Resource Fanfic Writer's Desk: Your Place for Writing Discussion, Questions, and Advice

@Grievous2003 - There's no need to be dismissive. You're in the Writer's Desk thread, in the Fanfic forum. If you don't want to receive advice geared toward writers, you've come to the wrong place.

 

It was not my intention of being dismissive. I did not mean to hurt anyone's feelings. I was only trying to explain my situation, what I was trying to do, and what I was looking for. I did not realize I was offensive with my previous comment. That is the last thing I want to do. I value any insight I receive from here. I am sorry.

 

I'm struggling with a creative dilemma in my current project. There is a military battle, and a Force battle planned for the climax. The former is being written at a faster pace due to the latter, since it hasn't yet felt natural to transition back to the Jedi vs Sith plotline.

The Force-related climax was going to involve four characters- my main character, my antagonist, an anti-villain who is part of canon and Legends, and another movie-canon character who is currently a Force ghost. My original plan was for the Force-ghost to temporarily return to the flesh (allowed by a ritual conducted by the Force-priestesses in the Wellspring of Life) so that he can achieve a task that you either need intense training or a very high midichlorian count for.
I'm wondering if the scene should be kept between the three other characters though, with the danger of the Force ghost coming across as a deus ex machina.

 

@Dark Ferus I think it's fine if you have been foreshadowing the possibility of the Force ghost's intervention prior to this point. If it evolves naturally from the story, I think it will work. The best way to know for sure is to write out a draft and see if it feels right.

 

@Dark Ferus Pretty much what Sue said. It would be a deus ex machina if it comes out of nowhere, but as long as you leave a good trail of breadcrumbs for your readers about the fact that some gamechanging ritual is going to happen before the end, it could work perfectly fine.

 

Hello friends! I've a couple of conundrums I've been pondering - one for a while, and one has only just cropped up as I've gotten to writing. In no particular order:

• Is there a GFFA term equivalent to narcissism/narcissist? I can't recall if I've ever heard it in context of the universe, and I know that word is rooted in some very real world history and mythos. Probably overthinking it, I just don't want to jerk a reader out of their immersion with something so tied to real life if I don't have to.
  
• I've been referencing the Wook article on Refreshers, and the article itself states that the refresher could refer either to the toilet or to the entire bathroom - is there any consensus on it? Could/would folks in a GFFA refer to a toilet as a toilet, a shower as a shower, a sink as a sink? I know it seems pedantic but the more I go the more it kinda bugs me.

My thanks in advance! I know they are probably pretty mild in comparison to most of the questions that come up here, but admittedly I'm struggling a bit to find answers.

 

@DLR001 About narcissism, I believe you're overthinking it. I mean, I'm Greek, and the word doesn't refer me to the myth. If it does annoy you though, and depending on how specific/clinical you want to be, you could go for a similar concept like egotism or just with a more everyday adjective like self-centered.

About refreshers, that's a dilemma I've faced many times! My conclusion is that I should go looking for other words than toilet, shower and sink only if it adds something to my story. For instance, I expect that water would be an issue aboard a spaceship since you can't harvest that in space, and the smaller the ship the more often you have to refill, so a smaller ship would definitely have a sonic instead of a shower whereas VIP quarters aboard a Star Destroyer would not only have water but an actual bathtub. Similarly, the existence of a proper sanitation system can be a good indicator of a world's level of development, so a very primitive planet would only have pit latrines, a slightly more developed one would use chemical toilets, etc.

I hope this helps!

 

It certainly does, my thanks @Chyntuck! I'm bad about the overthinking at times - perhaps I should let it slide a bit more when I'm uncertain about whether or not to include it - 'egotist' doesn't have quite the same ring to it that 'narcissist' does, I may stick with the latter. If a Greek says it's no big deal, I should be in the clear! XD

I'm glad I'm not alone in my frustrations with the 'fresher. Before getting started part of me had thought it referred exclusively to the toilet but, now knowing that it also refers to the entirety of the bathroom itself - or rather that it can - threw me for a bit of a loop. Excellent thoughts as to space-borne refreshers though! A part of me had considered it, but hadn't put much thought down that road, I'll have to tuck those thoughts away for later.

