Lit I wonder if Del Ray will continue to do single book plots or will have lengthy series in the future

I wonder if Del Ray will continue to do single book plots that pretty much give further development to a particular character or if they will have many lengthy series like they did in the old EU. There probably isn't quite as much of a need to have those ongoing series such as what they had in the NJO as long as the movie and television franchise is still going strong.

 

I'm sure we will get duologies and trilogies but longer series' are probably out of the question. I would love to see them though.

 

Honesty I would prefer a 3 book series to be the max in the NEU. I got burnt out of long SW book series after LOTF and FOTJ.

 

I hope for both, done well. That was the problem with the 9 book series format they were using at the end of the EU, and one of the main problems with NJO. Having 3 or more authors working on a series allows them to spread the workload around, lessening the chances of any one author being overworked, but without decent communication and collaboration between authors, mistakes will be made in characterization and plot. Also, authors need to be careful not to focus too much on shoehorning in one character, or outright butchering/ignoring another due to personal preference. Not to throw blame or start a thread on bashing one peson, but in LOTF, it was very easy to see that Traviss had a strong love for Mandalorians. There's nothing wrong with that, I love Mandalorians too, and alone it would've made an excellent story, but you really have to ask yourself if the heavy amount of focus that Boba Fett and Mandalore received was necessary to the overall story of LOTF. Multiple book series are a necessity I think, and allow for greater storylines, of perhaps a wider scale, to be told; storylines which can bring multiple characters from across the EU/NEU together, some who may not interact with one another all that often. Every now and again it's important, I think, to see large conflicts, that push these characters to the brink, that may leave them in a bad position, and really could change things forever. However, it again has to be done right, and I don't think it should ever be the focus of the franchise. Do that, and we'll end up where we were previously, with everyone feeling burnt out from the galaxy always seeming to be at war, and the heroes never really making any headway towards peace.

This is where smaller stories come in. As darkchrono points out, Knight Errant, Crosscurrent, Rogue Planet, The Han Solo Trilogy, all of them are fairly small in scope, really involving no more than a few characters, and this allows for a greater focus on a single idea, that can slowly be developed and fully expanded upon to the readers content. Heck, just look at Yoda's journey to learn more about the Force at the end of TCW. It had nothing to do with the greater conflict of the Clone War itself, only holding personal meaning for Yoda, but it was still interesting and well told. The entire galaxy doesn't have to be facing annihilation for their to be suspense in a novel. Just writing a character well enough to make readers care about him/her, having them face tough decisions, and landing them in situations where they're starring down the barrel of a blaster or at an incoming squad of Storm Troopers is more than enough. We should be able to have Han Solo going through his own adventure on Corellia and Luke exploring an ancient Jedi planet, without either of them tripping into each other's stories, or the entire Republic being in danger. Why can't some security chief on Coruscant be investigating into a corrupt government organization, and a bounty hunter be scouring wild space for a political criminal? This is a vast galaxy, with an untold number of planets, that can each have their own unique tales going on at the same time, and whether the main characters lives or dies the galaxy can keep operating.

 

Like everyone else, I'm not expecting anything longer than a trilogy for the foreseeable future-- and after LOTF and FOTJ, I'm not turned off by that.

Some of my favourite stories have been told in shorter series (there's this little trilogy called the Original Trilogy, you may have heard of it. ) and I have always much preferred the deeper character driven arcs we've seen in books like Shatterpoint or Crosscurrent. Longer series aren't inherently bad, it's just... they became cash cow for Del Rey, with stories artificially drawn out to a predetermined number of books, rather than allowing the story to be what determined how long a series needed.

Less is more, and all that writerly jazz...

I'm uncertain where they'd even choose to base a protracted series now. Rebels tie-ins will be standalone or very limited series. Sequel lead- and tie-ins the same. Post-ROTJ-to-Episode-7 could be done with a series, but... it depends if they plan to leave that open for a future TV series or spin-off films. So... I don't know. Maybe they could do a large series Pre-PT in the past, but I'm not expecting a lot outside ST hype for the next few years.

