What If We - a chain story AU - Discussion thread

[NavyGal]

I shall research the age of Obi for you...

 

After a quick google and delving into my memories if we want to be as accurate as possible on Obi's age in ANH and don't mind using EU timeline sources to work this out then he is approximately 13 years old at 44 years before the battle of Yavin making him approximately 57-58 years old.

[DarthBrendo]

So, broad brush strokes here...

 

OWK is on a mission to Tatooine to find a rumoured Clone R&D base, senses Anakin (flying his T-16 shooting Womp Rats in Beggars Canyon with Owen?), takes him, Yoda disagrees, but somehow Anakin is apprenticed to him anyway, they go on a mission (for Bail?), get into some sort of trouble with Clones, get out of it but Anakin is hurt, return to Tatooine to recuperate.

 

This gives us a relationship between Anakin and Owen, his history as a pilot, OWKs history with Bail.

[Guest]

Another idea on how Anakin and Obi-Wan could get together. Anakin is a pilot in the clone wars. Obi-Wan is a jedi. They go on a mission together to do something, Anakin unconsciously unleashes a ridiculous display of the force and Obi-Wan takes him to yoda. They'd be around 18 and 30 I suppose.

 

Here's another question. What are the clone wars about? How are clones involved? Was it fought by clones? Against clones? Over the issue of cloning?

[DarthBrendo]

I think it was Zahns Heir to the Empire trilogy really was the source that fleshed out more then the name.

 

From that, I understood the Cline Wars to be against armies of Clones that had gone amuck for some reason.

[Jaina Jade Skywalker]

I would LOVE to get in on this.

 

For my part, I was the most frustrated with how they dealt with Leia's memories of her mother. I can't remember if the OT said explicitly whether or not Luke and Leia were ACTUALLY twins, or if that's how it just worked out in the prequel plotline, but I think that her "memories" only have validity if she actually stays with her mother for some length of time.

 

I think it would also be a fun experiment to put Anakin and Obi-Wan in the same tempting situations. For instance, instead of the scenario of Anakin being singled out by the Emperor to be a Jedi spy, Obi-Wan and Anakin being tempted by the same kind of darkness and only one of them overcoming it.

 

I wouldn't be entirely against some kind of love triangle either.

 

It would also be fun to fit in Bail Organa as a more prominent character than he was in the movies, whether in a political arena or simply a social connection to Obi-Wan/Anakin through the Jedi.

[Tiana Calthye]

I would love to see Padme on the run with baby Leia. That to me was what bugged me most about the PT. I really wanted to see them together for at least a few years, and then Padme die horribly.

 

And you are absolutely welcome to get in on this, JJS.

 

Brendo, I always wanted to see them fighting clones that had gone amuck, yes.

[Jaina Jade Skywalker]

In fact, Leia spouting, "Ben Kenobi? Where is he?" seems like an inconsistency within the OT by comparison.

 

See, I don't see that as much of an inconsistency, because she was responding to Luke's cue. Luke knew him as Ben Kenobi, she knew him (as shown in the R2 transmission) as Obi-Wan, but when Luke says "I'm here with Ben Kenobi" that was bound to make some kind of sense, regardless of whether or not she had known him by that name.

[Tiana Calthye]

I'm just going to say that right now the list of interested writers looks something like: me, Brendo, JJS... HJP, Scorp, Narci3l, Ami? Certainly depending on how much time we can dedicate to this, I'm thinking we're probably going to want to work off of a scene-by-scene type outline with a little wiggle room. I recommend Google docs as an ideal way to write a chain story with a sizable cast, and work by splitting up characters and doing short RP style posts, but alternatively we could just make our outline and split up the chapter-work. The first way requires possibly a little bit of time arrangement since each writer's work will be in short pieces, and then a final edit to smooth over any POV but in my experience it reads the best as a joint story. The second way requires faith that we'll all handle the characters the same way, as well as a stricter outline.

 

The writer lineup looks fairly talented and personally, I'd rather see people "audition" for the character they want to write, so that it's one person really pouring their passion for the redux of that character... but if we can make a tidy outline we can probably get away with chapter splitting too, and a final edit for consistency.

 

Also, here's a video of someone else's alternate Phantom Menace. It's NSFW for a lot of f-bombs, but I thought I'd present the outline for consideration.