 

I would like to ad to this, this short list from the The Fanon Thread:

 

Hey, I was wondering if you guys think Maul had the potential to be as powerful as Sidious or even surpass him? Two reasons Sidious was so powerful was because his natural affinity to the Force and the vast knowledge he obtained over the years and under his apprenticeship to Darth Plagueis. I believe Maul has the same potential raw power as Sidious for the following reasons:

1.) Maul was able to survive getting cut in half by Obi wan through a combination of his Nightsister magicks, Dathomirian physiology and Sith tenacity. The fact that he managed to cheat death through his hatred and his will to survive indicates his strong connection to the Force whereas a normal person would have simply died. Many Dark Side users are shown to reveal their full potential when their anger is at the highest point.

2.) In the comics when Sidious is talking to Vader about his past apprentices, he regarded losing Maul as regrettable whereas he referred to Dooku as a torpedo that served his purpose. Base on this, it appears Sidious saw something special in Maul that he did not see in Dooku. That is not to say that Dooku wasn't powerful, be in Sidious' eyes he merely had the requirements for his plans to work and beyond that there was no further value.

3.) Maul's family members demonstrated considerable Force potential. Maul's mother Talzin had the power to match that of Sidious' for a time and really only lost because Dooku and Sidious ganged up on her. Maul's brother Savage had limited training under both Dooku and Maul and was able to do such incredible feats as Force Choke the more powerful Dooku and Ventress simultaneously, unleash a Force repulse destroying all the battle droids in a hanger, kill Jedi council member Adi Gallia, and survive a duel against Darth Sidious longer than three Jedi Council members did. Granted, Savage's feats a partially attributed to the ritual the Nightsisters performed on him to enhance his physical prowess and Force powers.

In canon, Maul in The Clone Wars is more powerful than Maul in The Phantom Menace. However, he is not powerful enough to defeat Sidious. After the war and into Rebels, it doesn't appear Maul has progressed much as he states that he unable to defeat Vader himself and ultimately was swiftly cut down by Obi wan. Clearly Sidious knowledge in the Force exceeds that of Maul. However knowledge and experience is not always everything as Anakin was able to kill the veteran Dooku by tapping into the Dark Side during their final duel, Ahsoka was able to match Maul's power during their duel on Mandalore, and Rey was able to defeat her grandfather Sidious despite have decades less experience (although this could be a bad example as Rey is viewed as a Mary Sue). If Maul was not cut in half on Naboo, remained Sidious' apprentice, and spent the next 10 years continuing to learn the Dark Side from his master (as well as study Nightsister secrets and rituals) instead of rotting away in some garbage dump while losing his mind, do you think he could have had the capacity to match Sidious' power?

 

Does anybody know what senators canonically went out of their way to be major jerks to clones?

 

@Cowgirl Jedi 1701 I don't remember any names from the top of my head, but I think we got to see a few of those in the TCW episode about the Senate hostage crisis (major asterisk here, my memories of that episode are pretty nebulous)

 

Halle Burtoni may have? Like the above comment, I recall dimly the ep featuring her and several senators, along with Padmé.

 

My answer is a simple "no." Easy enough since the whole "surviving being cut in half thing" is so ridiculous that I simply dimness that along with all the other times TCW takes EU places and such and then completely screws them up as non-cannon. For example, Rygoth (sp) in my view is still tidally locked and has no temperate areas.

More accurately, Sidious isn't so powerful because of his connection to the force. It's due to a combination of his amazing skill at farseeing, and his skill at politics, scheming, deception and manipulation (frankly which have little to nothing to do with the force) that gets him turned into head of a New Order. To be frank, other then his skill at farseeing, all he really needed to be so much as force sensitive to do is to intimate the Trade Federation etc. into doing what he wants, getting Count Dooku on his side, and getting Vader on his side and surviving the last-ditch efforts of the Jedi to stop him. And the comparative utility of farseeing and a gift for using thinking to predict the results of one's actions is very much not a settled one in my book. Honestly Dooku doesn't seem to have any need to be force sensitive to do his role. A non-force sensitive charismatic figure could do the same thing almost as well.

