{"id":11595,"date":"2011-03-18T12:14:19","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T19:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=11595"},"modified":"2011-03-18T12:15:03","modified_gmt":"2011-03-18T19:15:03","slug":"mack-writing-for-star-trek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2011\/03\/mack-writing-for-star-trek\/","title":{"rendered":"Mack: Writing For Star Trek"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author David Mack <\/strong>explains the freedoms and restrictions when it comes to writing Star Trek<\/em> novels.<\/p>\n

A fan since the original series syndication days, Mack came out of film school hoping to write for Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em>. “I hit a lot of obstacles,” he said. “[Editor] John<\/strong> [Ordover<\/strong>] gave me a copy of the writers’ guidelines for the novels. I went home, read them, realized my proposal-in-progress violated every instruction on the page, and decided not to waste John’s time with it. He appreciated this gesture so much that we became friends.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The friendship led the two to team up and pitch story ideas to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine<\/em>, where Mack co-wrote two episodes, Starship Down<\/em> and It’s Only a Paper Moon. Eventually, Mack began writing for the Star Trek: S.C.E<\/em>. eBook series. “After my 2003 short novel Wildfire became an eBook bestseller and critical success,” said Mack, “I was invited by John Ordover to write a pair of TNG novels for his nine-part A Time To<\/em> miniseries event. Those were my first direct to paperback novels, A Time to Kill<\/em> and a Time to Heal<\/em>, the latter of which became a USA Today<\/em> bestseller.”<\/p>\n

Writing for Star Trek<\/em> means making sure not to violate the canon, established in the television series and movies. “[Canon] is the primary product upon which all official licenses tie-in products – books, comics, games, merchandise, etc. – are based and with which they must be consistent,” said Mack. “This is the official decree of the Star Trek<\/em> licensing office at CBS Television Consumer Products, which currently owns and controls all things related to Star Trek<\/em>. Their word is law. End of story.”<\/p>\n

That doesn’t mean authors don’t have freedom to be creative. They have much more freedom with their own original non-canon characters, and even with minor characters from canon Star Trek<\/em>. “For instance, the S.C.E.<\/em> eBooks used several characters from the TNG<\/em> television series, including Sonya Gomez (Samaritan Snare, Q Who<\/em>) and Kieran Duffy (Hollow Pursuits<\/em>),” said Mack. “Because they were both minor characters, who never appeared again after their brief guest stints, the writers of the S.C.E. <\/em>novellas had great freedom to change (and in my case, end) these characters’ lives.”<\/p>\n

Mack has recently signed a deal to write four more Star Trek<\/em> novels, which will be published next year.<\/p>\n

The entire interview can be seen here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author David Mack explains the freedoms and restrictions when it comes to writing Star Trek…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2456],"tags":[2774],"class_list":["post-11595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-mack"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"T'Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"Books<\/a>","tag_info":"Books","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11595"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11599,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11595\/revisions\/11599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}