Okay. I am guessing that is not what it is called. Then I am opening the topic because I am curious what it is called and if it has been done before and if it is neat. Basically what I mean by spider web is my story "The Order" is vast but series seems like the wrong word. Off the top of my head I could probably name 10-20 different book ideas. They are all set in the same world but are not directly related. I mean they are related. Every book has characters from other books. The time, place and POV can shift but no character is only in one book. At the same time no character is in all books either. Do you think this is cool? How come? Who has done it? Does it have a name? Any cons to this? Just general discusion because it seems very interesting to me for some reason. I see the books always moving forward but always passing the baton too. Like one character. My first story has her age 24. In one book she will die at the age of 90. The universe will go on without her. lol
If you can pull it off, yes. Your readers will love it. Kudos for the breadth and depth of your idea Piers Anthony is one example: he has 41 books in his series: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Xanth Series You may get sick of doing only this series, and struggle to get the opportunity to do anything else.
It's a series, or a 'mythos'. Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and others have done it. Apparently comic are built on the idea too. Not often many cons, they can be fun Easter eggs, just don't make things convoluted.
3/ My favourite is Asimov. His Foundation trilogy all started as a series of novellas that were published in magazines before being collected to make the 1,000 year history of his universe-wide empire. I don't think any of the characters survived from one novella to the next, other than as a memory (Hari Seldon remains an almost god-like ancestor figure to them all). He then puts Caves of Steel in this same world, and I, Robot, and Bicentennial Man and many others. All massively different, hardly ever with repeat characters (although R.Daneel Olivaw does have quite a good run). Incidentally, apropos of that other thread on how English will evolve in the next five centuries, note how the names Asimov creates are close but no cigar to present-day names.
Terry Pratchett comes to mind with his Discworld series. Main characters from one novel can have cameo appearances in subsequent ones, and minor characters can become main characters.
Douglas Adams did a few novels in his Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
Foundation \ Foundation and Empire > The Foundation Trilogy Second Foundation / Then, Caves of Steel and the rest of his robot stories...but I don't really know the best sequence. I just read Foundation first, and then picked away at the rest of his list as and when I saw them in the library. That's the beauty of his universe. Each story is pretty much self-contained, with no requirement that you've followed the story so far.
Tom Holt has done the same with his J W Wells series. It can be nice sometimes to stay 'in universe' without following the same character around all the time
I often group my various stories in 1 or 3 universes. Depending on the genre. Usually only connected through small Easter eggs and such. Though most fall in either the first or the third. At one point I wanted to write a goosebumps inspired series set in the same town where you would actually see stuff from one story as Easter eggs. One example had it where a character watches as a kid chases after a dog. An event that happens in a completely different book. All of them being stand alone. So you are not the only one who is considering doing stuff like this.
