Writing in a Shared World
Every novel I’ve written has always been working alone. All the worldbuilding and character creation and plots and landscapes and the thousand details were in my mind alone. The tale was told by me.
When I worked on screenplays, that was different. We often worked in teams; sometimes including non-writers. Many minds would contribute to trying to tell the best story. There was a lot I liked about this, but I never collaborated on my novels.
Why was that?
In the dark mists of the pre-2020 time, I was working quite slowly on what would eventually become my first fantasy novel, Dueling Wizards. My friend Tiffani wanted to write some fantasy stories - she had an impressive backlog of ideas, some of which we would occasionally discuss. I was encouraging her to write out one of her ideas (that would eventually become A Songbird’s Tale) and noticed that her setting was a sort of generalized western european-ish fantasy world - naturally so, because Songbird was originally conceived as a character piece, so of course she hadn’t hammered out years of world-building. (Not everyone has worldbuilding disease like I do). So I offered to help her pick a spot in Galhadria to place her story, if she wished.
To my surprise she took me up on it, and chose Tigraen of all places … landing in the world I’d been lackadaisically creating since 2008 or so. I was genuinely surprised she would want to write her story in Galhadria, because I wrongly assumed that everyone would be as obsessed about worldbuilding details as I was. This was incorrect, as I soon found out when my old screenwriting partner and friend Phil pitched a unique genre story to me about a hard-boiled detective in a fantasy world (that would eventually become The Mind Thief Murders) and I offered him the option to also dive into Galhadria and enhance his city-of-angels-with-a-gritty-underbelly with the lore of one of the great cities of Nova Eian. Phil chose Arathes in Sarmatti, blending the tale he wanted to tell into the massive city I had planned there.
It’s now six years later. Dueling Wizards was completed, along with Mercenary Measures, and I’m hard at work on Winding Divide, all set in locations across Galhadria. Tiffani has A Songbird’s Tale in Tigraen, along with Of Dwarves and Dragons, Of Silver Wolves and Songbirds, and her upcoming Of Festivals and Fey novelas, all in and around Tigraen - and she has other projects landing in other locations around the continent. Phil has released the epic Mind Thief Murders and is closing in on finishing Shadows Spill the Darkest Blood. All our novels have shared touchpoints, easter eggs, and story elements, with full character crossovers coming in Winding Divide - and far more in the works.
All that recap is meant to lay out the true subject that I would love to address: How are we able to write cooperatively in a shared fantasy world?
Attending Dragonsteel Con 2025 was eye-opening, as fans (and hopefully fans-to-be) dropped by our booth, heard our pitches for our stories, and the most remarked upon feature was that we were all writing together. There are other groups of writers sharing worlds, and have been in the past, but I thought their enthusiasm for the idea remarkable, and wanted to share what we’ve been doing to make this process work.
We’ll follow this overlong introduction with our experience and advice in this endeavor - what’s worked, what we struggle with, and what’s gotten us attention from readers - and if you’re a reader, a look behind the curtain of how we’re creating what you enjoy. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoying writing it!