It was easy. I'm glad people found it helpful. I owe the board something back for the help people have given me. I occasionally work on a Star Trek story. I am 36 and I don't have any talents because I always said I'd never be good at that to everything. I think a few people in this thread got upset that I asked the same question over in a different way. I have read so much about writing that it makes my head spin and I don't know how to apply it. I think I have to accept that I cannot apply all the things I learned and write my first story like a seasoned professional. I have been back working on the story, but I found out information I got on memory-alpha was not the best, so now I have to make some more big changes. On the plus side I am excited about the new possibilities the changes will make.
I started a threat over in General Star Trek about the timeline to the Dominion War. Someone recommended the stardate calculator. http://www.hillschmidt.de/gbr/sternenzeit.htm. There are only a few episodes that mention stardates toward the end of DS9. Using this method The Breen attack on Earth is in late August, the Breen countermeasure is introdued fleet-wide by early November, and the war likely ends in late November. All 2375. What do you guys think? I don't want people to say I got the timing wrong. I mostly want a good idea of the time between major events to plan out my story.
That matches up with what Star Charts said, and it's what I figured for a while, but Treklit seems to assume that it went up to the end of December. (Literally even. The end of Mission Gamma: Cathedral given as August 2376 and Joseph Sisko says that it's been 214 days since Sisko disappeared; the only way that works out is if that happened on August 1st 2376 and Sisko's disappearance was December 31st, 2375.)
Thank you for your reply. I'm going to try and get it as close as I can, but there seems to be no good answer. The key events I want to get right are the Breen attack on Earth, Deployment of the Breen Weapon counter-measure, and the Battle of Cardassia.
If you want some general but explicitly-dated guidelines, Star Charts actually gives months for all the major events of the Dominion War in the Alpha Quadrant section.
My current debate is the time of the Breen attacking Earth. Starcharts says it was in October, but the Stardate calculator puts it on August... Any ideas?
Stardate calculations based on the show cannot be trusted. The writers didn't care to keep the stardates consistent; as long as the second digit went up one per season and the rest generally increased over time, they didn't bother with any more precision. So you can't rely on the stardate calculator. It can be handy in some instances, where there's no conflicting information, but it's hardly definitive. Stardates were deliberately invented to be meaningless.
Interesting read about the hints, BrentMc! I'm writing my first short story, about halfway through. Intend to submit to Analog and/or Asimov. Just curious, they say they would respond in a month or two to a submission. Can I expect some sort of feedback or brief review if my submission is rejected?
Usually, it's a boilerplate note, but if you write something good but unpublishable for whatever reason, they might deviate from the template. I've amassed a bunch of very nice rejections over the years!
My experience is that editors will only make the effort to write a personal rejection note if they see some potential in a writer that's worth cultivating through constructive criticism. I learned a lot about writing from the rejection letters I got over the years before I finally sold. Stanley Schmidt's rejections alone were particularly instructive.
Do you think I should go with the Breen attack on Earth in October like in Starcharts? I wonder where he got his information from.
^That's up to you. For what it's worth, I have it in November. The last ten episodes all follow pretty closely on one another, so they don't span that much time.
Wow November? Most places put the end of the war in November and if the Breen join the war and use their weapon, then Starfleet discovered a countermeasure and distributed it all in a month. But your sure know more about this than I do. I'm just trying to get the best date because I planned my story around things I read on memory alpha that turned out to be probably wrong. I also wonder about travel time from Earth to DS9. On the show they did it in a few days in a warp 5 Runabout. That doesn't sound very "deep space." I wonder if that could be a term leftover from when the first deep space stations were made and ships only went at low warp. Kind of like the "Midwest" United States.
^Well, some of the dates in my chronology are idiosyncratic. And yes, it was annoying the way the later seasons fudged the interstellar travel times in service of their sweeping narratives. DS9 should've been weeks from Earth. Not to mention the sudden proximity of Klingon and Cardassian space.
^Yeah, Cardassian space was supposed to be on the opposite side of Federation space and several weeks (if not more) from both Klingon and Romulan space. IIRC, Cestus III is near both Gorn and Klingon territory; Kasidy Yates told Sisko that the system was roughly eight weeks' travel from DS9 at maximum warp (although I don't know if she meant her freighter's maximum warp speed or a starship's); therefore, it doesn't make sense that Klingon ships were able to make it to Cardassian space in time to help Sisko's fleet retake DS9 in "Sacrifice of Angels." --Sran
I can't make things make sense when they weren't consistent on the show. I am just going to try and write a good story and get the things that anyone can look up correct and make a decision on things that are not clear like the date of the Breen attack on Earth. In my story it will take weeks to get out to DS9.