Why did Ton Phanan have to die?
The X-Wing novels describe wartime action. In war, people die — and not just the unknowns, the annoying second players no one likes, or people with poorly developed backgrounds and undeveloped personalities. If you only kill the minor players, it leeches tension out of any novel. If the reader knows all the characters he’s attached to are perfectly safe, there’s really very little emotional content. Ton Phanan died for reasons other than simply to demonstrate that war is dangerous. In actuality, he was originally scheduled to die in Wraith Squadron, in the scene where Jesmin Ackbar ended up dying. While writing Wraith, as I got to that scene, Phanan struggled with me a bit — characters aren’t just hand puppets their authors wear, and sometimes they disagree with what they’re being asked to do. In Ton’s case, it was obvious that there was something he needed to say or do before he died, but at the time I had no idea what it was. So I substituted Jesmin for Ton and kept thinking about it
