Have you written a book that wasn't wanted?

[The Laughing Vulcan]

To the writers please.

If I understand the process of a Trek novel, or indeed any other novel, it's a process of pitching ideas and working out outlines before you get a go ahead from the editors/publishers to write the novel.

But have you ever had a pitch shot down, an idea that you were so enamoured with, that you went and wrote the novel anyway, just for yourself (or are in the process of writing whenever you can find the spare time)? Are there masterpieces lying in boxes or loose leaf binders that will never see the light of day?

 

[Lonemagpie]

Nope. Though what gets shot down at one publisher may be flavour of the month at another, so I'm sure you'll find lots of us have published books that were previously rejected by a different company.

 

[Geoff Thorne]

So far that hasn't happened for novels though there are a couple in my current set of pitches that will definitely get written whether they are accepted as Star Trek or not.

Several of my short stories that didn't make the cut at Star Trek have had the "numbers filed off" and found homes elsewhere. However, in most cases, the filing changed the story to something quite different than its original form.

A couple of them have been too deeply meshed in Trek-ness to be changed to something else. So they sit in the cellar and languish, poor things. I visit them as often as I can and try to buck them up but, really, it's just very sad.

 

[Christopher]

To the writers please.

If I understand the process of a Trek novel, or indeed any other novel, it's a process of pitching ideas and working out outlines before you get a go ahead from the editors/publishers to write the novel.

Not exactly. That's usually the way it works with Trek and other tie-in fiction (though often it's not so much a case of the author pitching as the editor specifically requesting a proposal from the author). But with original fiction, it's not so necessary to get outline approval in advance. When the universe is entirely your own creation and property, you don't need anyone else to approve your ideas of what can happen in it. And if you're a new writer trying to get an agent or editor for an original, non-tie-in project, you have to write the whole novel first (on spec) and then try to sell it.

But have you ever had a pitch shot down, an idea that you were so enamoured with, that you went and wrote the novel anyway, just for yourself (or are in the process of writing whenever you can find the spare time)? Are there masterpieces lying in boxes or loose leaf binders that will never see the light of day?

Not in the way you're suggesting -- and certainly not where Trek fiction is concerned, since there's no point in writing a novel you already know you can never sell. If you don't sell an idea in one context, rather than going ahead and writing it in that form, you save the basic idea and try to rework it for another context, another market, another universe. Writers save and reuse old ideas all the time. For instance, my new Titan novel is partly based on an unsold spec novel I wrote many years ago.

Some authors have reworked failed Trek pitches into other forms, both Trek and otherwise. As Dave Mack mentioned just yesterday, elements of his SCE novella Wildfire were adapted from his and John Ordover's original pitch for DS9's "Starship Down." Howie Weinstein's Mere Anarchy installment is based on an idea he'd originally pitched as a Trek novel and then a Trek comic. David Gerrold turned a rejected TOS outline into several different works -- the original novel Yesterday's Children, its revamp Voyage of the Star Wolf (which has two sequels, one of which is based on his rejected TNG script "Blood and Fire"), and the Bantam TOS novel The Galactic Whirlpool. I know there was a "name" SF author who turned one or two failed TOS pitches into original fiction, though I forget who it was, possibly Philip Jose Farmer.

 

[Greg Cox]

I would never write a rejected tie-in novel just for the hell of it, but I seldom let a good idea go to waste.

For example: I once sold a rejected VOYAGER pitch to FARSCAPE. I just turned Seven of Nine to Aeryn Sun.

Another example: ASSIGNMENT: ETERNITY started out as a proposal for a Kirk-meets-Q novel. When that idea got vetoed, I simply turned Q into Gary Seven.

Now if I can just figure out what to do with that old FIREFLY outline . . .

 

[Dayton Ward]

I've got a pitch for an Enterprise novel in my files, which I wrote when the series was still very new (which I never submitted), and a Voyager project which never got beyond the "Gee, this might be neat" stage even though we wrote a complete outline and submitted it. Thinking back on it, the VGR pitch isn't that good, but there are elements of it I can see using in another project at some point.

I've got a few SNW stories I wrote for the contests years ago, which were rejected - and there may be an idea or two in there worth repurposing. I don't know that I've even opened those files in the years since the contests, though. We had an SCE pitch which was rejected, and which I actually reworked in order to pitch it as one of two ideas we submitted for a different project, but nothing ever came of those, either (it wasn't sent to Pocket).

Among other things, we've also got a handful of ideas/short pitches for what became Myriad Universes. Of those, there's one I'd really like a chance to revisit one day if the fates are kind.

There's other stuff (pitches for short story anthologies which didn't make the cut, etc.), but it's all a bit hazy at the moment.

 

[David Mack]

To recap what others have said, I would never write a tie-in novel just for grins; I am too busy to waste time and energy on something I can't sell. (Though one of my rejected Voyager episode pitches with John Ordover became the SCE story "Small World.")

Original novels are another ball of wax. I have numerous ideas in development (some are further along than others). I don't throw away story ideas, I just put them in a file on my desk and thumb through them every now and then.

As for rejected TrekLit pitches that haunt me, there is one; when Marco and Margaret first began talking about what became the Myriad Universes concept, they had thought it might be a line of standalone mass-market paperback novels. I had a pitch for one, but when the time came to go forward on the project I was busy on other assignments, and they had changed the format to three short novels in trade paperback.

