Hi There - Welcome to OA!
Please feel free to join in on any conversations that grab your interest or to start new ones if you want to talk about something not already being discussed.
If you have any questions or concerns re the OA setting or the project more generally, please don't hesitate to ask.
If you also like a less formal discussion community, we also have a Discord server. A significant chunk of the membership hangs out in both places, although the worldbuilding and fiction writing always passes through the forum before it's done.
Regarding your specific post/questions below:
(11-27-2021, 03:14 AM)Prosapien Wrote: Hello all!
I am blown away by what has been created here. It's a perfect example of what a macromind can do! I have never seen world building this in depth.
Thanks! It's been a labor of love for a bit over 20 years now and is constantly growing and evolving. Evolution can be messy - but it seems to work out better in the end.
(11-27-2021, 03:14 AM)Prosapien Wrote: I would very much like to become a part of your creative writing. Personally, I have a book I wrote and is going through beta testing. Before I give it its final revision and attempt publishing through traditional means, I would love the opportunity to write with y'all and be published through you, online. If this is an option, how can I proceed? Do you have certain procedures or applications you would like new authors to go through? Other than vetting the work, of course.
The two formal pages on how to contribute to the project can be found
HERE and
HERE.
The first (Terms and Conditions) is very formal and intimidating looking, but basically boils down in plain English to:
1) Contributors retain their copyright to any content they create for OA. This includes the right to grant others outside of OA permission to use their ideas/content.
2) Contributors grant OA a perpetual license to use/change/combine/remove/grant others permission to use/etc. their contributed content. This also means that contributors can make use of ideas already contributed by other members when writing up new stuff for OA. In the context of story writing, this basically means (for example) that you are free to write a story set on a world that I (or some other member) created without actually having to track me/the other person down to specifically ask for permission. This extends to the OA 'management' being able to grant you permission to do OA related stuff outside of the OA website. You can also ask me/the other member directly if you want - but with all the intermixing of ideas in the project that could become tedious after awhile - so most people just ask 'the management' if the issue comes up.
3) Proper attribution to the OA project/setting is probably the most important thing to us in terms of stories. If a story appears on the OA website and is obviously set in the OA verse then that takes care of itself. In terms of a book or story published outside of the site, we ask that attribution be included. This can take many forms, but the most common are to either include a reference to OA in the title (XXX - an Orion's Arm Story, or Tales from Orion's Arm: XXX, or whatever) or a brief attribution statement (including our web URL) on the copyright or acknowledgements page.
If you're just looking to write stories and have them go straight onto our fiction pages you can just write them and post to the forum for feedback. If you want to do something involving attribution just reach out to us via the forum or the Contact Us page (forum is probably preferred) and we can discuss. We're generally pretty flexible.
The second link on How to Contribute is a bit out of date in terms of fiction writing (planning to update during my Xmas vacation), but covers things in a general sense. The guidelines for contributing EG articles generally also work for stories. As above, when in doubt please don't hesitate to ask. Really, we don't bite.
Also - here's a page on OA's 'culture' as it were. Just FYI, but we find it helps folks to know how we roll around here:
LINK
(11-27-2021, 03:14 AM)Prosapien Wrote: I feel like I have a grip on the various styles and stories that could be written. I purchased After Tranquility a while back (my favorite story was the one about the primitive sophonts being kept by the transapiens basically as pets. I can't remember the story title and I leant the book to my father so I can't look it up. The one in Venus during the Dark Age was awesome too!) and I feel I could write across the variety of timelines. Is there a preferred era you would like stories written for, or a series that you have for new comers to expand on?
I hope you are well,
Pro
No preferred eras or series or starting points. Basically, just write about anything that grabs your interest/inspires you.
As an author we may want to pick your brain about the writing process and what we might do to make OA more amenable for people to write fiction in. This is a longstanding area of challenge for us (we would really like to see more stories set in OA) and being able to get insight from other authors could be very helpful. Perhaps something we can discuss (if you are so inclined - no worries if you aren't), once we've gotten to know each other better.
Hope this helps and once again - Welcome to OA!
Todd
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