That should stand as an operative lesson on a GFFA - being a Jedi master or Sith Lord is not the end of everything. Think of it another way - at the climax of ROTJ, assume Luke falls to the dark side. Then what happens? Him, Vader if still alive and Palpatine get blown up with the Death Star II.* Result is the same except Luke is dead.

There's an interesting fanifc idea - a subtle rewrite of the PT with a non-Sith, not even force sensitive Palpatine still winding up Emperor.

((* Yes I know about the guy using the force to enhance the combat skill of the Imperial fleet - but he would get blown up too. Also, consider the timeline - by the time Emperor dies and that guy stops doing it Rouge Squadron and Lando are already deep in the Death Star II to blow the reactor. The outcome is pretty much already decided by that point.))

 

Unfortunately, if Luke falls to the dark side, Palpatine stops being distracted, becomes aware of the threat, and at a minimum successfully evacuates the Death Star II just as Luke himself actually did.

And then the Jedi immediately kill him, something that only didn't happen in RotS because Palpatine was not only a Sith, but a Sith of sufficient capability to defeat Master Yoda in combat (something that we know from him defeating Dooku, 95% of Sith could not accomplish).

While being a Jedi or Sith is most assuredly not everything in Star Wars, in the critically important category of personal survivability - something that matters a great deal to any autocrat or would be autocrat - it's an awful lot. Autocrats needing the backing of Force using bodyguards or some kind of group that can conceivably deal with the threat of Force using assassins, and given the nature of how the dark side works it is extremely difficult to be a non-Force sensitive who manages to convince a dark side based Force tradition to provide that level of protection instead of killing you and taking your place (though the Contispex dynasty that ruled the Pius Dea managed it through the device of theocracy). Mandalorians can conceivably do this, as can, potentially, a Republic Chancellor with sufficient backing from the Genoharadan (Leotyne Saresh seems to have attempted this route, though the circumstances were...complicated). Otherwise, well, at some point the autocrat wakes up in the morning with a lightsaber through the chest.

Edit: I realized there is one really good way to conquer the galaxy without using the Force: be an ascended droid intelligence distributed across multiple bodies like SCORPIO.

 

So I was wondering, in the 2003 Clone Wars show were experimenting on Nelvannian warriors to turn them into large hulking monsters. What I am wondering is if there was a live action version of this, what would the mutated Nelvannians look like. In the cartoon, the mutated Nelvannians looked like the Blob from X-Men. However, a bunch of fat guys doesn't really look that intimidating, so I'm wondering if they would actually look like the Blob or if that would just be the cartoon's rendition (since Grievous in the 2003 show looked nothing like live action). Would they look more muscular like the Hulk or the Titans from the Arkham game series? Or would their muscles appear more conservative in that the mutated Nelvannians would be as big as Wrecker or Savage Oppress?

 

Good point.

That's pretty much it. Destroying the Jedi Order will take a Jedi or Sith to fight them.

 

Honestly, I think you put so much thought and research into what constitutes canon that your judgement is as good as anyone's. And you make an excellent case for artistic freedom in this instance.

Personally, I would envision these characters based on what kind of story I want to tell and what I want their day-to-day experience to be. If they integrate well into their society, I'd go conservative on the muscles. If you want to emphasize their isolation from others for being big and scary, I'd design them more like the Hulk.

 

So basically what I am trying to do is take the drugs that were used to mutate the Nelvannians and apply them to the Morgukai Shadow Army. During the Clone Wars in Legends, the Separatists attempted to create their own clone army by cloning the Morgukai warrior Bok on Selucami. A thought I had was if the Separatists were capable of creating super soldiers as demonstrated with the experiments on the Nelvannians, they could have applied those enhancements to the Morgukai warriors to create an army of super clone soldiers. These super clones would be wearing cortosis armor and wielding cortosis staffs/blades so their emphasis would be on close combat in order to put their enhance physiologies to use. In this scenario, which route would go in terms of muscle size?