Try as I might, I can't think of a way to condense my MyrU pitch to fit that format. So it sits in the idea file and pines for the fjords.

 

[William Leisner]

A few years back, I started a proposal for The Great American Trek Epic Novel, which went absolutely nowhere.

Two of the characters from that proposal (one more or less as originally conceived, one radically altered) will make appearances in Losing the Peace.

There's another Trek story that I'd written as a SNW story, and then later as an SCE pitch, and which has recently been preempted by another Trek novel. Yet I still hold out hope that its time will come.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Now if I can just figure out what to do with that old FIREFLY outline . . .

The forthcoming live action Star Wars series?

 

[TGTheodore]

Not a novel, but an episode of DS9. I liked one of my stories so much, I wrote an entire spec script of it. A day after I pitched the story Ron Moore called me and said they wanted to buy the story for their 1995-96 season. I was ecstatic because it was one of the few stories I had expanded into a complete script, so I could possibly get full solo writing credit.

Some months later, DS9 changed its mind.

I've often thought it would make a great novel, though.

--Ted

 

[Greg Cox]

Now if I can just figure out what to do with that old FIREFLY outline . . .

The forthcoming live action Star Wars series?

From your lips to Lucafilms' ears!

 

[Man of Steel]

Not a novel, but an episode of DS9. I liked one of my stories so much, I wrote an entire spec script of it. A day after I pitched the story Ron Moore called me and said they wanted to buy the story for their 1995-96 season. I was ecstatic because it was one of the few stories I had expanded into a complete script, so I could possibly get full solo writing credit.

Some months later, DS9 changed its mind.

I've often thought it would make a great novel, though.

--Ted

Then why not pitch it and write it?

 

[LutherSloan]

Not a novel, but an episode of DS9. I liked one of my stories so much, I wrote an entire spec script of it. A day after I pitched the story Ron Moore called me and said they wanted to buy the story for their 1995-96 season. I was ecstatic because it was one of the few stories I had expanded into a complete script, so I could possibly get full solo writing credit.

Some months later, DS9 changed its mind.

I've often thought it would make a great novel, though.

--Ted

What was the story about?

 

[TGTheodore]

Not a novel, but an episode of DS9. I liked one of my stories so much, I wrote an entire spec script of it. A day after I pitched the story Ron Moore called me and said they wanted to buy the story for their 1995-96 season. I was ecstatic because it was one of the few stories I had expanded into a complete script, so I could possibly get full solo writing credit.

Some months later, DS9 changed its mind.

I've often thought it would make a great novel, though.

--Ted

Then why not pitch it and write it?

The DS9 novels are now post-series era.

What was the story about?

It was called "Omission" and dealt with a Federation bigwig bringing Sisko up on charges of desertion for the events at Wolf 359 which, in this guy's mind, resulted in the death of his son aboard the Saratoga.

Instead, "Rules of Engagement" a Worf court-martial episode, was written and produced.

--Ted

 

[Scott Pearson]

I wrote a Voyager story for SNW that wasn't chosen, so then I turned it into an SCE pitch that never had a chance before SCE went away, so then I rewrote it as a non-Trek short story, and it will be coming out in an anthology later this year. It was fun and challenging to slice out the Trek stuff and reinvent the ship, the weapons, etc. It turned into a pretty cool story if I do say so my darn self.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

It was called "Omission" and dealt with a Federation bigwig bringing Sisko up on charges of desertion for the events at Wolf 359 which, in this guy's mind, resulted in the death of his son aboard the Saratoga.

Instead, "Rules of Engagement" a Worf court-martial episode, was written and produced.

--Ted

Honestly, your story sounds far more interesting than "Rules of Engagement." The show made a mistake on that one.

 

[TGTheodore]

I wrote a Voyager story for SNW that wasn't chosen, so then I turned it into an SCE pitch that never had a chance before SCE went away, so then I rewrote it as a non-Trek short story, and it will be coming out in an anthology later this year. It was fun and challenging to slice out the Trek stuff and reinvent the ship, the weapons, etc. It turned into a pretty cool story if I do say so my darn self.

I love it when that happens. (Well, not the rejection part ...)

Regarding your avatar: William Schallert was on Desperate Housewives last night. His hair is white, but that distinctive voice of his and twinkle in his eye never change.

--Ted

P.S. Thank for the compliment, Jimbo! I agree! It's actually one of my favorite spec scripts. I interwove "new" flashbacks with existing footage from the DS9 pilot to create the timeline of events aboard the Saratoga, and we saw more of Sisko's wife before she died.

 

[TerriO]

Yup. Granted, I'd written it long before I got the chance to pitch it as a novel (and it might have flown if not for the cutback to 1 book a month), but it's still there. I've co-opted bits and pieces of it for other stories, because no idea ever goes stale, and no idea can't somehow be reformulated to fit another universe.

 

[Captaindemotion]

P.S. Thank for the compliment, Jimbo! I agree! It's actually one of my favorite spec scripts. I interwove "new" flashbacks with existing footage from the DS9 pilot to create the timeline of events aboard the Saratoga, and we saw more of Sisko's wife before she died.

That sounds really good. I'd like to have seen that episode or read that script/

 

[William Leisner]

My DS9 spec script was very much a third season story, and thinking back on it now, I'm not sure it would work in a new prose project without recasting and retweaking -- and then, maybe as a B-plot.

Of course, I've since cannibalized it for names and other elements for other projects.