A few questions and Ideas I'm looking to thrash out before bore everyone with my unformed cerebral emesis Q1: do people read star trek fanfic about original characters and ships and monsters of the week? I was planning on throwing in auxiliary characters that people are familiar with (Admiral Jelico, harry kim, etc) and maybe trying to upgrade some minor characters to more major roles (like they did with O'Brien in DS9) but essentially most of the primary characters would be original. Would people read that? Q2: Would there be interest in stories that cross genres such as police procedural's in the star trek vein. CSI: bajor kinda concept? Or Lovecraftian Horror? OR thriller? Q3: Google has failed me. I was surprised at the lack of how-to or advice guides specifically for star trek fanfic, especially with star treks long and pivotal role in FF's origin, maybe the best articles pre-date modern inter-webs? Im not new to writing fanfic just new to star trek fanfic. any links to guides would be super helpful. Q4: Sex and violence. I normally write some pretty wierd lovecraftian stuff, what level of wierd and detail is 'normal' for star trek fanfic? So a few ideas and themes I've been scheming and think might be interesting. What do you think of the following (and do they in any major way brake cannon) I1: Trill. We know that currently trill are your standard federation type planet (even if its unknown if their in the fed or not (thats crazy we dont know that btw!)) but its not unreasonable to suppose that like us they have a less than stellar history. we know that there aren't enough symbionts for everyone, so maybe in the past they were held by an aristocracy, maybe even a royal family. think of this. A trill king. joined when the king dies he is transpanted into his son, and now he is king, his wife is now also his mother, maybe she and a few others are joined and so this horrible, incestious power mad family Rule for centuries! (how long do symbionts live for?) Even better; when he needs advice he goes to his Zhian'tara parliament composed entirely of himselves. a metaphorical echo chamber. The piece and characters would be themed around the concept of "The sins of the father" of redemption and restitution. maybe a historical peice or maybe the first part set in the past and the second set 'now' I2: The Katra Killer. Essentially a vulcan serial killer. bodies are found murdered but investigation finds evidence of recent psychic activity. a killer who takes by force the katra of his victems as he kills them and its upto CSI: Risa (or whatever) to track him down. Finnal twist as a child his dyng mother gave him her katra but he never told anyone and it was her dominance and wishing to protect her son that drove him to kill anyone she didnt feel was good enough for him. I3: A few character concepts: A Vulcan- Klingon hybrid. I have no idea where this one goes but its something to do with nurture vs nature. a... Vulingon would presumably be pure feral rage and emotion. Maybe a character like scorpious (farscape) or darksied (DC comics) where they are perfectly controlled mostly.... no thats too vulcan. or maybe their like kirk in ST'09 self destructive.... no . I dunno. but its an idea I can't put down. Second character: an officer who suffered a head injury during the dominon war before being captured by the dominon. Parts of his brain are replaced with bio-neural gel pack and or positronic technology, he also spent the last X years captured by the Dominion and when he finnally gets out he discovers that the federation is a drastically changed thing. Look at the enterprise, goind from the D (galaxy class) an exploration ship, with lots of scientists and stuff to the E (sovrign class) which is more of a war ship. This character is kind of meant to be a vehicle to criticize / discuss the changes in star trek at a meta level.... just think about the changes from early TNG to the end of Voyager / DS9 and the star trek reboots. think about what it would be like for a season 3 picard to interact with a pale moon light crew, how morbid and militant they might seem. Ever watched sherlock? the BBC tv series? Its a little thing but my fave bit is in rienback falls when john watson is talking to sherlocks brother, mycroft, and mycroft smiles at john watson as he leaves and mycroft's smile just..... hangs there. its a mask, its not real, its whats expected of him. I hangs there just for a moment too long, its chilling. This is my idea for a vulcan, like a psychopath who has no 'real' emotions hes learned to pretend, to smile and laugh and pretend, but then... sometimes the mask drops and its chilling. I think he might be the ships councilor... I4: I did have an idea about feeding a Q to the borg and having the borg go singularity and ascend from the mortal plane but having just read about the star trek: destiny books..... bugger 5 years late. I5: The dominon Civil War. After the events of star trek destiny, 40% of the federation is anihilated, billions dead, and the guys who you just spent years fighting beg you for help, would you? Could you help? Should you? the dominon has relied politically, socially and most importantly; economically on annexation of new worlds, fighting the whole alpha quadrent left it drainned. rebellions are everywhere and odo, representing the changlings asks, begs for help. This the where I propose to send my crew. peacekeeping in the most dangerous place in the galaxy.... So those are the kinda things Ive been thinking about.... any adcive? please?
A1: I think most people are more comfortable to known characters, myself included. The problem being, too many fan-fics do not capture the true nature of said characters. Indeed, many authors have an agenda (both good and bad) they want to present, and the end up "destroying" the essence of our beloved characters. So, for me personally, I don't mind meeting new characters. A2: As long as it's not a cross-over story, great. Don't "borrow" Gibbs from NCIS or Grissom from CSI. And by all means, leave H. Caine in Miami. Make up new characters, with their own personality. Don't write CSI / NCIS characters with a different name. But, yes, expanding the Trek world beyond Starfleet is always welcome. A3: No idea, sorry. A4: This is a PG board. Or at least PG-13. So, I'm not in favor of sex scenes. Hinted at or mentioned discreetly, sure. Graphic detailed sex scenes, please don't. Ditto for violence. Acknowledge that it happens. Again, there's no need to get into graphic detail during a hand-to-hand fight scene. Just give the readers enough to know what's going on, and let their imaginations take over. Lovecraft is weird? No, Lovecraft is horror. Personally, I'm not big on horror.
Q1: Yes to all that. You have all kinds of fans who like all kinds of fan fiction. Some prefer canon characters while others like original characters. Also some like certain eras, like TOS or TNG, while others are open to reading stuff from every Trek era, even ones not shown on TV or film. For my own fan fic, I use a combination of canon and original characters, but more original characters. I use the canon characters more to set my stories in a certain time frame and to add a certain flavor to my stories. Plus part of the fun is having my original characters interact with some of the characters I grew up watching on TV. Q2: Yes again. It's a subjective thing, but I do think there is an audience for all kinds of Trek. I wouldn't worry so much about what people like at this point. Just focus on the kinds of stories that interest you and that you want to invest the time in researching and writing. I think you'll enjoy it more and readers will too. Q3: I got my feet wet reading fan fic from this website, also Trek Writer's Guild, Fanfiction.net, and various websites. Ad Astra is another place where fan fiction is posted. Some of my fellow United Trek writers post there as well. One good place to check out is the Star Trek Expanded Universe Database. It can provide a good overview for a lot of fanon out there. As for canon information, back in the day I bought a Star Trek Encyclopedia. But now there's the very useful Memory Alpha website which mainly deals with canon stuff. The Memory Beta website deals with canon stuff, but also includes information on novels, comics, video games, etc. Both of them are great resources. Q4: This forum is PG-13 so I don't know if that's the level you want to write. You would have to surf some of the fan fiction sites to see their various ratings levels. As for your ideas, I skimmed them. From what I read I thought they were good ideas. I recommend just diving in and writing any of them, or all of them.
My answers are in bold. All my humble opinion... Overrall, you have some great and unique ideas. I hope to see you writing around here.
Had a couple other ideas about research. You should be able to find scripts for just about all the Trek shows on the internet. I haven't looked for them in years but earlier in my fan fic career they were a great help in terms of getting the dialogue and technobabble. Today I sometimes go to You Tube due to my hazy memory. The clips people post there sometimes help me with setting, dialogue, technobabble, and action as well.