 

[DarthBrendo]

I'll check out the video when I have a bit more time, but I like the idea of splitting up the chapter work, otherwise it'll be too difficult to string the story together and make it flow nicely.

 

I think the chapter method is going to produce a better result, as you said, and will also be the better option time wise for people.

 

And yes, Google Docs will be the best option I think for somethgin with this many people.

[Jaina Jade Skywalker]

For my part I think that splitting up the story by character makes the most sense with multiple writers, RP-style. That being said, we'll have to work extra hard at keeping tense, voice, and maybe even length of posts consistent, with lots and lots of beta reading.

 

I guess the huge questions would then be, 1) which of our authors will play which respective characters? Is that something determined by the audition process or primarily the writer's favorite character? 2) How are we going to come up with the general outline of the story so as to not founder in the land of vague description or adherence to canon plotlines?

[Tiana Calthye]

For my part I think that splitting up the story by character makes the most sense with multiple writers, RP-style. That being said, we'll have to work extra hard at keeping tense, voice, and maybe even length of posts consistent, with lots and lots of beta reading.

That's how I feel, and it would allow for shorter amounts of time spent writing per day since you have to write a paragraph to pass off rather than a few pages. While it might seem like it would grow slower, I think it would build up faster and the beta reading isn't as hard as it would seem. If you and I, JJS, combined the task (I prefer a focus on the plot and characters and style and you obviously prefer nitpicking out the grammar details), it'd go quick. Just as long as people are okay with editing rather than just redlining for the sake of speed.

 

Length of post is no big deal. I'm a huge advocate of using google docs for this, which means that someone can retroactively add a snip of dialogue here, a description there.

 

I'll be honest right now: I've worked on a few chain stories. There are only two ways I've seen them work. One is just "people don't use the same characters in the next post, it's just a theme" - such as bus trip. The other has been "the writers involved in the scene stay live, preferably, and work it out together in Google docs."

 

I have tried the 1,2,3 style posting where each person just carries it on--like "and then" and those only work for silly stories where the plot is less key.

 

So long as we set it out at the beginning: this story is going to be in third person limited, past tense I think we're all smart enough to mostly hold to that restriction.

 

 

 

The list of main heroic characters looks something like, as heroes, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme... I am vastly preferring the idea of Obi-Wan as a protagonist and/or the "cop buddies" feel between Anakin and Obi-Wan. That rounds out the traditional "a hero, a buddy, and a love interest". From there we might very well see Yoda, Bail, and probably a few important army type people.

 

On the dark side, we've definitely got Palpatine, and possibly some other Sith a la Maul running around, and then an army of clones messing shit up.

 

JJS, I think we'll just have to founder in the land of vague description. If it's too strict, people won't want to write. So an outline might look something like:

 

well, I'll just borrow Narcil's idea because I like it:

 

Scene 1: "Anakin is a pilot in the clone wars. Obi-Wan is a jedi. They go on a mission together to do something."

 

Scene 2: "Shit goes down. Obi-Wan and Anakin end up in a big schwack of trouble."

 

Scene 3: "Anakin unconsciously unleashes a ridiculous display of the force which enables them to escape. Anakin did not realize he could use the Force."

 

Scene 4: "Obi-Wan takes him to yoda."

 

Scene 5: "Yoda is uncertain, hey, maybe this kid's a SITH omg, but before any decisions can be made, the Jedi temple is attacked!"

 

It has a specific series of events, but the events and character reactions are left often unspecific for the sake of the writers. There might be a space battle before they get to Yoda. What was the display of Force powers? Whooo knows!

 

 

If people each take a character to write, I'd basically like to see an audition post where people write a short vignette with that character in the premise we finally come up with and then we'll have a poll on top. So it would look something like...

 

 

 

 

Audition: Anakin in (story)

(poll of interested writers)

 

Post 1: writer1

Post2: writer2

Post3: writer3

 

At least for the major characters.

[DarthBrendo]

I'm going to have to regretfully withdraw from this.

 

As I've posted around the place, I'm going to be crazily busy with university assignments for the next few months.

[Guest]

I don't think it's necessary to split up characters, especially main characters, between writers. I mean, we're all star wars fans here, we all want to write Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Yoda. Splitting up characters would really kill my enthusiasm personally. It would also make such a fractured narrative with so many different viewpoints that it would be really overwhelming. I'd rather deal with it like LucasBooks deals with the EU. Everybody deals with the main characters, but some characters are only handled by a specific writer (Eg. Boba Fett and other Mandalorians are almost exclusively handled by Karen Traviss) who has a really strong grasp on them. Palpatine could be a character like this. Jango, if he's used.

