Help With Writing a Story

[Sgt_G]

Cool. Feel free to "borrow" the format.

Now, allow me to nit-pick one of your characters a little. Yes, I have a minor problem or two with your Captain.

First, his age. "Late 20s / Early 30s". Even for a war-time promotion, that's pretty young. Let's say someone that age was advanced to the center seat during the war, after the war he'd probably be dropped down to Lt-Cmdr or maybe full Cmdr and given a smaller ship to command in a set patrol area, with other ships reasonably close by. A more likely assignment would be as second-in-command to an older/wiser captain who will teach him how to become old and wise himself. I just can't see someone that young and inexperienced being sent off to the far reaches of the galaxy with no visible means of support.

I ran the numbers once, and using modern US military rules, the minimum age for someone to make full-bird Captain / Colonel is 34 years old, with a theoretical absolute minimum of 30-1/2 years if a child protegee finishes college by age 18.

And a minor point, you say "has a penchant for mood swings and over-excitement due to his Vulcan heritage". I would think that it would be "in spite of" rather than "due to". And again, someone that moody and presumably hot-headed would not be the first choice to lead a five-year mission in another quadrant.

Just my opinion. Take it, or not, for what you think it's worth.

 

[Esirprus]

Endgame cannot have happened the way it was portrayed. The 29th century polices the timeline closely. Therefore the 29th century would not have let Janeway go back in time to get Voyager home. While I believe the rest of the story happened largely as depicted Voyager barely survived their use of the transwarp conduit and did not get welcomed back by the Federation, either. Just my opinions. But I hate that kind of inconsistency. Abrams rewriting the entire universe is bad enough but going so far the wrong direction it's unlikely to become cannon.

 

[Curios_Gelatin]

Cool. Feel free to "borrow" the format.

Now, allow me to nit-pick one of your characters a little. Yes, I have a minor problem or two with your Captain.

First, his age. "Late 20s / Early 30s". Even for a war-time promotion, that's pretty young. Let's say someone that age was advanced to the center seat during the war, after the war he'd probably be dropped down to Lt-Cmdr or maybe full Cmdr and given a smaller ship to command in a set patrol area, with other ships reasonably close by. A more likely assignment would be as second-in-command to an older/wiser captain who will teach him how to become old and wise himself. I just can't see someone that young and inexperienced being sent off to the far reaches of the galaxy with no visible means of support.

I ran the numbers once, and using modern US military rules, the minimum age for someone to make full-bird Captain / Colonel is 34 years old, with a theoretical absolute minimum of 30-1/2 years if a child protegee finishes college by age 18.

And a minor point, you say "has a penchant for mood swings and over-excitement due to his Vulcan heritage". I would think that it would be "in spite of" rather than "due to". And again, someone that moody and presumably hot-headed would not be the first choice to lead a five-year mission in another quadrant.

Just my opinion. Take it, or not, for what you think it's worth.

Yes T'kel is undergoing some editing at the moment, especially the mood swing part, but I think having a young age isn't something that's entirely unheard of. Kirk himself was 32 while he was in command of the Enterprise and other young captains have been noted in the canon universe.

I love TNG for how Picard really makes you think about greater philosophies and human nature, but I think what is lacking in this is that you don't see the journey that Picard took to become wise and so full of an appreciation for life.

In my story I want to explore the universe through the eyes of an intellectual who's not quite reached his full potential yet, but will do so as he gains experience and learns some hard lessons. On that note I'm thinking that he may be going some sort of therapy to suppress his Vulcan side, since in the instances we've seen of half breeds that part seems to dominate over the human side. I think this will also add some drama in longer term situations when he doesn't have access to this therapy and has to deal with the intensity of Vulcan emotions with an untrained mind.

I'd also like to add while the Federation has not, from what I can interpret from DS9, sent any galaxy-class ships to explore the Gamma Quadrant, it has been noted that both science and merchant vessels have come from both sides. So I believe there would be at least some Federation outposts around and some trader stations/planets. They're not completely alone out there.

 

[Curios_Gelatin]

Endgame cannot have happened the way it was portrayed. The 29th century polices the timeline closely. Therefore the 29th century would not have let Janeway go back in time to get Voyager home. While I believe the rest of the story happened largely as depicted Voyager barely survived their use of the transwarp conduit and did not get welcomed back by the Federation, either. Just my opinions. But I hate that kind of inconsistency. Abrams rewriting the entire universe is bad enough but going so far the wrong direction it's unlikely to become cannon.

Yes, I'm on the second season and that episode (I believe it's called Threshold?) where Paris and Janeway ... er... evolve... into salamaders...? Yeah I'm going to be ignoring that.... whatever it was trying to imply...

