Lit With various authors in a SW series, how is the plot developed in the books?

I just finished all of The Fate of the Jedi books. They are by various authors. Does each new author just take the plot from where it last left off and do with it as he or she wishes, or are they constrained by over arching goals set by the Lucas Film team?? I suspect the latter. I'm curious about this but have failed at a Google search on the subject.

 

Moved to Lit.

 

The latter, really. A detailed synopsis for the series and the individual books needs to be worked out (by the author and editorial team); it's then vetted by Lucasfilm's editorial team (if it's not an in-house Lucasfilm Press thing) and the Story Group.

The extent to which the author gets to make up stuff depends on the series. They may be given a very prescriptive brief, or a slightly more open-ended one.

 

With FotJ, the outline of the series was decided beforehand, but by both the authors involved and the editors at Del Rey--with input from LFL, sure, but less than I think you're imagining. In any event, that series and Legacy of the Force were special cases and we're in a completely different situation now that there's a Story Group at LFL and there are movies to support. I certainly don't think we're going to see anything bigger than a trilogy for a long time.

 

I have a feeling the majority of the books we get will be surrounding the films. Once a film is released books will soon be released around that same in universe time frame to give more depth to the characters and situations in that film.

I'd imagine once Rogue One is released we will start seeing books giving us backstories to the characters in Rogue One.

 

Oh to be in a world where we'll learn that 'New Republic: Bloodlines' is a prelude to a soon-to-be-announced New Republic live action Netflix Series.

 

We know we are bound to get Netflix Star Wars tv series at some point probably within the next few years. With everything they are doing with Marvel in that arena you know they would be thinking about doing the same with Star Wars which has an even larger mass appeal than Marvel does.

 

Well if the NR is supposed to be the stable democracy to the Resistance's scrappy fighting force, that series would probably be pretty boring.*

*except for Jello

 

The West Wing, but Star Wars.

Somewhere out there, Eric Geller just felt a disturbance in the Force.

 

Depends what you want to opt for:

Version A:

Rule 1: They can't tell you.
Rule 2: See rule 1.

Version B:

All the talk of rules is designed to obscure the fact there are none.

 

I know there is a Clone Wars Book Series. Does the animated TV series follow it. Is it worthwhile? My favorite series was The Thrawn Chronicals. I liked Thrawn equally well as Vader.

 

Those were created alongside the cartoon series to give us further adventures. However they are considered legends now as well. Only the actual animated series made the cut.

 

Very poorly.

 

There's planning, where overall goals are decided, who's doing what is decided, and what each author has the free room to do if they want is decided. (Does it always work perfectly? No, people are human.)



It's not THAT different from other Star Wars books, or other franchise books. There always has to be planning when you're playing in somebody's else's universe, even if there's only one author.