Has there ever been "shared-world" spanking fiction? Shared-world short story collections used to be quite common in the 1980s and 1990s - usually in fantasy settings. For those who don't know what a shared world is, I'll explain; a group of writers get together to create a 'world' - a fictional setting, usually a city with the surrounding countries lightly sketched in. They decide its general layout - (Merchant's Quarter here, ruler's palace there, names of main streets etc) its history, climate, politics, religions etc etc. Each writer then creates their own cast of characters and writes stories about them. They can use events from another writer's stories to influence their own tales, and even include (with permission) another author's characters as bit-part players in their stories - for example, say author A has two antagonists gunfight in the market square; author B might use the event as a distraction to allow one of his own characters to dodge past someone who was searching for them, while author C might decide that one of the gunmen's wild shots has injured one of C's own characters, and author D uses the incident for his character to demand stricter laws...and so on. While major inconsistencies must be avoided, minor ones are allowed - they give texture to the world as each character is seen slightly differently by different authors (I remember one series where the shaven-headed robed priest turned out to be a shaven-headed robed priestess, under a religious oath not to reveal her true gender, and the scowling rogue festooned with lethal weapons whom everyone was wary of proved to have never actually been in a fight - his fearsome reputation a complete bluff...). As one editor explained it 'No adventurer ever got hired by claiming to be the [i]second[i] best swordsman in town!' While it would take some work to create a suitable setting (a girls' school, a private club, a suburb...?) it could prove an interesting project, and a good way for authors to inspire each other... What do YOU think...? |