Who develops the storyline for a Star Wars novel?
The short answer: the credited author. With the sponsorship of former Bantam Spectra editor Tom Dupree, I “auditioned” for the opportunity to write a Star Wars trilogy on the strength of my novels Emprise and The Quiet Pools. After I was approved by Lucasfilm, both Bantam and Lucasfilm sent me cartons of background and reference material, including an extensive timeline distilling the events of the other licensed fiction (novels and comics). I studied the timeline for an unexplored window of time and began generating ideas about the storytelling possibilities which existed in that point in time. Those ideas became a three page-sketch, which I discussed with Tom. With Tom’s endorsement of the “high concept,” I went back and turned the sketch into the detailed 20-page formal submission outline. Bantam reviewed and approved the outline, and so did Lucasfilm in its turn. Finally, I wrote a second, shorter version of the outline (incorporating two modest changes requested or suggested by Lu