 

Tiana, that seems like a good rising action. Maybe some of Palpatine's machinations to get the attack on the Jedi underway can be shown, or that could be a mystery solved later on. After that a lot of jedi on the run scenes could be interesting. Padme could be brought along with them. Anakin and Obi-Wan could have a little battle for her affections. Yoda could be disappointed in Obi-Wan, lose some faith in him for a while.

[Tiana Calthye]

In my experience not splitting characters ends up with a far more disjointed and messy narrative, Narcil. You refer to EU, and while I'd passionately say "well, of course", but... EU is done book by book and the disparity between chapter by chapter is inevitably going to be visible when it comes to different writer's styles, especially if there's more than a couple of writers. If chapters are split between say... two writers, who interchange chapters (A does Anakin, B does Obi-Wan) and likewise, POVs (chapter 1 is from Anakin's POV, chapter 2 from Obi-Wan's POV), especially if the main action splits up for a while a la Attack of the Clones, I think it would come out okay. I'm sure you'd agree that there's a very obvious difference in voice from writer to writer, and that different writers clearly have more passion for certain characters.

 

But if there's ultimately say, 7 people who want to work on it, the difference in handling characters from chapter to chapter is going to show, plus everyone will want to write that final epic scene... and it's inevitably going to stick when one person has to get their chapter back... and doesn't. The big difficulty in the requirement of interchanging chapters is splitting up the action fairly to best take advantage of different writer's strengths, as well as the inevitable wait.

 

With the commitment being much smaller in scale (working a few paragraphs at a time at most!) it allows for more rapid evolution that can be sustained if one writer drops out, and it does not make a fractured narrative. You're imagining RP (and if what I were imagining was RP as well I'd cringe as well. There are some masterful RP posts out there but they are not written with narrative best kept in mind... though the duel between Furion and HJP in the battle stimulator was a riveting read and I'll be going to see the outcome all right). RP is written with no prior agreements, but when you write with someone with the agreement that "this scene is from Anakin's POV and so I'm not going to inject any thoughts but only non-personal observations on behalf of the scene" and likewise the agreement of "and in this scene, x and x will occur" all it does is lend consistency. Nothing's stopping either writer from going on into a description of action between clones fighting things, or describing a pretty sunset, and if you're on a roll, why stop? But when Anakin stops to think Man, this place sucks it's because that writer injected that there.

 

But in short, I think the real killer of the chapter concept is going to be the requirement of a 4-8 page chapter before the next person in line can step up. Any shorter and it becomes RP posts and the problem you speak of resurfaces when it's put together. But I think of people like Ben who have trouble updating more than once every few months, and know that a more rapid-fire solution helps keep the literary ego from surfacing. Also when there's people like you and JJS who haven't been around in a long time, well, I see a lot of oldbies vanish back into the dust.

 

This is just my experience, I've done no small amount of co-writing and my opinion is very much colored by what I've seen happen with chain stories. But I think the answer is going to be "we'll take a majority vote based on who writes it". I'll go with what the majority of the people who want to be involved want to work with (I'm just hoping I can sway people! Character by character is fun if you've never done it before.) and if it ends up being just you and I, Narcil, I'll do chapter by chapter for you.

 

Either way, this is why a detailed outline must be made and agreed on before any actual writing occurs. Too much nattering otherwise. Either that or we can just throw all this out of the window, I'll write an intro and we cross our fingers.

 

Back on the plot topic: so who is Padme? Someone from Alderaan? Do we need to make a new planet just for her? I prefer the slight battle for affections rather than SRSBUSINESS Obi. Though we don't want to go soap opera, because that's one of the things I felt ruined the action. I don't know how people felt about Padme the Action Babe/queen but I think it needs to go either one way or the other... not both. Heck, she could be a Jedi or a clone for all I care! A clone! A little bit of Stockholm syndrome/falling for the enemy going on maybe, eh, eh?

 

If we plan to use her I think we'd better define her, and if we plan to not split characters, we'd better define the character revamp well. That's the thing, of course, we're not just writing the character as-per-canon anymore... but we're revamping these guys.

