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S02E28: Expeditiously Chatting with EK Johnston, Part Two
28 Plays3 months ago
What's it like to become a Star Wars writer? How do you deal with playing around in someone else's universe? And what does Larry the Cucumber have to do with it all anyway? Find out as we continue our conversation with author EK Johnston!
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Transcript
Introduction and EK Johnston's Path
00:00:01
Speaker
We're learning about EK Johnston's path to Star Wars author-dom and we're doing it real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a Star Trooper?
00:00:15
Speaker
Author-dom, author-hood, author-ship, I don't know, but I'm just happy to be here. This is Bob Gerard and you are listening to Short for a Stormtrooper and part two of our conversation with Star Wars author E.K. Johnston. If you remember last episode, we met Kate and we found out how she started writing.
Journey to Writing Star Wars
00:00:35
Speaker
And today we're going to dive into specifically how she became a Star Wars writer and what the process was like writing her first Star Wars book, the Ahsoka book. So with no further ado, let's transition over to me and Kate.
00:00:51
Speaker
is So are you writing full time now or are you still? Yes. I'm quite fortunate in that um I do get to write full time. It's not super common. ah The two main reasons I can is that one time Disney gave me a boatload of money for a book.
00:01:06
Speaker
Um, and I was able to like do investments and stuff and set myself up. Um, and the second reason is that I'm Canadian. So we have healthcare, so I don't have to have like a, like a corporate job to, to cover that.
00:01:18
Speaker
So, um, it's, it's definitely not like, not something everybody can do, even if they really, really want to. And even if they're super talented, um, but it's something I'm very happy that I get to do. Yeah, that's fantastic. Congrats on that.
00:01:30
Speaker
Thank you. You know, that would be that would be wonderful for me some point, but I've got to get off my butt and start writing more. um and help Tell me tell me more about how you got into Star Wars.
Filling the YA Star Wars Gap
00:01:40
Speaker
Then how did you make that bridge if you weren't doing Star Wars fanfic to getting noticed? And, you know, has so I worked in a bookstore and um I noticed when I was in that bookstore that there were like Star Wars books in every section of the bookstore.
00:01:58
Speaker
There's this crafting. autobiography sometimes like there were Star Wars books literally everywhere except in YA. There were middle grade Star Wars books and there was like the Young Jedi Academy and like that whole thing. But that's pre like what we consider to be like current YA after like 2009. Yeah.
00:02:16
Speaker
or maybe 2006. um So since Twilight, basically, YA has changed a lot since Twilight came out. And there hasn't been Star Wars in the YA section at that point. And um when Disney gave me that boatload of money for the other books um that I was mentioning, in the back of my mind, I was like, someday they're going to realize that they don't have Star Wars books in the YA section, and they're going to have a meeting. And when they have that meeting, I want someone in the room to know who I am.
00:02:41
Speaker
and um then uh the force awakens was an announced and uh they announced claudia gray so claudia gray and lost stars is the first for all intents and purposes modern ya star wars middle or young adult novel um it's still one of the best i think easily it is like really possibly without contest actually um and then it's uh
Queen Amidala Trilogy Proposal
00:03:06
Speaker
but I still wanted it. So I had submitted a proposal.
00:03:08
Speaker
um It was actually a proposal for a trilogy of books about Queen Amidala and her handmaidens. And I heard back from my agent and he was like super excited. And then I heard back from my Disney editor and she was super excited. And then two days after that, Mike Siglain phoned and he was like, we're putting together some movies because it was Christmas of 2014.
Ahsoka Book Commission
00:03:26
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, I've heard. um And he was like, we'll be in touch. And so ah the next, I think it was August, um,
00:03:34
Speaker
They got in touch and they asked me to officially write a book. They couldn't tell me what it was yet, which was weird. But um later on in the fall, ah they said they wanted Ahsoka, by which point I had finally, I had an inkling that it was going to be Ahsoka, just based on a couple of conversations we'd had.
Influence of Clone Wars and Rebels
00:03:51
Speaker
And then I was like, oh man, I really got to finish the Clone Wars. I put off the Clone Wars because I was like they're going make me like the clones. and And that's just going to suck for me personally, right?
00:04:01
Speaker
And then Rebels came out and I was like, fine, I'll watch the Clone Wars. And then literally in the first episode, Yoda's like, take off your helmets. You're all individuals and you all matter. and I'm like, what? And so that was my introduction to Clone Wars and Rebels.
00:04:16
Speaker
um And then, and I was watching Rebels more or less live at that point. I think season two had just started. um Yeah, I know season two had started because I was every week after The Force Awakens. So The Force Awakens came out in December of 2015.
00:04:28
Speaker
And Lucasfilm kind of took a nap for the month of January. And then about halfway through February, I started sending them outlines. We already knew there was going to Soka book, but they wanted an outline. So I started sending them an outline. It would literally be like every Tuesday, i would send in an outline.
