WHY CREATING A MULTIVERSE IS A GOOD IDEA FOR AUTHORS
Many authors and writers, in general, these days have seen the concept come to fruition. While many know it thanks to the concept being introduced over the last few decades in DC and Marvel Comics, the idea of there being a Multiverse is a theory that has actually become a working theory for some scientists around the world. The thought that not just one but an infinite number of universes exist outside one another, with some subtle or even some large differences from our own reality is an idea that has sparked incredible creativity from the writing community.
In the year 2020, as our world faces bleak realities from politics, health, and society as a whole, the entertainment industry has made great use of the multiverse in their products as of late, most recently in DC Comic’s newest crossover event, Death Metal. What does this mean for authors? Perhaps it’s time to start making multiverses of our own.
Stephen King realized this with his own work over the years. For those of you unaware of the legendary author’s works, many of his books have been loosely or tightly connected to his magnum opus, The Dark Tower series. The story of a lone gunslinger chasing an evil wizard across a desolate wasteland has evolved into the story of a small band of heroes working to stop a monstrous evil from destroying the nexus of all reality, and along the way, several of Stephen King’s other books have found their way into this growing multiverse, from The Stand to Insomnia and Cell.
Fans enjoy seeing their favorite authors connect their long list of novels, short stories, and other collective works together. While this can all mean that these individual stories take place in the same universe, creating a multiverse gives authors so much more room to grow and expand on the stories themselves while keeping them connected to their other stories at the same time.
For the purposes of giving an example, I am going to use my own work to demonstrate this concept. I am in the process of creating my own multiverse right now. I have several ideas and stories I want to include in this shared multiverse, but the two most prominent are Nightmare Wars and The Legend of Electric Fusion. Nightmare Wars is a horror/action/romance series about an apocalyptic world where the monsters of legend have taken over, and a lone group of survivors must stop the end of the world forever. The Legend of Electric Fusion is an ongoing superhero narrative following Electric Fusion and a growing number of other heroes banding together to fight the forces of evil.
Each of these series has an exponentially large amount of room to grow. Nightmare Wars already has a prequel YA series in the works, a series of short stories and anthologies, and more novels and series in the works all under the same umbrella. The world of Nightmare Wars is so large already that trying to connect it with anything else would make the reader feel like the story is overly complex and crowded to handle something like a superhero narrative. The same rules apply to Electric Fusion, and each project is themed differently and features a vastly different mood and atmosphere in each series. One is the struggle of survival against all odds, while the other is about hope and sharing the light with the universe. It’s similar to how Marvel’s heroes are often fighting to earn the trust of the public while the DC heroes often are revered as gods amongst the citizens of their world, a difference explored when each multiverse met in the company crossover event JLA/Avengers.
In reality, the multiverse concept exists whether an author blatantly connects their work to the concept or not. However, for the purposes of marketing, readership, and engagement, authors should see a great improvement and more interest in their work if they craft a woven tale that connects their work into a shared multiverse. Promising readers the possibility that they can see their favorite works from you the author crossover with one another is a major selling point of the multiverse concept, and while this works mostly for fantasy, science fiction, and similar genres, even romance and drama novels can enjoy this concept by featuring easter eggs from other novels that showcase their connectivity.
In conclusion, should you build a multiverse in your works? It all depends on you the author. Each author and their work is unique and deserves to make that call themselves. However, from a creative and marketability standpoint, it makes sense to try. Not only will the multiverse connect your ideas in a much more grand style, but creating a multiverse adds to an even greater concept, the Omniverse, which shows there is an infinite number of multiverses in effect. It may baffle the mind at first, but trust me when I say that multiverses are a must-have for modern-day storytellers looking to engage with readers in a whole new way.
