What kind of Star Wars book would you like to see from Trek Authors?

[Christopher]

Re: What kind of Star Wars book would you like to see from Trek Author

Basically, I hope that if we ever get more televised Trek, it either is in a way that TrekLit can go ahead as it is now, or it is really amazing, literally the best series to have come. (And either way, that it pulls in the TrekLit authorial community for storyline work, or maybe even screenplay writing. If JLU could do it with some of the top DC comics talent, why couldn't televised Trek do it with TrekLit authors? )

Writers who are good at working in one medium can't necessarily adapt to another. The comics writers who've worked on shows like JLU are generally ones who had a fair amount of screenwriting experience already. And if they weren't, comics scripting and film/TV scripting aren't too dissimilar, since they both involve telling a story with visuals, dialogue, and sound effects. And writing for animation is even more similar to writing for comics, because animation is often plotted as much or more through storyboards as through scripts.

Making the transition from prose to scriptwriting is more of a challenge (or vice-versa -- see Roddenberry's awkward prose style in the ST:TMP novelization). If any TrekLit authors were to have a chance at writing for a new Trek TV series, the edge would go to those who already have screenwriting experience, like Dave Mack, James Swallow, or Geoffrey Thorne. (I might be able to pull it off -- my scriptwriting chops were evidently good enough to get me invited to pitch to DS9 and VGR -- but I'm horrible at verbal pitching and I'm not sure I'd be comfortable trying it again.)

 

[ATimson]

Re: What kind of Star Wars book would you like to see from Trek Author

I am surprised (and stand corrected) that there are LESS Star Wars novels per year than Trek - bookshops shelves seem to be groaning under their weight with only a few Trek novels nearby - maybe SW is a bigger seller, hence more stock ?

Star Wars is definitely a bigger seller. But Random House also keeps the entire fiction backlist in print (unlike S&S with Trek), meaning that bookstores have a bigger selection to order from too.

 

[Fer]

Re: What kind of Star Wars book would you like to see from Trek Author

I am surprised (and stand corrected) that there are LESS Star Wars novels per year than Trek - bookshops shelves seem to be groaning under their weight with only a few Trek novels nearby - maybe SW is a bigger seller, hence more stock ?

Star Wars is definitely a bigger seller. But Random House also keeps the entire fiction backlist in print (unlike S&S with Trek), meaning that bookstores have a bigger selection to order from too.

I figure that's probably due to Star Wars being much more linear in nature. There are side stories, but for the most part you're following either the Skywalker lineage or the history of the Sith. One gets the feeling with the Star Wars books that you can start at the beginning of the timeline and read an entire saga, thus there's more demand for the older books, so they all stay in print.

As opposed to Trek, which is much wider, with TNG, DS9, VOY, NF, SCE, Gorkon, Titan and DTI (did I miss anyone?) all taking place more or less at the same time. It's more a shared universe than one saga. Sure, if you get into SCE or New Frontier you're going to want to track down all the books in that series, but otherwise there's not as great a motivator to want to read every Trek novel ever written.

Not saying it's better or worse, just different.