00:04:43
Speaker
And then i would watch that week's episode of the of of Rebels and then email Jen and be like, oh, I'm going to change the outline. Don't worry. I just saw this week's Rebels. And it wasn't that he it wasn't the Kanan and Ahsoka were doing the same things. It was that they were hitting very similar emotional beats.
00:04:59
Speaker
Okay. um And so I wanted to like stop doing that as much as possible. And so I kept like, back to the drawing board pretty much, I kept changing the outline. And this wasn't even really the content, like the events of the book. It was more like the feeling of the book kept changing week to week to week to week.
00:05:15
Speaker
um And then the, my original outline, cause they, they were very vague. They were like, ah we'd like you to write a book about Ahsoka
Story Adjustments and Collaborations
00:05:21
Speaker
Tano. And I was like, cool. Like, what about Ahsoka Tano?
00:05:25
Speaker
I felt like there would be more rules. Like, you guys are Lucasfilm. Don't you have some guidelines or something? I don't know. um And they were like, i don't know how she gets her white lightsabers. And I was like, are serious? Like, what?
00:05:38
Speaker
And so I wrote this, like, outline where um most of the book was the same, except, or what what ended up happening in the book was almost exactly the same, except, um...
00:05:49
Speaker
after Ahsoka went to Ilam and realized that the empire was like destroying it, ah she was like, okay, who do I need to find? who do i who could I find who I know find kyber crystals?
00:06:01
Speaker
um And that was Hondo. So in my original pitch, she went to Hondo and Hondo was like, I will help you, but you have to do all these things for me. And then she uses that to like work for Baal and the the rebellion or like the nascent rebellion. And then she gets the crystals and then all that kind of stuff. um And then they were like, you can't have Hondo.
00:06:19
Speaker
And I was like, okay. So, ah yeah. So we it ended up being, um ah that was when Dave gave me the Inquisitor. Basically, he said I could use the Inquisitor.
00:06:30
Speaker
um So that's where the crystals ended up coming from. um So that was the big difference. My original proposal had Hondo and Dave's counter proposal was like, what if you use this Inquisitor? And I was like, that does make things on the planet a little bit more awkward.
00:06:43
Speaker
um So it worked out well. Yeah, good conflict. um So yeah, it worked out pretty well. And then... um She gets basically her, ah the way that she kind of comes into that was very much like how, um but I remember like when we finally got the outline approved, Rebels was not quite done yet. And I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do if she dies. Like I'm going to be really upset if she dies. I don't know if I can write a dead girl book. Like, I don't know if I can do this.
00:07:10
Speaker
um And then she did it. And then I started writing the book the next day. So it was a very like emotionally fraught period of my life. um But it was really fun. I love that.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah. Well, you I have to admit, i have a little bit of experience writing official canonical content for established IP. Yeah. Which is VeggieTales. That's pretty cool. I do like VeggieTales. It was pretty fun. yeah so So I wrote the, essentially the script for a VeggieTales episode that was audio only. You get it on CD. It was kind of like a radio show. Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:45
Speaker
And I remember because I was leaving for a business trip the day after I had submitted the first outline. And I was literally like about to leave and get on the airplane to fly to Kuala Lumpur.
00:07:57
Speaker
And there was an email in my mailbox from Larry the Cucumber. His feedback. And I was like panicking. I had that moment of like, oh my gosh, I am meddling in somebody else's creation. And now I am going to hear back from them what they said. And you know what? It's like he had like two notes. It took me like literally before I left on the plane, I had made my corrections and sent it back to him. i was like, whoo.
00:08:24
Speaker
But. What was that like with working with Dave Filoni? Because I imagine there was a little bit of back and forth or a lot of back and forth. I know how protective he is of Ahsoka and how much he loves that character.
00:08:35
Speaker
What was that experience like for you? um So that was definitely the part I was the most concerned about um in terms of like, if I could do it or how it would work. um Because I did know how much the character meant to everybody and how much the character meant to Dave.
00:08:49
Speaker
um And at the time, this was 2016. So um the new Clone Wars had not yet been greenlit. And like the live action live action Star Wars was still like a dream, basically. Yeah.
00:09:03
Speaker
um And it was in a lot of ways, it was a test balloon to see if people would still buy Ahsoka stuff um to see if the kids would grow, the kids who had grown up would still buy it.
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, they still interested. And if there were new kids who would buy it, basically. um So it's a test balloon and people were super not sure like they had a lot of doubts.
Ahsoka Book Success
00:09:24
Speaker
um The one person who had zero doubts the entire time was Ashley Eckstein. um And they ended up having like if the book came out in October, and I think at the midway of August.