As for Abrams, technically speaking his movie takes place in an alternate timeline but it does affect the fate of the original Spock, and Romulus. The only really annoying issue I have with this is that Romulus does have advanced science so if they were in danger of complete planetary destruction I'm quite certain they would have noticed and co-ordinated a mass evacuation.

 

[Tarek71]

Brannon Braga, who wrote "Threshold", said it was an homage to "The Fly". He later said he regards it as a "terrible" episode. I agree!

While I would stick to Captains being in their 40s - early 50s, you can certainly have a younger one. I wouldn't do that, but you're allowed. I would prefer to say that someone that age being a Captain by rank, while not entirely unprecedented, is very, very rare.

 

[Sgt_G]

Make him mid-30s, say 35 or 36, and I'm on board with him. Maybe he gets his new command on his 36th birthday .....

At that point, I can buy that he received a battlefield promotion and was able to keep it after the war ended. Other such war-captains, being younger, weren't so lucky.

 

[Curios_Gelatin]

I think I've decided on 35.
Given he immediately joined up with Starfleet Academy as soon as he was old enough to (18), 4 standard years, another 2 served aboard a star ship, 2 back in command school, First Officer aboard a ship during the general chaos of the Dominion war which put him in emergency command situations.
After that, service as a first officer and finally at the recommendation of various commanders he served under Captain of his own ship.

I'm still working out the details but put very roughly;
Y2365-Y2369: Star Fleet Academy, Exoarchaeology and Exobiology
Y2369-Y2371: Served aboard a Star Ship as a science officer, Lt jg.
Y2371-Y2373: Decides to attend Command school after discussing with captain.
Y2373-Y2375: Graduates from command school and due to wartime is promoted to first officer, under emergency is made captain for some months before the end of the war.
Y2375-Y2380: Serves as First Officer aboard another starship.
Y2380-: As per recommendation of tutors and previous captains serves as Captain of USS Beyond

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

With T'kel having a part-Vulcan origin you can get to play about with his age, as he is always going to look younger than his years; he could be in his mid-60s though still look like someone who has yet to turn 30.

 

[Curios_Gelatin]

With T'kel having a part-Vulcan origin you can get to play about with his age, as he is always going to look younger than his years; he could be in his mid-60s though still look like someone who has yet to turn 30.

It's more about his maturity than his appearance, I'm not quite sure how that works age wise with Vulcans. I'm going to research that now actually since you brought it up.

 

[Sgt_G]

Remember: The captain runs the mission, the XO runs the ship.

By the way, I may have missed it, but is there a Senior Chief on the crew manifest??

A Senior Chief? I don't believe so. Is that a very prominent role?

I tried to cover the basic (and most recurring) Senior Staff officers in the first story, including Chiefs of Engineering, Security, Medical, the ship's Counselor, the First Officer and the Captain.

Depends on whether you subscribe to the Roddenberry view that everyone in Star Fleet are officers, i.e., Ensigns and above, or if you take a more modern approach in that most of the crew are enlisted. If the former, then no, you won't have a Senior Chief.

See the topic "Creating a realistic crew manifest for a Starship. Ideas & comments?" under Fan Fiction for more on this, but you're going to be forced to define the crew a lot more than just the senior staff at some point (even if we don't see most of them in the story).

If you do go with an enlisted crew, most of the worker-bees will be Petty Officer Third and Second Class (E-4 / E-5), with First Class (E-6) as team leaders and a Chief Petty Officer (E-7) running each division. Oh, sure, the Lieutenants and Lieutenant-Commanders think they run the shop. The officers give the orders, and the Chiefs and team leaders make it happen.

The Senior Chief (E-8) is the Captain's right-hand when it comes to managing the crew. On a smaller ship (e.g., a police cutter), this would be an additional duty for the ranking Chief Petty Officer, but on most ships this is a full-time job. And as this is a Galaxy-class ship (yes??) with a fairly large crew (750-1000), it would not be unreasonable to up this one to Master Chief (E-9), and maybe bump up two or three Chief slots to Senior Chief.

Remember: The captain runs the mission, the XO runs the ship, but the Senior Chief runs the crew.

 

[Curios_Gelatin]

Oh dear it's... going to take a while to grasp all that. O_O I can't say I'm very good with all these terms, I always thought Star Trek played a little fast and loose with rank terms so I didn't think too much about it.

If the Master Chiefs concern is managing personnel I don't imagine they're involved in senior officer briefings, at least not directly, are they?

At any rate, you're right and I think I may try introducing such a character in the next story. I would include it in this first installment but it's already been written ahead of time and I think if the Master Chief were to make an introduction it would have been in the first few sections instead of the last. It would be too forced now, I think.

I have looked at that thread now though, and although the first chart is a little over my head (It's very colourful and the writing is very small so my eyes kind of glazed over while trying to read it, aha.) I'm finding the second one very useful in regards to the hierarchy. It's a lot easier to understand things in that way. I might try recreating it and filling it out for my notes.

