Star Wars Authors Doescher and Kogge at Star Wars Reads Event

Star Wars authors Ian Doescher (William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series) and Michael Kogge (Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know) recently took part in panels at the Star Wars Reads weekend event at Victoria Gardens library in Rancho Cucamonga, California. SirStevesGuide.com forums’ own Bel-Cam Jos was moderator of one of these panels, and has some great details from the event.

“Portland, Oregon-based author Ian Doescher [deh-sher] (pictured above, with a statue of his inspiration) came to Rancho Cucamonga, CA on May 28, 2016, at the 9th annual Star Wars Reads celebration as the feature in a panel discussion about his Star Wars Shakespeare book series. At the event – formerly the library’s Star Wars Day, now a 2-day event thanks to increased support – Doescher spoke of his theater background going back to high school, so putting together the style of the Bard with Star Wars made sense. While reading some passages from his books at the panel, Doescher did an admirable Yoda impression and read with confidence and inflections. He had read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (published by Quirk Books, written by Seth Grahame-Smith) and found the email contact information on the book jacket, writing to propose a mash-up of Shakespeare and Star Wars. The company told Doescher to send them what he had in mind, and soon after the book was accepted, then licensing approval from Lucasfilm was reached. Doescher noted for aspiring writers that his quick rise is not what they should expect.

With the books themselves, Doescher did not really have input on the woodcut-type sketch pictures in them or on the covers. The artist was French (or French Canadian; I don’t recall which) who made them look as if they would have been from the late 16th- or early 17th-centuries. Doescher’s favorite was from The Jedi Doth Return, where Admiral Ackbar looks very much like a classic sea captain. He designed the later books (after Verily, A New Hope) to have unique quirks (no pun intended) for certain characters or situations. He found times where specific Shakespeare lines would work for certain scenes (I believe he mentioned that Luke gives an inspirational speech before attacking the first Death Star akin to one in Henry V). But the best parts were when readers realized that characters had their own styles of speaking: Yoda (in Haiku), Boba Fett (in prose), Ackbar (his few lines all end with a rhyme of the word “trap” ), the introductory Rumour had acrostics (where the first word in each line would then spell out a phrase). One hidden gem he mentioned (I never knew this one) was a “Rick Roll” in the middle of an Anakin line, where the acrostic in the first words’ letters spells out “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and the last letters spelled something like “You’ve Been Rick Rolled.” Others were that Mace Windu’s lines all include a Samuel L. Jackson movie title reference, or that Jar-Jar speaks in pidgin speech because he thinks other species like humans expect Gungans to be dumb and simple (he said that would address the issue of Jar-Jar’s polarizing effect from the films).

When asked about The Force Awakens, Doescher is obviously hopeful he would be chosen to write that Shakespeare version as well. But I asked if he would prefer to have all of the upcoming trilogy films released first, so he could make allusions to events, characters, or plotlines that the readers would already know; he thought that was a very good question that he hadn’t considered before, and that would be a good point.

For editorial changes, he mentioned a few scenes he proposed that Lucasfilm rejected: a soliloquy by Vader in Verily, A New Hope where he questions if it he should kill innocents (Lucasfilm said as of that film, Vader was completely evil and would not doubt his motives; so Doescher simply flipped the tone of it 180 degrees); Vader mentioning Padme’s name in the same book (Lucasfilm didn’t want any Prequels references in the first book); and Fett convincing Lando to betray Han in The Empire Striketh Back (I believe the reason was “too close to canon” he said).

After the panel, Doescher signed copies of his books at the local comic shop’s booth. For his future writing plans, I believe he mentioned a possible Star Wars story, not in iambic pentameter or borrowing from the Bard; I am sure readers will enjoy that as much as his New York Times-best selling series has been.

There was another Star Wars writer at the same event, on the second day, May 29: Michael Kogge, who wrote the junior novelization of The Force Awakens, some of the Rebels books, and co-wrote Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know. I was just an audience member and not a moderator at this panel. His background with Star Wars included the SW Adventure Journal from West End Games and articles for SW Insider. Kogge also wrote the adaptation of the Batman v. Superman film, and that manuscript was due a few weeks after TFAwas.

He had a brief time to look over a script treatment to take notes but did not get to go on-set and therefore had no visuals to help write his book. He mentioned there were some parts he “got right” once he saw the film, and others that weren’t the way he wrote them to be. He went to a wedding while he was writing the book and had to be careful where he left his laptop and couldn’t tell anyone what he was writing.

When asked about the captions below the film photos inside the book, he said he did not write them. He was surprised to hear that I felt they were in a different voice than how the book was written (which was why I asked him the question). The parts that Kogge got to expand from the film included starting the book with FN-2187 learning about the upcoming Jakku mission, allowing the reader to get into his head and learn about his morals; Rey’s dreams on Jakku; and how Poe got himself off Jakku after the TIE crash.

Kogge also signed books at the same comic booth, and he was very personable and asked some of the children in line what they liked about the books and who their favorite characters were. He hoped to be selected as the writer of the upcoming trilogy’s novelizations, too.”