00:09:37
Speaker
they had to double the first print run. So like they had ordered, ah forget how many, but basically the first print run doubled two and a half, a month and a half before the book came out because like people were so interested in it, um which was amazing and also terrifying. But when we were actually putting it together, um i would hand in the outline. We probably did, i want to say maybe four outlines. It felt like a billion, but it was probably only four.
00:10:02
Speaker
yeah, and The last one was the one where Dave gave me the Inquisitor. And so that was where we kind of pieced that part together. um And then originally he had said, you know, what she go go to, a well, originally when they told me I could only have bail and I was like, what?
00:10:23
Speaker
um And then Dave was like, she we had ah we had a phone call and she was like he was like, yeah, she can like go to a planet and like meet, I don't know, like a boy or a girl. And I was like, definitely meets a girl and like um all that kind of stuff. And and then, ah so we had that part. And then you know three rounds later, I ended up putting the Inquisitor in.
00:10:43
Speaker
um And it was it was very like, it was an interesting way to work. it was the first time i'd ever worked that collaboratively. um Because usually I just have one editor. And this time I had one editor, five people on Story Group and Dave. So there were a lot of notes. And they all have like funny sense of humor and like all that kind of stuff. So it's actually really fun.
00:11:01
Speaker
um And ah so yeah, it was really good. And then by the time we got to the drafting, we did five
Introspective Content and Narrative Balance
00:11:09
Speaker
drafts. Dave read all five of them. ah And I think it was the fifth one.
00:11:17
Speaker
um he had finally sent like basically it was like this is what the animated scene would look like but it was like two sentences long of how crystal bleeding worked and i had to be like um dave i'm not keeping any of these words like not make any sense so it's it's like a page and a half in the book right because i had to like make you feel the music and whatever so um i i got to write that which was really fun and um And then when people started responding, you know, a lot of people really were hoping for, frankly, the Hondo version.
00:11:52
Speaker
um But we couldn't have that. And the thing is with Star Wars, if you're ever reading something and you're like, feel like this would be better with this character, there's definitely a reason why it's not that character.
00:12:02
Speaker
um And they needed him for Disneyland. So um you kind of have that that have that going on, which is which is fun. And so a lot of people, even if they were like, oh, I was i was kind of hoping for this, but like this is it's a much more introspective book than I was expecting. But I guess it's not a show. like When you see things on Star Wars, um you you kind of get a different feeling than when you read it And the book ended up being a really great example of that because one of the first things they asked for was 15,000 words about the Battle of Mandalore with no dialogue or action sequences.
00:12:35
Speaker
And if I could like keep the script one do that and if i could like keep the description to the minimum, that would also be great. And I was like, okay. So I wrote her capturing Maul. And then four years later,
00:12:47
Speaker
three years later, saw it on screen. And I was like, yeah, that's pretty much not exactly how I pictured it, but it's pretty close. And the thing is when I write it, I can't like have shattered glass and music and color and light and dark and like a mocap fight scene and like all that kind of stuff.
00:13:05
Speaker
um But Dave can't tell you what they're thinking. So um you kind of get like both sides
Conclusion and Future Teasers
00:13:10
Speaker
of that. and That's how I approached the Ahsoka book from very, very beginning because they didn't want an action book at all. Yeah.
00:13:16
Speaker
um And i was like, fine, she's gonna do a lot of thinking. um Because that you like that's something that you can't get on the show. You can't figure out of what she's thinking. And so that's really what I leaned into. We are getting close to the 15-minute mark, so I will hit pause, and we will come back next week for the conclusion of my conversation with Kate.
00:13:36
Speaker
We talk more about the Queen series and some of her other projects, and you will not want to miss that. So I hope you've been enjoying this. I certainly have. We've got some great guests lined up and just some good general Star Wars stuff happening. You know, it's going to be a...
00:13:55
Speaker
An interesting year. I'll tell you guys one thing really quick because we have just a few seconds is I just found out that the role of the engineer in Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run at Disneyland and at Disney World is going to get beefed up with this new version of the ride that will come out in May. So for those of us who enjoy being the engineer, we're happy about that.
00:14:22
Speaker
For the rest of you, maybe you'll you know tolerate being the engineer. And if this has no meaning to you just come back next week and hear more about writing Star Wars books. Also, make sure that you join our Discord community and talk to the few of us who are in there actually chatting.
00:14:40
Speaker
And also, of course, smash that like button, smash subscribe, button tell all your friends, proselytize for us. It would be wonderful. We'd love to have more people join us on this journey.
00:14:53
Speaker
In the meantime, the force be with you. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Who's that mindless choice to do? Podcasts, hope you see them through. Star Wars is your favorite in it.
00:15:04
Speaker
Let's chat for 15 minutes. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for us, Spawn Trooper? Aren't you a little short for us?