People can only share what’s outside of your head.
The team writers regularly have ideas for their stories that don’t fit the preconception of the world I’ve created. How do we handle those ideas? My rule is: I can’t just say ‘No.’ I can ask why they want that particular thing, and suggest alternatives, create alternatives, or carve out an exception for that thing they want to do. For example, Galhadria doesn’t have orcs, goblins, or hobgoblins. Phil wanted to have a gang of goblins in his story. Obviously, this is a potential conflict, because other stories and the setting guide specifically mention not having goblins. We talked through what he needed them for and how it fit the story, and I was able to suggest a solution that worked for everybody (and delighted me because it meant a little more of the world lore was in a story now). But I had to stifle the urge to say ‘no’ and work with Phil so he didn’t just have a solution, he had a solution he was happy with.
Obviously, if you’re a contributing writer, you’re going to have some limits, a lot of which are unspoken. You can’t destroy the setting. You can’t murder the pantheon of powers. No sinking continents without asking. You’re going to need to color inside the lines of what the worldbuilder has made, though it’s perfectly fine for you to ask for the occasional accommodation to make your story work.
Another detail - your collaborators enjoy writing in your world, but there is no way they’ll be able to keep straight every detail of your worldbuilding, especially if you’ve been doing it for a long time. We have a lot of conversations about ideas the writers are processing or working on, and specific conversations as they are going through certain segments of their stories. Then, when that’s said and done, I always do a review of their drafts to note any little details that need adjusting. Most suggested corrections are just little details about the world that help make all the stories feel coherent and like they fit together in the same setting. I do try very hard never to limit Tiffani or Phil’s creativity in their stories - if they want to do something that isn’t quite what I had in mind, we communicate and I come up with a way to give them what they want. Writing in Galhadria should be a positive for them and their storytelling, not a straightjacket.
Note from Tiffani: I would probably chime in here and mention that you can actually get more creative when you have more constraints, not less. I do really well when I know the size of my sandbox, and also having to think less about coming up with all this from scratch enables me to focus more on characters and plot and the actual storytelling then having to generate a whole world from scratch.