Topic summary
Shared world
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Shared universe.
A shared universe or shared world is a fictional universe from a set of creative works where one or more writers (or other artists) independently contribute works that can stand alone but fit into the joint development of the storyline, characters, or world of the overall project. It is common in genres like science fiction. It differs from collaborative writing in which multiple creators are working together on the same work and from crossovers where the works and characters are independent except for a single meeting.