-<<The Downtime Pilots Lounge>>- A Place for Writers of Rogue/Wraith/Other Squadrons.

Hey guys! I'm new arround here and I'm looking for some advice on a NJO era fic I'm trying to write about some Jedi X-wing pilots. The story begins somewhere in the middle of Star By Star and works it's way foward though the timeline. The current working Title is Paladin Squadron and is meant to have a X-wing series feel to it.

Any ideas and advice is welcome. Thanks!

 

TBJ: The best advice for a squadfic is this: Develop your characters. When I set out to do [shameless_plug] Halberd Squadron: Unlikely to Survive [/shameless_plug] my objective was to try to make the characters all come alive and have their own unique personality and role. For a good example of this, see InryiForge's X-wing: Deception.

Another tip is to have a good, complex plot. I don't mean get into real twisty territory; just have something more sophisticated than a standard save-the-galaxy. Mesh it with canon events if you want to fit it into continuity (otherwise, just have fun ). If set during SbS, throw them into the middle of the fall of Coruscant, hearing Leia's holo address and flying cover for evacuation ships. Develop subplots about the relationships and inner conflicts of pilots. Work from that starter.

I know it sounds like a tall order, but a lot of times forethought and detail are what separates a generic squadfic from a really good squadfic.

 

Thanks for the advice Alion_Sangre! So far I've worked out what I hope are some good likeable new characters with a few familiar faces thrown in. The plot so far has them participate in the battles of Talfaglio and Coruscant and eventualy recuing some prisoners in a vong camp.

The relationships are kinda in the works, with only a few set in stone at the start and others developing overtime. For example two of my main characters start out being just slightly more than good freinds and wind up falling over eachother.

I have a few plot twists that I hope will be good and I have the majotity of the major plot points thought out, but some of the more minor stuff is still kinda vague.

The main thing I have problems with is coming up with good character names. Most of my characters already have names, but a few don't, such as a few of the villains. Any advice on comeing up with good names?

 

When I was rencently reading a book on World War II and Britain, I came across a long chapter about the Battle of Britain. What was remarkable was the large number of parallels between the simplified telling of the Battle from the British POV and the Rebellion's fighters prior to the defeat of the second death star. Therefore, I suggest anybody writing about that period might benefit from reading a short history of the Battle. I hope this helps.
~Rosy

 

I'd be very careful to use the "stories" about the Battle of Britain as basis. The accounts of both sides - the RAF as well as the german Luftwaffe - are not particularly accurate speaking of the real events, but tend to dramatize and exaggerate things. A british historian (I'd have to look up his name at home) said:

"The Battle of Britain was a pretty small affair."

which pretty much contradicts the "official british view".

 

I got the impression that a lot of the starfighter stuff was based on WWII fighter planes.

 

I know that much of it is dodgy historically, I was just mentioning it because those exagerated stories reminded me a great deal of the Rebellion and could be helpful to someone writing fanfic.

(Actually, if you read the RAF and Luftwaffe reports on the battles in a critical text they will give a quote and then say something like, contrary to Luftwaffe's estimations of (high number) of RAF planes incapacitate only (significantly lower number) were destroyed in the battle. Both sides reported notoriously bad data. It gets rather funny after a while.)
~Rosy

 

Uh Rosy - welcome to "my" territoy (amateur Luftwaffe historian here ). Of course the Luftwaffe horribly overclaimed in the BoB, but that was mostly due to the circumstances (many planes in a rather small area, fighting over enemy soil etc), but the RAF did the same and used "creative bureaucracy" to minimize its own losses. The Luftwaffe regarded any plane with more than 60% damage as complete loss and dumped it, but the RAF didn't consider a plane lost when the engine (!) was useable again - even if the rest was scrap metal.

The overclaiming stuff is not surprising and it happened to the RAF later, too. For example in the second half of 1941 the RAF claimed 711 german fighters shot down in the Channel region and over France while 432 own fighters were lost. In reality the Luftwaffe lost exactly 117 fighters in combat in the specified timeframe.

 

Cool. Its a very neat period in history.
~Rosy