Articles relating to
shared universes
,
fictional universes
from a set of creative works where more than one writer (or other artist) independently contributes a work that can stand alone but fits 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 artists are working together on the same work and from
crossovers
where the works and characters are independent except for a single meeting.