Nervous Question

[Drashner1]

I wish to write fiction set in OA and host it on other other writing-sharing sites. First, am I allowed to do this, and second, how should I avoid copyright issues? Like, I want to give credit where it's due; most of the people on this site are way smarter than me, and I don't want to take credit for their intelligence. But I also don't necessarily want to end every short story with a Works Cited page.

Yes, you are allowed to do this.

Regarding the copyright issue, there are a couple of common ways to handle this:

a) Include an explicit reference to the Orion's Arm Universe Project, or the Orion's Arm setting in the title or subtitle of the work. For example:

Tales from Orion's Arm: <Insert your title here>

Or

<Insert your title here>: An Orion's Arm Story

Or something to that effect.

We also generally like it if the OA web address (www.orionsarm.com) can be tucked in somewhere just to help point readers to the project.

b) Rather than explicitly mentioning the setting in the title, use an attribution statement. This generally goes on the copyright page or an acknowledgements page. Somewhere reasonably easy to find and see it, but it doesn't need to be as prominent as the title of the story is. Based on what you've said here, such a statement might look like this:

This story is set in the Orion's Arm universe (www.orionsarm.com). All concepts used with permission.

The exact details of the statement (or title/subtitle standard) would be worked out in conversation with our managing members (of which I am one).

The OA management has the right to grant you permission to do what you're suggesting (so you don't have to reach out to each individual author of each individual EG article), which we are generally inclined to do as long as proper attribution or title reference or the like is done.

You would retain the copyright to the story itself, but as a condition of using our setting, all other members of the project would have the option of also writing stories or EG articles set in the OA universe that use concepts or characters you might introduce in your story. We (the project) would also probably look very kindly on it if you would have at least some of your stories posted in our Fiction section.

Hope this helps, and if you have additional questions or would like to discuss this further, please don't hesitate to contact us or post further to this thread.

Todd