I'd rather write new stories.
General Q & A Session For The Authors
- Thread starter Kilana2
- Start date
https://www.trekbbs.com/members/christopher.295/
What is your ruling as the creator of the Agni on the location of the former Agni home world? Also can we definitely say that there are Migrating fleets of Agni that the leader of the Agni dosen’t know about?(I love that the actual novelists are there in the forum to definitively answer questions about loose ends what happened to the character after the novel ect with beta cannon answers)
What is your ruling as the creator of the Agni on the location of the former Agni home world? Also can we definitely say that there are Migrating fleets of Agni that the leader of the Agni dosen’t know about?(I love that the actual novelists are there in the forum to definitively answer questions about loose ends what happened to the character after the novel ect with beta cannon answers)
@https://www.trekbbs.com/members/greg-cox.2996/
Is their any Calamarain breeding ground or nebula that is like a home planet of Calamarain(are there any Calamarain outside as the one in your Q zone Novel and did Picard ever succeed in establishing a knowledge exchange between Starfleet and the Calamarain?(from your Q continuum novels book 2)
Is their any Calamarain breeding ground or nebula that is like a home planet of Calamarain(are there any Calamarain outside as the one in your Q zone Novel and did Picard ever succeed in establishing a knowledge exchange between Starfleet and the Calamarain?(from your Q continuum novels book 2)
https://www.trekbbs.com/members/una-mccormack.2340/
Was Sahil’s homeworld connected politically with Spaceport Develoka, as UFP worlds during the time of your novel Wonderlands? And was Remington’s Starbase Vanguard a member of the Emerald Chain?
Was Sahil’s homeworld connected politically with Spaceport Develoka, as UFP worlds during the time of your novel Wonderlands? And was Remington’s Starbase Vanguard a member of the Emerald Chain?
What part(s) of being a professional writer, aside from the paycheck, make you want to tear your hair out in frustration? What part(s) of being a professional writer, aside from the paycheck, make you smile and go, "Ah, this is what makes this all worthwhile."?
Thank you for continuing to answer questions!
Thank you for continuing to answer questions!
Oh, man, the paycheck is the good part!
The assumptions that non-writers have about the work can be wearing at times:
That we are all as rich as Grisham or King. (We're not).
That writing is easy. (It isn't).
That writing isn't a "real" job. (It is).
That we need some stranger offering us their story ideas, from which they want 50% of the profits for 10% of the work. (Thanks but no thanks).
That we have any control over stuff like cover art, cover blurbs, release dates, publicity, translations, adaptations or which stores stock our books. (We don't).
And then there's the stuff specific to writing tie-ins, like being on the receiving end of snobbery because we write in the universe of an established intellectual property, as if that somehow means it doesn't take as much effort and creativity as "real" writing; or the endless second-guessing and nitpicking when a work doesn't match up *exactly* with someone's idealized idea of how it should be.
But you learn to let that stuff go, because it's part and parcel of the gig, and dwelling on the negative just drains the life out of you. The positives massively outweigh the negatives...
The it-never-gets-old moment of seeing your name on a book in a bookstore, and thinking to yourself "Hey, I made that."
I love that I can write a story that will take people I will never meet on a fun and exciting adventure for a little while.
There's the creative rush of making something you're proud of and putting it out into the world.
Getting to work alongside clever, creative, amazing people.
Specifically for tie-ins, the fanboy thrill of being able to play with a toy box of beloved characters and contribute a little something to a great tapestry of narrative.
And it makes my day when someone messages me to say they enjoyed my work, that they "got" it, or that it gave them a distraction from the everyday.
Hand on heart, I would not give up this career for the world.
The slowness of everything, the endless waiting and not knowing how long I'll have to wait, even for the things I know are going to happen -- including the paycheck, but also contracts, approvals, copyedits, even just the go-ahead for the next project. Conversely, my own slowness when I'm struggling to meet a deadline.
Those all-too-rare times when I really get in a creative groove and I just can't stop writing. The way my characters often surprise me and say or do things I didn't think I was smart enough to write. The satisfaction of finally telling stories I've wanted to tell, even if I had to wait decades for them to come together.
But yeah, the paychecks help a lot too.
Coming up with new characters in tie-in fiction isn't much different from creating them in wholly original stories. A lot of it can be summed up by asking a list of questions - who is this person, why are they in this story, what element of the plot can I use them to illustrate? Then there's the core stuff about their persona - what do they want, what do they care about, what are they afraid of, do they have a secret, and so on...
I like to work from the "voice", finding the tone and timbre of how a character acts and speaks gives me the shape of them. Sometimes I will 'cast the role' and pick an actor who might play them if this was movie or TV show - it's a great way to spur the process.
But the one specific thing to look at when creating a new character interacting with established ones in a tie-in novel, is that you have to consider how the new person will affect the dynamic that is already in place.
I don't always do the casting thing, but sometimes it helps. For the record, General Gogg in my last Trek novel was "played" by Christopher Lee (at least in my head), the post-Worf security chief in my TNG trilogy was Lucy Lawless, and the villain in my most recent LIBRARIANS novels was James Mason, circa "North by Northwest."
As for a new character's voice . . . honestly, sometimes I discover that over the course of writing the book, which sometimes means going back and revising the dialogue in the early chapters to bring it more in line with the voice the character eventually ended up with.
As for a new character's voice . . . honestly, sometimes I discover that over the course of writing the book, which sometimes means going back and revising the dialogue in the early chapters to bring it more in line with the voice the character eventually ended up with.
I've always been very impressed with tie-in writers, I've always thought it would be harder to write stuff that other people created than it would be to write in my own world.
It's easier in some ways, since the foundations have already been laid for you, but harder in others, since you have to know the established characters and universe well, and since you don't always get to do things your own way. I find that writing tie-ins requires similar skills to writing hard science fiction, in that it's largely a matter of researching the subject matter and building new ideas on the basis of the established facts and rules of the universe.
@David Mack
In Fortune of War, you mentioned "Lieutenant Reyfin Omal, a Tyrakhean woman whose pale complexion was accentuated by her prominent and symmetrical black facial tattoos".
Is she meant to be the same species as Jaylah from Star Trek Beyond?
In Fortune of War, you mentioned "Lieutenant Reyfin Omal, a Tyrakhean woman whose pale complexion was accentuated by her prominent and symmetrical black facial tattoos".
Is she meant to be the same species as Jaylah from Star Trek Beyond?
I agree with Christopher. Some things would be easier. I have to imagine creating something from scratch presents its own challenges. With a tie in universe the basics are all already there so you don't have to outline every last detail before starting. Yet there are some challenges as well, you want to get the characters and setting right so they are recognizable. And in general you have to put the pieces back where you found them at the end. You can't kill off a main character for instance, at least not without the permission of some higher authority at S&S or even Paramount I'd imagine.
It's probably even more challenging when it comes to the relaunch novels because it's a continuing story so you want to make sure your story flows from the previous stories. All our novelists have their own unique styles and things they are better at. But when writing a relaunch you still want to make sure that the entire 'meta' story makes sense. And by and large they have all seemed to have done that over the years. Like episodes of the TV series, the focus shifts a bit depending on the author's strengths, yet the overall storyline still makes sense. I can't say I ever saw anything jarring from one book to another.
If I remember correctly, yes. The species name is also an homage to Taarna the Taarakian from the Heavy Metal movie.
\m/
Every single day. The difficulty is self-doubt, and the solution is to put something on the page and trust that flow will come.
Hollow Men, now that I'm better at plotting.
Similar threads