 

[Sgt_G]

If the Master Chief's concern is managing personnel I don't imagine they're involved in senior officer briefings, at least not directly, are they?

Yes and no. He (or she) wouldn't sit in on the staff meetings, but would have private meetings with the Captain and First & Second Officers, and would hold his own meetings with all the Chief Petty Officers. His job is to be both a conduit and filter of information between the command staff and enlisted crew.

In my stories, I have the following characters filling the role:

Senior Chief Gunner's Mate Gar Telko (Tellarite male)
Senior Chief Quartermaster Roger Guzman (Human male)
Senior Chief Master-at-Arms Stoan (Vulcan male)
Senior Chief Boatswain's Mate Julie O'Hara (Human female)

Their stories are set on smaller ships (police cutters) and so their roles are very important to the plots.


As to the other thread, yeah some of those charts were not what one would call a final draft. May I direct your attention to my posts #60, 61 and 67, please? (Note: in post 61, "Officers = 5" should be "55" ... sigh.) I may be bias, but I think those might be the most helpful to you.

 

[Esirprus]

I think someone hot-heated with a war-time promotion to Captain who is being sent into a hostile quadrant that has either just suffered an economic upheaval due to the fall of the Dominion or who have just finished fighting the Dominion is exactly who they'd send due to lack of willing average Commanders. T'Kell's personality seems ideal for this mission. Likeable the lief of the party, moody, and strong likely able to fight well, yet has no problem taking his stick-in-the-mud security chief and somehow gets her having a drink with him, procrastinating taking command for a few more moments and doesn't seem the type to be the least bit phased by having a Cardassian as his first officer. I think the head Admiral had sense insisting he go. Also he's the kind of Captain who seems more comfortable without the Admiralty breathing down his neck. Making it so I imagine like Kirk he was breathing down Admirals backs, and being shipped off to the Gamma quadrant as a punishment disguised as a reward. Just my opinions.

And I would DEFINITELY advise against using the Borg. If the Borg were in the Gamma quadrant during the war, Jem'Hadar would be on Borg cubes. They MUST make tactical drones, unless they committed suicide every time Borg boarded in which case they wouldn't have had the sheer numbers needed to fight in 2 quadrants at once. No matter how you cut it, a modern Borg presence in that quadrant is impossible in my opinion. Hope this helps. And my writing improved when I stopped worrying about the character personalities before I started writing. And several characters intended for bit parts have become increasingly recurring so being flexible is very important as a writer.

 

[Curios_Gelatin]

I think someone hot-heated with a war-time promotion to Captain who is being sent into a hostile quadrant that has either just suffered an economic upheaval due to the fall of the Dominion or who have just finished fighting the Dominion is exactly who they'd send due to lack of willing average Commanders. T'Kell's personality seems ideal for this mission. Likeable the lief of the party, moody, and strong likely able to fight well, yet has no problem taking his stick-in-the-mud security chief and somehow gets her having a drink with him, procrastinating taking command for a few more moments and doesn't seem the type to be the least bit phased by having a Cardassian as his first officer. I think the head Admiral had sense insisting he go. Also he's the kind of Captain who seems more comfortable without the Admiralty breathing down his neck. Making it so I imagine like Kirk he was breathing down Admirals backs, and being shipped off to the Gamma quadrant as a punishment disguised as a reward. Just my opinions.

And I would DEFINITELY advise against using the Borg. If the Borg were in the Gamma quadrant during the war, Jem'Hadar would be on Borg cubes. They MUST make tactical drones, unless they committed suicide every time Borg boarded in which case they wouldn't have had the sheer numbers needed to fight in 2 quadrants at once. No matter how you cut it, a modern Borg presence in that quadrant is impossible in my opinion. Hope this helps. And my writing improved when I stopped worrying about the character personalities before I started writing. And several characters intended for bit parts have become increasingly recurring so being flexible is very important as a writer.

I've extended T'kel's biological age to about 60, to give plenty of time for experience in the field of command, so at least he's going in with more experience than originally planned. It also make it a bit more plausible that he'd be placed in charge of a Galaxy-class. His personality is still quite the same though.
I would think the admiral's see him as unconventional rather than a commodity. Makar at this point probably just considers him irresponsible, heh.

As for the Borg, even in the Delta quadrant, there were vast stretches of space where one wouldn't encounter them, and that's their origin quadrant! I imagine that they have at least a small presence in every quadrant somewhere or another, thanks to their transwarp tech.

Not that that means I'll be including them. I think the franchise has explored all it can with the Borg, I might do but I don't really have any plans on writing a Borg story any time soon.

 

[Sgt_G]

And my writing improved when I stopped worrying about the character personalities before I started writing.

