Do you consistently stick to one world/planet/ectc with each story?

[TheCrystallineEntity]

For me, all of my books take place in the same universe but in different locations. Books 1 and 2 take place on the same planet, but Books 3 and 4 take place on a different planet. Book 5 and 6 take place in a dimensional plane and various locations in a magical realm. All four settings are galatically near each other, but then Book 7 takes place on a wholly different planet in a different galaxy.

What about you guys?

 

[Insolent Lad]

The primary setting of almost all my fantasies has been the same world (though some stories are separated by millennia), but in that an infiniverse lies beyond it with travel possible between different worlds/universes (for those who know how/have innate powers/can find a gate), there is occasional popping in and out of my main world. My latest book (coming in about three weeks) starts out in one of those other worlds but then moves to the prime world and the action stays there. And of course there are the realms of the gods—get to visit some of those.

 

[Svrtnsse]

All of my stories so far takes place on the same planet and in the same time period. There are historical records that show the elves arrived on the planet through a portal from another plane of existence, but that's the only mention I have of things like that so far.

 

[Heliotrope]

nope. I switch it up. All my stories are totally separate entities. I find that setting is a perfect way of getting across my theme. For example, in my pirate story the pirates are trying to protect modern day Montreal from a cursed Spanish treasure. They have disguised themselves as buskers and do coin tricks in the Montreal metro, hiding out in the old abandoned tunnels. The main station they use as their base is the Place D'Arms. In old Montreal the Place D'Arms was the rallying place for the fort's defenders.

I love finding ways to use setting in meaningful ways like that.

 

[skip.knox]

Veterans here are welcome to skip over this message.

All my stories are set in Altearth, a place that runs tightly parallel to Real Earth, down to place names and even individuals. The two timelines diverge in the late Roman Empire, but even after a millennium and a half, there is still such a thing as the Great War ... with the difference being that it's a single war that runs from 2667 to 2698 AUC (1914-1945). So, same but different.

Doing this provides this historian a wonderful playground for deconstruction. It also imposes constraints, but I welcome them. That's where the challenges are found.

 

[Night Gardener]

In my current WIP, it's basically within earth-like parameters. The reader will probably recognize it as earth. Although, I did invent an abundant substance that we don't have on our periodic table that is the main element that powers the civilization. It's going to be a political intrigue plot wrapped in a horror-story in a fantasy setting, so defining the specifics of the planet aren't necessarily going to be addressed in the book. It has basic earth-like mechanics as the working-model. The only alternate dimension so to speak, is what we would relate to as an after-life.

I've drafted out sci-fi works before, but those were basically all earth-approximate conditions, because I was writing about humans in the future, and humans need certain parameters to exist physically in the known universe.

There's a few drafts and short-stories I'm dabbling with that are based on real-earth and known human history, set in present times. However, I make a specific point to never directly state what city or place I'm talking about, to make it annonymous /ambiguous. But, I won't invent a city name or place to allude to a real location either. i.e. "Gotham City" or "Metropolis". The audience will be told about other real places, but not the current one. I guess I picked that up from movies... where it could be anywhere, and maybe there's hints or clues, but the details cannot be confirmed or denied in relevance to the actual story.

So, while I don't currently reference anything relatable to Earth as we know it based on known human history, it's still my working-model as far as how the planet works mechanically.

 

[CupofJoe]

... The two timelines diverge in the late Roman Empire, but even after a millennium and a half, there is still such a thing as the Great War ... with the difference being that it's a single war that runs from 2667 to 2698 AUC (1914-1945). So, same but different.

I was reading a history book [the title of which eludes me for now] which talks about the first half of the 20C as The Second Thirty Years War but unlike this wiki page The Second Thirty Years War, the book added in Italian expansion in Africa, the Chinese Civil War and various Japanese expansion conflicts.

 

[Devor]

I used to have this notion that all of my story concepts were set in different parts of the same world, and I suppose it's possible.... but ultimately I've abandoned the notion. I decided that I wanted most of my stories to be self-contained and not have to think about how this affects things outside the story area, especially when it comes to different magic types.

 

[Gurkhal]

I try to get my stories in roughly the same kind of cultural enviroment I want to explore but really I don't feel much in this way or that about the exact world of planet that they inhabit.