 

I think there's a good argument for either character design in terms of plausibility.

If you're concerned primarily with the practical implications of the character design, I would look at it form a war logistics angle. Bigger soldiers means that custom armour and uniforms are a necessity; this is probably fine early in the war, but could become a problem for the Separatists later on as their resources dwindle. People lose or break their weapons, their armour absorbs too many hits and gets damaged, clothes tear, and boots wear out. Factories that make their custom pieces get damaged, or they lose that territory to the opposing side, so there goes your custom gear. It would be a lot easier to have the option of replacing their gear with surplus from other wars; humungous soldiers are more likely to be missing armour or have ill-fitting boots because the surplus gear was made for average sized soldiers. If you want the soldiers losing morale as the war goes on to be part of the story, I'd go for the bigger soldiers for this reason.

 

@Grievous2003 - You might consider checking out the Literature forum for questions like these; they love digging into this sort of thing over there and will probably be able to give you more in-depth answers. I can't speak for all of fanfic, but a lot of us here aren't going to be much help when it comes to details about power levels and muscle sizes, etc.; and few of us regard any of those things as having a "correct" answer at all. A writer can make just about anything believable or entertaining if it's handled skillfully enough.


EDIT: Ninja'ed! Okay, so some of us will have detailed answers for those sorts of questions, but Lit is still potentially a good resource because they're very detail-oriented there.

 

This is broadly true. Verisimilitude is not realism, the goal is to create the appearance of truth so the audience doesn't lose immersion, not actual accuracy. Additionally, Star Wars is a very 'soft' universe overall. It's a space fantasy and not really concerned with things like proper biomechanics (I mean, Yoda is allowed to fight lightsaber duels with humans) and has a long history of extremely duboius ideas inserted by various authors - ex. Yuuzhan Vong amphistaffs can block a weapon that can slice through starship hull plate because reasons.

Star Wars does have (two) extremely large canonical reference resources to draw upon, and I'm generally of the opinion that consistency with this material is helpful in anchoring the frame of reference. Familiar canonical elements should behave in familiar ways, as much as possible. For example, a TIE fighter shouldn't suddenly fire missiles, because the capabilities of TIEs are well known and changing them without clear foreshadowing feels like playing a trick on the audience. Obviously, this won't always hold, as many canon elements have either extremely vague definitional boundaries (including pretty much anything involving the Force) or conflicting and even outright contradictory explanations across different sources or continuities (ex. Beskar is basically as effective as armor as the plot needs it to be from frame to frame). It's also important to take into effect how the limitations of various media produced various decisions. For example, to draw upon the Nelvaanian example proffered earlier, one of the reasons the appearance of the mutated individuals was so extreme was that the animation style used in the Gendy Tarkovsky Clone Wars was highly stylized and to make the freakish nature of the mutations clear they had to make it incredibly obvious.

 

With, as you say, the caveats that there is an incredible amount of leeway within SW, for all the reasons you said. SW isn't hard sci-fi. There are two canons. There's an incredible amount of vagueness in lots of areas, as well as out and out contradictions between sources, and yes, limitations of the various media and questionable concepts inserted by various authors. And, I'd add to the list, the reality that very few fans are going to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all these details and both canons, and the fact that canon itself is an ever-changing beast.

So, yes, the bottom line here is that a good writer can make almost anything believable and/or entertaining. Imagination and writing skill are the most important ingredients here. A writer who prefers to stick to canon as closely as possible certainly should do so; that's what's going to make them happy and probably where they'll be most comfortable writing. But if you want to contradict canon, have a field day with it. Canon can contradict itself, so we can contradict canon. Write humor, write crack, make up your own history for why things are, introduce a compelling reason why something happened differently. Fanfic isn't official fic, and we have none of the official limitations. If you want to write it, write it. It'll make you happy and there's an audience for every fic out there.

 

Except that weird time when all the novels and other stories in the Expanded Universe (now "Legends") were at one point official fic that essentially turned into fanfic which pretty much goes to show you that 'canon' is whatever you make of it because today's canon is tomorrow's non-canon.