Looking for SciFi authors/artists for a Collab/Writing Group

[Pharthan]

All authors and artists out there (and tbh anyone who would be interested in seeing the following develop), I'm looking for some help. I'm in need of a writing group; both to critique my own works, but I'm also looking for help to create an Anthology for the Sci-Fi Universe I'm working within. It's set within the Milky-Way Galaxy in 3418, with humanity having spread throughout the Orion Spur. We let members who join in make their own star nations, organizations, what-have-you, but what I really need are authors. Artists, too - we more have that.

The general idea we had set forth with is that we do all the legwork with worldbuilding the universe, and authors with developing, coallescing ideas of their own could play off the fact that we've got a world already built.

Even without that, I'm looking for people who'd like to help me work on my own novel within this universe, to help flesh it out and make it better all-around.

[USS Monitor]

The general idea we had set forth with is that we do all the legwork with worldbuilding the universe, and authors with developing, coallescing ideas of their own could play off the fact that we've got a world already built.

You think worldbuilding is "doing the legwork"?

[Pharthan]

The general idea we had set forth with is that we do all the legwork with worldbuilding the universe, and authors with developing, coallescing ideas of their own could play off the fact that we've got a world already built.

You think worldbuilding is "doing the legwork"?

Okay fiiiine, not all of it.
Just a very significantly large portion of it.

We've done a rather large portion thusfar.

[USS Monitor]

You think worldbuilding is "doing the legwork"?

Okay fiiiine, not all of it.
Just a very significantly large portion of it.

Absolutely not.

Worldbuilding takes so much less skill than writing, it's basically worthless. In some cases, having someone else do the worldbuilding actually makes things harder because it means you can't change the world to fit your needs.

We've done a rather large portion thusfar.

Right, but no matter how much you've done, it's still worldbuilding, and worldbuilding is the easy part. Especially if you're getting people off NS, where we all have nations we can use as a starting point.

[Pharthan]

Absolutely not.

Worldbuilding takes so much less skill than writing, it's basically worthless. In some cases, having someone else do the worldbuilding actually makes things harder because it means you can't change the world to fit your needs.

I see your point, but raise you "fan-fiction."
Writing is difficult - hence why I'm trying to gather writers for a writing group.

Right, but no matter how much you've done, it's still worldbuilding, and worldbuilding is the easy part. Especially if you're getting people off NS, where we all have nations we can use as a starting point.

That's part of the reason I turned back to NS. I knew a bunch of friends who already had nations on NS, so they'd have pretty much all of their bit of the worldbuilding done in a way that we could easily incorporate, and then springboard off of that.

Worldbuilding for simpler stories is somewhat easy.
What's hard is deep worldbuilding. You don't want to show your entire universe you've built in your story. If you do that, then it comes off as shallow. You want an iceberg, where the reader only gets to see the tip of said iceberg, wanting, yearning to see the rest and getting engrossed in your story as you hint that the lower portion of that iceberg does indeed exist - you have to get that sense of structure to your worldbuilding within the story.

The idea is that we're providing that iceberg. Yes, the story has to be adapted, but it's still the notion of being a part of something bigger. Your one singular story can become a large part of the ever expanding universe.

[USS Monitor]

Worldbuilding for simpler stories is somewhat easy.
What's hard is deep worldbuilding. You don't want to show your entire universe you've built in your story. If you do that, then it comes off as shallow. You want an iceberg, where the reader only gets to see the tip of said iceberg, wanting, yearning to see the rest and getting engrossed in your story as you hint that the lower portion of that iceberg does indeed exist - you have to get that sense of structure to your worldbuilding within the story.

The idea is that we're providing that iceberg. Yes, the story has to be adapted, but it's still the notion of being a part of something bigger. Your one singular story can become a large part of the ever expanding universe.

"Deep" worldbuilding is neither difficult nor necessary. There's no temptation to bore your readers with an irrelevant infodump if you haven't done any irrelevant worldbuilding.

[Pharthan]

Worldbuilding for simpler stories is somewhat easy.
What's hard is deep worldbuilding. You don't want to show your entire universe you've built in your story. If you do that, then it comes off as shallow. You want an iceberg, where the reader only gets to see the tip of said iceberg, wanting, yearning to see the rest and getting engrossed in your story as you hint that the lower portion of that iceberg does indeed exist - you have to get that sense of structure to your worldbuilding within the story.

The idea is that we're providing that iceberg. Yes, the story has to be adapted, but it's still the notion of being a part of something bigger. Your one singular story can become a large part of the ever expanding universe.

"Deep" worldbuilding is neither difficult nor necessary. There's no temptation to bore your readers with an irrelevant infodump if you haven't done any irrelevant worldbuilding.

I'll default to some of the current great writers like Brandon Sanderson who disagree with half of what you said.
The point is that you don't infodump your worldbuilding; infodumps rarely work well. You slowly unveil it, and hint at a good deal of what you haven't shown. But it is very important that you have structure, if not detailed structure, that you don't show.