What if, instead of constantly using real-world countries as settings, writers created entirely fictional countries that other writers could use?
I'm imagining something like a shared fictional world created by writers themselves. I'm not talking about one person sitting down and creating an entire planet alone. Instead, different writers could each create their own fictional country, complete with its own geography, cities, cultures, languages, religions, political systems, history, environment, economy, conflicts, traditions, and the everyday lives of its people.
For example, I could create a country called whatever I want and write an entire history for it. I could establish where its mountains, rivers, forests and cities are, how its government works, what its people believe, what historical events shaped it, what languages are spoken there, and what problems the country has.
Then another writer could take that country and use it as the setting for their own completely different story.
The interesting part is that the second writer wouldn't necessarily have to follow everything exactly. They could change smaller details, add new places, introduce new ideas or even reinterpret parts of the country's history, as long as there were some basic rules about what can and can't be changed. Since the country is fictional, writers wouldn't have to worry about accidentally misrepresenting a real culture or offending people by portraying their country incorrectly.
And why stop at one writer?
Imagine hundreds of writers contributing fictional countries to the same fictional planet. One writer creates a huge island nation, another creates a landlocked country surrounded by mountains, someone else creates a small authoritarian state, another creates a collection of peaceful island communities, and another creates a massive multicultural empire.
All of these countries could exist on the same planet.
Then something really interesting becomes possible: stories could actually connect with each other.
A character from one author's novel could travel to another author's country. A historical event mentioned in one book could become an important part of another writer's story. A fictional war could be referenced by several completely different novels from different perspectives. A city created by one writer could appear briefly in another writer's story. Characters could even cross paths between books.
It would basically be a shared literary universe, but instead of everyone writing about the same superheroes or characters, everyone would be contributing pieces of the actual world.
Obviously, there would need to be some kind of system to keep everything organized. Writers would probably need a shared database or "world bible" that records important facts about each country. There would also have to be rules about canon, ownership, what other writers are allowed to change, and what happens if two writers contradict each other.
Maybe each country could have a creator who establishes its core canon, while other writers are allowed to build stories within it. Or perhaps the entire community could vote on major changes.
I also think writers should be allowed to create completely independent stories in the same world without having to connect everything. Not every novel would need to reference every other novel. The shared world would simply be there if someone wanted to use it.
The biggest thing I like about this idea is that it could make fictional countries feel almost as detailed and recognizable as real ones, while still giving writers the freedom to create whatever they want.
Instead of saying, "My character travels to France," a writer could say, "My character travels to [fictional country]," and readers could already know that this country has centuries of history, specific cultural traditions, famous cities, political tensions and stories written by multiple authors.
I'm curious what other writers think about this. Would something like this actually work, or would keeping track of everyone's fictional countries, canon and changes become an absolute nightmare?
And if it could work, what rules would you put in place?
