6 Degrees of Separation -- the Breaking Light version!
Oh, my God, I just started playing the silliest game and I am having so much fun doing it. I was making a chart of various things I've written to examine some demographic info-- genres, lengths, genders of the protagonists, that sort of thing --when I started thinking about the various character connections between the assorted pieces. As I mentioned, I've started considering everything I've written that's a basically-realistic-approximately-historical period piece (Mrs. Hawking, The Stand, Tailor, Mrs. Loring, Puzzle House Blues, Brockhurst, et cetera) to be all in the same universe. I found I could play a very amusing version of six degrees of separation between characters based on who would have known or encountered who, and I have been happily wasting time writing out the connection chains.
I've discovered I can link all the protagonists from my completed major works-- Victoria Hawking and Mary Stone, Tom Barrows and Alice Loring, Josie Jenkins, Elizabeth Loring --plus the characters I've explored to great extent-- Flora Johansson, Carson Hill --all within the proscribed six degrees. I was surprised at first to see linkages flowing through certain characters much more than others, until I thought about it-- they tended to be those that have appeared in more than one work, or at least more than one area of the greater universe. I roughly break it up into the "Hawking" section, London in the 1880s, the "Fairfield" section, the east coast of America in the first half of the 20th Century, and the "Stand" section, the California territories in the middle of the 19th Century. The most frequently occurring characters were Lillian Holland/Lou Amsterdam, Elizabeth Loring, Marcus Loring, (all "Fairfield") Jamie Harper, ("Stand") and Reggie Hawking ("Hawking"). Those last three all appear in my 1910s-era larp Brockhurst, the first piece I ever wrote that was explicitly crossing all three section. Elizabeth was mentioned in Tailor before she starred in Mrs. Loring, and Lou who first appeared in Mrs. Loring before she recurred in Puzzle House Blues.
The greater universe should probably have a name. I'm tempted to just call it the Breaking Light Universe, but not everything I write takes place in it-- see Alice, Oz, Chadwick, Adonis, the Vantage 'verse, and others. Call it "Breaking History," maybe? I don't know. I like things to have names. I'll think about it some more?
This is a very silly preoccupation, and likely nobody cares but me, but damn, I'm having fun with it. :-)
I've discovered I can link all the protagonists from my completed major works-- Victoria Hawking and Mary Stone, Tom Barrows and Alice Loring, Josie Jenkins, Elizabeth Loring --plus the characters I've explored to great extent-- Flora Johansson, Carson Hill --all within the proscribed six degrees. I was surprised at first to see linkages flowing through certain characters much more than others, until I thought about it-- they tended to be those that have appeared in more than one work, or at least more than one area of the greater universe. I roughly break it up into the "Hawking" section, London in the 1880s, the "Fairfield" section, the east coast of America in the first half of the 20th Century, and the "Stand" section, the California territories in the middle of the 19th Century. The most frequently occurring characters were Lillian Holland/Lou Amsterdam, Elizabeth Loring, Marcus Loring, (all "Fairfield") Jamie Harper, ("Stand") and Reggie Hawking ("Hawking"). Those last three all appear in my 1910s-era larp Brockhurst, the first piece I ever wrote that was explicitly crossing all three section. Elizabeth was mentioned in Tailor before she starred in Mrs. Loring, and Lou who first appeared in Mrs. Loring before she recurred in Puzzle House Blues.
The greater universe should probably have a name. I'm tempted to just call it the Breaking Light Universe, but not everything I write takes place in it-- see Alice, Oz, Chadwick, Adonis, the Vantage 'verse, and others. Call it "Breaking History," maybe? I don't know. I like things to have names. I'll think about it some more?
This is a very silly preoccupation, and likely nobody cares but me, but damn, I'm having fun with it. :-)