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Last time around Sean Williams told us a little about writing novels set within the Star Wars universe. Today, he’s back for Part 2 of the interview…

How much freedom do you get in writing a Star Wars novel?

A surprising amount, I’ve found, within certain restrictions. Obviously you have to write something appropriate for the Star Wars publishing line–so graphic sex and violence are out. And it has to fit into the universe as given. But as long as you’re prepared to toe those lines, you’ll be fine. (If you didn’t, why would you want to write a Star Wars novel?) You’ve got the whole ‘Galaxy Far, Far Away’ to play in, and as I keep saying, it’s a big place.

Of course, the nature of the story you’re hired to write does dictate precisely what freedoms you’ll have. The Force Unleashed was a tightly-constrained, close-focus account of two characters at one critical point in history. It was also the novelization of an action computer game, based largely on the game’s script. To invest the novel with too much history, philosophy, backstory, etc, would be to rob the book of the momentum it needed to feel representational of the game–so there were less freedoms with this book, in that sense. I was, however, freed up to explore the psychology of the characters, to really dig deep into their emotional cores, and I think that at least partly explains the book’s ongoing popularity.

Writing in The Old Republic presents a whole different sort of challenge, because it’s an MMORPG [http://www.mmorpg.com/]—there are dozens of stories spread across many characters and character classes. There are decades of history behind it, and thousands of hours of gameplay. Where do you even start? The hard thing here was finding a single scenario, a series of converging stories, that accurately represented the world of the game without giving anything away about the game. It sets things up, while at the same time standing alone. It’s very important to me that all my game novelizations works as novels in their own right, because there are plenty of people who will just read the book. And I write novels, of course, not cheat manuals.

What’s the hardest thing about writing Star Wars?

I think I was just touching on it, there: the need to satisfy a large number of often contradictory imperatives coming at you from all sides. Everyone involved in a Star Wars project—and there are a lot when you’re writing a game tie-in—have an investment in the finished product, as they should. And sometimes the timelines are very tight. There’s nothing more intense than writing a novel in a month with a dozen people looking over your shoulder. It’s like the universe is waiting for you to fail. But you don’t—or at least I hope I haven’t. You rise to the challenge and you give it your all, and then a bit more. There is no try, as the little green man himself said. You just do it.

The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance is your latest Star Wars book. Will there be more?

We’ll see. The book is doing very well, and getting good reviews, and I certainly enjoyed writing it. I suspect The Old Republic is huge enough for dozens of novels, and I like to the think that the characters I created for Fatal Alliance are interesting enough to hear more from. It’s not up to me, though. Time will tell.

Would you ever consider writing for another franchise, like Star Trek or Doctor Who?

Ah, well, that’s an easy one, because I have already written for Doctor Who—just one Third Doctor short story for Big Finish, that’s all, but I was very pleased when it was picked for their “best of” anthology, Re:Collections, as my love of SF really began with that franchise. I wouldn’t write for Star Trek because I’ve never been a huge fan (all apologies to those who are; vive la difference etc) but I have gone after Battlestar Galactica a couple of times, and I might have done something there if my timing hadn’t been consistently out. I came close to a Firefly novel once, which would have been fun, and since The Force Unleashed did so well, I have been offered other franchises that would have been fun and high profile, but always it’s a juggle between original work and tie-ins. I don’t want to do one at the expense of the other. I want to have my cake and eat someone else’s too.

My thanks to Sean Williams for dropping by Literary Clutter to chat about writing in the Star Wars universe. To find out more about Sean and his writing, check out his website.

Sean will be attending Aussiecon 4, the 68^th World Science Fictions Convention, which starts tomorrow (2 Sept) at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. I’ll also be there… so Literary Clutter will return after it’s all over, with a report on the convention.

Catch ya later,  George

PS. Follow me on Twitter… quick… before it’s too late!

Tags: Sean Williams

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Interviews, Science fiction, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.