 

Anakin's now a pilot in the Clone Wars who happens to be really Force sensitive unless someone has a better idea.

 

Ob-Wan's a young Jedi Knight who's young and reckless and gets caught up in the action.

 

Sound about right?

[Jaina Jade Skywalker]

JJS, I think we'll just have to founder in the land of vague description. If it's too strict, people won't want to write. So an outline might look something like:

 

well, I'll just borrow Narcil's idea because I like it:

 

Scene 1: "Anakin is a pilot in the clone wars. Obi-Wan is a jedi. They go on a mission together to do something."

 

Scene 2: "Shit goes down. Obi-Wan and Anakin end up in a big schwack of trouble."

 

Scene 3: "Anakin unconsciously unleashes a ridiculous display of the force which enables them to escape. Anakin did not realize he could use the Force."

 

Scene 4: "Obi-Wan takes him to yoda."

 

Scene 5: "Yoda is uncertain, hey, maybe this kid's a SITH omg, but before any decisions can be made, the Jedi temple is attacked!"

 

Either way, this is why a detailed outline must be made and agreed on before any actual writing occurs. Too much nattering otherwise. Either that or we can just throw all this out of the window, I'll write an intro and we cross our fingers.

 

I think that's more of what I meant. We need SOME sort of outline, or we'll have x number of writers going in x number of different directions. Something this vague still allows for a general plot to be established, but leaves embellishment, character development, and the finer aspects of story up to the writers themselves. Essentially, the difference between RPing this and turning into a story.

 

Concerning Padme's character, here are some pretty good options, some of which Tiana already mentioned.

 

1) A Jedi contemporary of Obi-Wan. This would throw in all sorts of interesting character twists with Anakin, especially considering we're pretty established that Anakin is going to be a Force-sensitive, untrained pilot with the Republic. It would also make keeping her pregnancy/their relationship a secret necessary.

 

2) A clone or other enemy of the Republic. Maybe a prisoner of war?

 

1+2) A DARK JEDI! WHOOAAAAA!

 

3) Anakin's wife. Obvious and maybe boring, but still feasible. Republic soldiers presumably have families, though you never hear about them. Going this route, the only problem I could foresee would be inventing a way to bring her into the greater storyline or conflict, as there wouldn't be an obvious path into it.

 

4) A "random" individual stumbled across on some planet on their journey. I don't much like this path, because it smacks of young Anakin on Tatooine in Phantom Menace.

 

5) A Republic officer or soldier, someone who serves with Anakin, maybe a pilot in his squadron.

 

I think Padme should either be a combat-based character (Jedi, soldier, clone) or not at all involved in combat scenarios.

[jedi_master_gimpy]

Okay, so admittedly I skimmed through this thread pretty quickly and still feel a little lost, but WOW. You all rock. I'm amazed!

 

I think this is a fantastic idea!

 

My preference would be to go with Padme options 1 or 5 from JJS's list. I think that if we really want the opportunity to explore the love angle (granted, not from the overdone, corny, plot-overtaking way the PT showed it) we need Padme to be in the story a lot. If she's not present in any of the action bits it's going to limit our options, and a spit-fire Padme seems more like the type that would draw the reckless duo we're starting to draw up. Although...granted.... them vying for the affections of a more genteel lady would present some humorous situations! I could easily see Padme as either a Jedi or a pilot a la Mirax Terrik style.

 

I think that in order to really define the plot we're going to have to pinpoint Palpatine a little more. I could be wrong, but I don't think the rule of two for Sith (at least by the time it hit the Old Republic) was mentioned until TPM, so keep in mind we could have a whole legion of Sith running around still. I think one of the few things the PT did do well was Palpatine's clever machinations to bring about his literally unquestioned rise to power. Of course, such careful planning by a Sith lord should be almost unnoticeable, however that was also one of the weaknesses of the PT because they never truly showed the best parts of the plot!

I think we want to keep Palpatine's cunning in tact for the sake of a truly worth villain, which means he's still going to have his sticky, manipulative fingers in the thick of it no matter where he is.

 

I would love to be a part of this, but I definitely do not have the time to play a major role. I guess I'd take one of those small side characters that pops in every once in a while, assuming that I can pass the audition once we rebuild the characters we want...

[DarthBrendo]

Are people still interested in this? Or has interest waned?