Overall Plots

That disappearance was [redacted] as well as [redacted]. In fact [redacted] [redacted] [redacted].

grrrr, stop redacting me!!!

The overall plot [redacted].

and that is so that there is a sense of progression throughout the released stories.

hah!!! you let me get part of it through!!!

I wasn't working on anything until the end of the Gen 2 process when I was brought on board to help the Gen 2 authors... but I can tell you that the entire development of Gen 2 was collaborative between the authors. Kristin and some of the Gen 1 authors provided some guidelines based on how they'd seen things in Gen 1 work and how Gen 2 could be improved but the plots and story ideas, characters and how it would play out for the first year was all developed along with some longer reaching plots that would run their course over 4 years and perhaps more in some cases.

Those longer reaching plots were developed a bit more but nothing beyond the first year was completely set so that we could make organic changes as things progressed.

Ah. Well, that's a tricksy question.

Yes, I'm responsible for the project of Gen 2. One of the biggest problems a shared universe can face is that different parts move at different rates. Some authors write like crazy. Others not so much. Some characters interact with others a lot, others can go their own way... until a key event happens. And there are characters that are motionless because their authors are on hiatus or... unfortunately, have passed away. Whateley in 2015 was facing all these things in spades. And on top of that, we were starting to get low on active authors and knew we needed to bring new life into the team but at the same time, there were 10 years of concepts, in progress work, and published stories that any new author had to master before diving in seriously. Some fans think they really understand the universe... I can assure you, very very few really know the scope of what's been developed for the WAU behind the scenes. There is problem MORE content developed for potential use in the WAU that has been discarded because the universe evolved in another direction than many story universes will ever publish. Hell, it might have had that much in just the first three or four years... now... yikes.

What I did at that time was work out a system of separation... I knew that cameos and interaction with existing characters would not resolve the problems we were facing... and there'd be all sorts of spoilers. We want to be able to put some really dramatic scenes in the Gen 1 plotline... and how much actual tension can we get if everyone knows those characters are regular appearances... as teachers or otherwise... in Gen 2. So I picked a point ten years forward. This stays close enough to the originals that many of the staff and faculty could be familiar and the universe backstory won't deviate too much further from our version of Earth (something that the founders and those of us who followed have tried to be super careful about... too much power, developed science, too many tweaks, and then it's harder to justify why so many things are the same as they are here).

Then I went recruiting for authors. I had a concept in mind to offer to them. But I wanted everyone who participated to be invested in the project so I recruited first. Then I brought them in, set up discussions and gave them a sort of fundamental goal to aim for. Decide what 'style' the stories need to be. Are they rom-com? Sci-fi? Military? Social revolution? The original Gen 1 was meant to be light hearted and hopeful fun at first, before hitting some harder issues and the really dark stuff that is supposed to happen before TK graduates. There's foreshadowing out there about where that's headed but we've still managed to keep most of those events under wraps... which means much of the Gen 2 departure and the 'neutral zone' between the generations has worked. Ten years... enough for everyone who is a protagonist in Gen 1 to graduate AND for anyone who is a freshman or older and who thus knows TK to also graduate before the first Gen 2 student arrives.

From there, I recommended that they try to work in a sort of television series episodic framework instead of linearly like we'd done in Gen 1. The idea was to pre-plan the major episodes, the season starts and finales, know what the major arcs were going to be for those episodes and share those out across the team. Individual character and plot development would be independent of that, allowing one offs and spin offs for those authors with more time to write.

Once the team had decided on an overall concept, we had a LOT of discussion (and argument) over what it would take to make it doable. A few of those things included some of the heavy hitters at the school, especially Psi Department and Carson and the board... so those events weren't actually given as pre-conditions, they were actually built as a way to keep a concept coherent.

A lot of the backstory for where the world had gotten to in those years was done before authors were permitted to start presenting their protagonist characters for approval. Much gnashing of teeth ensued.



So as far as concepts and characters go? Most of that can be put in the hands of the Gen 2 authors, with Elrod as their wrangler. Or as he tended to put it... I was the officer on the project, he was my NCO. I told them to take the hill... he turned that into action... they climbed the hill and beat up the bad guys.

But if you'd like to talk about how to develop a large scale concept... I can do that too. I do have what I like to call the Gen 3 concept. Which is really the one I originally offered to the Gen 2 authors, but it wasn't a style / genre concept they were interested in writing. Let me know... it gets tossed around a bit now and then just as a rough guideline of where the universe could go in the years after Gen 2.