 

I suppose it depends on how much free reign they plan on giving the books. But unless I see otherwise, I assume that it's going to be much like Star Trek novels in the 80s, with an occasional book like Tarkin thrown in.

 

This. Long series can't keep track of their own plotlines and you get sick of the series as it goes on.

 

More accurately, nobody has tried (that hard) to keep track of long series plotlines.

 

The only way I can see Del Rey doing a long series is if it is set in a different time period than the films or is a side story to the films, i.e. with different characters happening at the same time.

The current projects they have seem to be strictly spin offs of the films so I think their policy would have to change, but once Episode VII is released and the spin-off films start coming out that might be a possibility. I don't really trust Del Rey to do this sort of a project unless Jim Luceno is put in charge.

 

The only longer series I would expect to see are Young Reader ones, like Galaxy of Fear. Otherwise, I doubt it.

DigitalMessiah Luceno should be in charge.

 

Luceno should be on the story group.

 

I've always felt since the NJO ended that Luceno should be nominally put in charge of the entire EU, i.e. the novels, comics, video games, whatever, to better organize multimedia continuity and projects.

I guess the story group is supposed to fulfill this role now, but I doubt we will see anything resembling SOTE or the NJO.

 

I wish we would. Oh how I wish we would.

 

Luceno, Wallace, Fry, Pena...

 

I really enjoyed Legacy of the Force (it was my first Star Wars series I read when I was in middle school) and I have yet to finish Fate of the Jedi and I have had fun with that too. There are pros and cons to these series though. Besides the last Legacy of the Force novel, which I just could not put down, I don't know if any of these series have one book that is as good as something as Darth Plagueis. When its only one writer for one book there is more freedom allowed. Like the author does not need to worry about not doing something because it will be in the next book, so they end up having some sort of filler to take its place.

 

Not too sure about only having short series. I could see a 6 book series about the Rakatan coming back and starting a massive Darkside war along with their technology that NO-ONE currently has any idea how it works.........can even see the Lost Tribe yet again allying with the Jedi to help defeat them..... HHHMMM . I wish i was able to write books and send them off to skywalker ranch to be edited...

 

Aslo,, what about the 12 or so planets that were found in the swarm war?? who built them?? how about they come back?? and if they can build whole planets with tiny nano thingys why couldnt they start speading different nano's to take over,, again they is alot of openings to some of the books to continue,,,

 

I see short stories being told for the forseable future. I don't think we are going to get those long titles anymore. Trilogies are it and most everything is going to be after Episode 4...so I can see a very big dose of Luke Han, Leia and stuff like that.

 

Hoping for no more than three books in a series....and all three by the same author. If you want multiple authors on a subject, that's what short-story anthologies are for.


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Um. You are aware that none of that is canon now, right?

 

I wouldn't worry about "lengthy" series until we see any trilogies announced. So far it's been only standalones.

Del Rey has had a weakness to ignore the strengths of the trilogy format and go standalone-or-megaseries only before, but in the current environment I would look for trilogies as the only realistic means for stories to go bigger than standalone status.

 

What do you mean, single-book plots? For the first time ever the books are going to be a part of the actual integrated Star Wars saga! I mean, come on, who cares about trilogies or extended series when books are now actually going to be part of the canonical SW universe for the first time ever!

 

Trilogies are just a perfect story telling tool and make a lot of sense when dealing with large empty spaces on the timeline (between TPM and AOTC, ROTS and Rebels, the OT and ST). A trilogy allows a single author to tell a more complex story that has more character development -- if done right. They do the most to advance the overall story. Standalones do have their place when they tie in to the films or TV shows more directly. Here a standalone novel can give a lot more depth the characters or stories we have already seen. It wouldn't make sense to fill in a ten to thirty year gap with only standalones -- they would have their place in these sections of the timeline because short quick stories are a lot of fun and add variety--, but it makes sense to do this within the trilogies.

 

I say 5 books is the longest a book series should be in star wars novels for now. Despite the benchmark of 9 books being set, there was still the sense that plots were being stretched and filler used to fill out the series for 9 whole books in FOTJ AND LOTF