Que the John Williams music, because today I’ll be talking about Star Wars!
Star Wars has been a part of my life for, well, most of my life! I love the way the characters are built up and interact with each other. I love the intense action and story. I’m enthralled by the overarching narrative and world building(well in Star Wars case universe building, but I digress). Plain and simple, I love Star Wars! Which is why today I’ll be taking you on a journey through this franchise to show you what two things we can learn from it and how we can apply it to our own writing.
When you think of Star Wars, what comes to mind? Is it the logo, the music, the little green man, the whiny boy from a desert planet, or is it something else? The point is, something comes to mind. You may not know anything about Star Wars at all, but when someone says the words “Star War” something from the franchise comes to mind. This is the first thing we can learn from Star Wars, memorability. We all write about characters, fictitious or based in reality, but more often than not, only a handful of people will remember them. I know Star Wars was originally a movie, thereby more people had access to it, but still you have to admit, the franchise made extremely memorable characters. The way Star Wars was able to make memorable characters, in my opinion, is by using relatable, realistic, and generic characters with a slight twist. Let me give you two examples: the character Luke SkyWalker is your standard male protagonist; seeking adventure, white, whiny, and born with an exceptional amount of powers(his force abilities that is). The nice lemony twist is, Luke reacts like any normal person in this situation. He doesn’t believe that he has any connection to this mystical power, but when a recording of a cute girl asking for help appears, he’s all in. I’m not condoning his motivations, I’m just saying it’s realistic. I’m a guy, trust me on this. Luke is also a dynamic character. While at first he only does it for the girl, he later does it to avenge his dead aunt and uncle and bring peace to the galaxy. My next example is the cute girl, Princess Leia Organa. When Luke and smuggler Han Solo finally save Leia, she says the classic line, “You came in that(“that” is the Millennium Falcon)?” When you get rescued, you probably want to be rescued in a classy and organized fashion, and that’s exactly how Leia expected to get rescued as well. We later find out that Leia isn’t just a little snotty, but that she also has admirable qualities such as strong leadership skills, bravery, compassion, and a no-nonsense attitude. You want to have characters like these in your stories because they resonate with the large majority of people. They’re likeable and well-rounded characters. Let it be known, though, that you should not copy and paste these characters into your stories. All I’m saying is that we should make our characters relatable, realistic, and slightly generic with a twist, so that they are likeable! Sorry, it’s just you guys won’t believe how many people don’t get that. It gets a tad bit annoying re-explaining myself, so yeah my apologies.
Now it’s time to move on to the second thing we can learn from Star Wars, that being the portrayal of power. In Star Wars the Jedi are portrayed as the good guys( the reason I say the Jedi are portrayed as good guys is because we find out in the comics and books that the Jedi have made some morally ambiguous decisions) and the Sith are the bad guys. The Republic, the New Republic, and Alliance are the good governments, the Separatists, Empire, Yuuzhan Vong, and Lost Tribe of the Sith(I don’t count the new trilogy movies, which is why the First Order isn’t on here) are evil governments. Any ways, you can clearly see that one side is primarily good and the other side is evil. This is what we call a balance of power, good and evil exist to show what power can do to both good and bad people(or organizations, governments, etc.). Take Anikan SkyWalker for example, he was supposed to bring balance to the force(which he eventually does in Return of the Jedi), but when Palpatine, who is an evil sith lord, offers him power which he can’t refuse, the power to save his wife from death, then he swears allegiance to Palpatine and his teachings. Anakin was misguided which is why he was willing to do anything to gain power, even if that meant committing horrendous deeds upon the galaxy. Star Wars shows us that even the best of us, or maybe the most powerful of us, can possibly be corrupted by power. It also, surprisingly, let’s us know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. It also shows us who has more power/control, who has less power/control. In the original trilogy the Empire is the overpowered central government in the galaxy. In the prequels the overpowered central government is the Galactic Republic. I could go on and on about all the different governments that we learn about in the books and comics, like the Old Republic or the New Galactic Republic, but I’ll stop at these two. Now that you know how Star Wars portrays power, let me explain how we can use it in our own writing. When writing our stories we want to have a very clear line between who has more and who has less power/control. You should try to write some type of governing power in your story that has more power than your protagonist( this could be a person as well, not just a government). You also want to have some type of “good guy(s)” and some type of “bad guy(s).” This doesn’t mean that the good guy(s) always make the best decisions, it just means that we know that they make better decisions than the bad guys on more occasions. It’s okay if you make your bad guy(s) relatable or have logical reasoning(in my opinion that makes for a much better story and, I literaly just said that in my first point), but you should have them make morally ambiguous decisions.
Wow! That was a lot to talk about! I thought it was going to be much easier, but I found myself referencing some of my books for information( and relief). None-the-less, it was really fun making this post, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it.
May the force be with you, and remember to wear your pencils!