I'm taking a break from outlining my planned submission for #TheSwordsofSaintValentine to wonder publicly about something that I've often been perplexed about privately.
I've made a hobby out of world building. I've been doing it for over twenty-five years at this point, and everything is interconnected. Literally, nothing I've imagined falls outside of a grand web of design. No one-shots, no separate franchises...if I come up with a plot or a concept, my mind immediately furnishes a context for it within the existing framework of everything else I've ever come up with.
Maybe this is a learned behavior. My early reading was taken up by things like Tolkien and Asimov, who worked very similarly. I didn't read C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy until later in my life, so for me his Narnia stories represented coherence in creativity. It was just how stuff worked, as far as I knew.
Fast forward to the last couple of years, and my discovery of the indie rennaissance in science fiction and fantasy. Even more recently, my experience of reading the fine #PulpRev authors on Steemit. Some people follow the practice of what I'm calling "coherent world building", but just as many if not more ar demonstrating the ability to create one-off stories completely unrelated to what came before and what came after. This is, I'll admit, something completely foreign to me.
Im certainly not complaining. I enjoy it all. However, I am curious how those of you who write on here decide whether to go with discrete stories or complex, interconnected world building. Does one come naturally versus another? Or is it a conscious choice in each case. So far, I haven't been able to overcome the reflex to assimilate new ideas into my existing world, and I'm not sure how I would start going about it if I decided it would be advantageous to do so.
So, Steemians, what have been your experiences?