To each their own way of doing things. For me, the character sheets are just a way to help me keep things straight in my own head. They aren't really meant for public view. And the profiles are living documents, not carved in stone. People do grow and change over time. And you do want to track who did what, so ten stories later when your characters are swapping war-stories at the bar you don't have the wrong guy claiming he did such-and-such. Si add that data as short bullet-statements to the character sheet as you go.

If you have a new character and allow the personality to develop in the story, and later create the profile sheet, that makes perfect sense to me. As I said, however, I do kind of want to plan out my core cast ahead of time. Of course, I'll have had several story ideas bounce around inside my head before hand, so a lot of the cast's general personalities will have already been decided upon long before I put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard as the case may be.

And several characters intended for bit parts have become increasingly recurring so being flexible is very important as a writer.

Oh, yeah. Sometimes they turn into the best characters in the story.

 

[Tarek71]

I see what you mean Tarek, and I suppose I will eventually be seeing those developments myself soon. After the first few responses on this thread I started watching Voyager.

And I think I will be changing the Chief Medical Officer to be Vulcan instead of Kobali. Originally the idea of having a Kobali aboard the ship was interesting to me but I doubt they'd be even plausibly near the Alpha Quadrant or have had that much contact with the Federation by 2380.

Plus I think it would be an interesting dynamic with the captain, who I'm thinking of changing to be half-Vulcan but with a greater emphasis on a human lifestyle. They may butt heads over their personal philosophies and such.

Well, you can still have an alien CMO who comes from a culture that is very different than human culture and very different from Vulcans as well. We haven't met or know much about most of the 150 member world's of the Federation that Picard mentions. That leaves you plenty of room to explore some of those species.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Well, you can still have an alien CMO who comes from a culture that is very different than human culture and very different from Vulcans as well. We haven't met or know much about most of the 150 member world's of the Federation that Picard mentions. That leaves you plenty of room to explore some of those species.

I'd have to agree with that. Including loads of races who have been mentioned but never seen, such as the three-eyed Doctor that Dax tried to hook Kira up with, the winged Vilix'pran species, hydrogen-breathing Lothra. Though you also have a lot of freedom to create something new that would work for your own stories.

 

[Sgt_G]

I already PM'd the author on this, but Memory Alpha states that the Galaxy-class has a crew of about a thousand. Foggy memory told me it was more like 600-700 crew plus 300-400 family members (wives & kids). I sent my rough guess of how many crew would be in each department for a 600-man crew (plus a 120-man Marine company, which could be swapped out for Security personnel if Marines don't fit into the plot). The suggested science department (25 scientists & 45 lab techs) might be a bit light and by doubling or even tripling those numbers will fill some of the gap.

I figure there should be at least 100 officers, perhaps 150-175, and the rest of the crew enlisted (or Ensigns, if one wants to go with the Roddenberry view that "everyone is an officer").

I would -NOT- put families on the ship. That was a very dumb thing from the word go, and I believe later stories said Star Fleet changed the policy, and wisely so. Now, married couples, both in the service, can be on board in what we call a "joint-spouse assignment".

 

[Mistral]

I already PM'd the author on this, but Memory Alpha states that the Galaxy-class has a crew of about a thousand. Foggy memory told me it was more like 600-700 crew plus 300-400 family members (wives & kids). I sent my rough guess of how many crew would be in each department for a 600-man crew (plus a 120-man Marine company, which could be swapped out for Security personnel if Marines don't fit into the plot). The suggested science department (25 scientists & 45 lab techs) might be a bit light and by doubling or even tripling those numbers will fill some of the gap.

I figure there should be at least 100 officers, perhaps 150-175, and the rest of the crew enlisted (or Ensigns, if one wants to go with the Roddenberry view that "everyone is an officer").

I would -NOT- put families on the ship. That was a very dumb thing from the word go, and I believe later stories said Star Fleet changed the policy, and wisely so. Now, married couples, both in the service, can be on board in what we call a "joint-spouse assignment".

The officer to enlisted ratio would be way off-the American military model is top heavy with brass. Think it through a bit.

 

[Sgt_G]

The officer to enlisted ratio would be way off-the American military model is top heavy with brass. Think it through a bit.

Not really. At least, not from my experience: 26 years in the US Air Force. I was assigned to small 16-man detachments, twice at a medium-sized squadron, and at a wing-equivalent headquarters, all in a fairly technical career field. At all levels, we'd have about 15-20% officers / GS-civilians to 80-85% enlisted.

I just pulled up the real numbers: USAF as a whole has about 19% officers, Navy has 15%, Army has 14%, and Marines has just under 10% officers. The number I presented, 150/450 officers to enlisted, is 25%. Ergo, if anything, in my world Star Fleet is officer-heavy compared to modern US military.

And for what it's worth, official source data (Franz Joseph Tech Manual) says the original Enterprise had (or should we say "will have"?) 43 officers and 387 Ensign-grade crew, or 10% officers / 90% crew.