 

[Corwynn]

I've been planning to use a single universe for most of my stories. The idea is that they are set in the same universe, but following different protagonists in each story, who may or may not meet those from other stories. The stories also may not all be set in the same historical era.

On the other hand, there are a lot of interesting concepts I might like to explore, but are too difficult to shoehorn into my primary universe, so I may end up doing the occasional one-off set in a completely different universe.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I wanted to connect all my stories in this way, but the magic systems are too different...

 

[elemtilas]

The World (as distinct from the stars and planets within it) is a huge place, with more than enough room for squillions of stories more than I could ever write in a million lifetimes.

Although I've written some stories that don't appear to be connected with anything that goes on in Gea, they are almost certainly located somewhere in the same world. Perhaps in a different galaxy or somewhere else in the same galaxy or perhaps in a far distant time; yet they are all connected by the same web of existence.

So yeah, one world for me!

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Thanks for so many interesting responses!

 

[shangrila]

I find it boring to stick to one place. Setting can be as much a character as the actual characters so I don't want to constrict myself too much.

That said, there's some bleed over. A "void" between worlds, a being that oversees the strings of time (the Weaver) and a few others.

 

[noob of the north]

I don't have the patience to deal with one world or one genre for too long, so I switch like crazy for every book. It's too much fun researching different eras and settings, and to play with tropes in genres, that I just have to switch. I tend to get inspired by stuff often and unexpectedly, so I never know what the next novel idea will be, and that's kinda exciting!

 

[Mythopoet]

I'm apparently following the Tolkien method of world creation wherein I spend the vast majority of my life obsessively building and adding detail to one vast setting and only barely get any stories set therein published.

 

[Tom]

I work with two main worlds: Issadai, and Arilisee. Issadai is the setting of my high fantasy project and it's the world that I've been obsessively developing for years now. Aside from that project, it used to be that I would create a new world for each new story. Now I've managed to rope most of them into a single world, Arilisee. It's kind of my "sandbox world", with looser rules, and I throw anything cool that's a little too outlandish for Issadai into it. I also have a couple of urban fantasy stories set in the same alternate version of modern earth, all operating on the same rules.

I really like switching up the setting for everything I do, but I also wanted some consistency and a chance to explore a single setting and all its facets. So my worlds are incredibly diverse, with a ton of room to explore new stuff with each story.

 

[elemtilas]

Mythopoet: and Tolkien wrote (complete) two fantastic and utterly foundational stories from that deepest of otherworlds! Everyone has their own way, and I say let the jumpers leap from world to world; let those who brush the surface of a place and quickly become bored move on. If you feel it's right in your bones to enter and explore but one world, then do that with the utmost joy and zeal! If you write one great novel, it would at least be founded in a world as deep and as rich as the primary world!

 

[Devor]

To be honest, I'm not convinced that Tolkein's world really was all that detailed, at least compared to more recent works.... Tolkein barely touched the world east or south of Mordor, for instance. Game of Thrones covers a much larger span of the world and a far more vast array of lords and characters. That's not meant to criticize or to praise either work, but if you're looking for a world building model, this area of writing has seen a lot of development since Tolkein that shouldn't be overlooked.

For me, I find that I limit myself to one span of area - usually a continent, maybe smaller - that the story takes place in. That's because all of the elements usually end up working together, and there's only so many things I can take an account of. I also find a tendency to try and "exhaust" the setting and go all out in exploring its elements. If there's an ethereal "magical web" behind the universe, then there's going to be a villain who doesn't just use it but tries to "cut its threads," so to speak. I may world build an area for the kind of depth that other writers might have a hundred stories bouncing around in, but I plot for the grand all-encompassing epic that leaves no stone unturned, at least in my mind, for a separate story.

 

[skip.knox]

I'm apparently following the Tolkien method of world creation wherein I spend the vast majority of my life obsessively building and adding detail to one vast setting and only barely get any stories set therein published.

I'm sort of the same, except most of the details that get added only appear as the result of writing stories. I'm not at all good at adding things just to be adding things. Every once in a while I'll think of something kewl and drop it into a grab bag in my WorldReference project, but for the most part the details emerge from the demands of the stories.