While walking my son to school today we were talking about the Clone Wars comic book he is writing.

Guess what … that got my mind jumping down the rabbit hole.

I wonder if George Lucas had an inkling of what the Clone Wars would turn out to be when they were mentioned in that fateful scene from A New Hope.

How often do we mention something to fill a little niche of backstory with no intention of ever fleshing the historical event out? Did Lucas intend for The Clone Wars to become the seven-season series that it evolved into?

I’ve done it. I have events like the Afkin War and the Bastet Insurrection. I have characters like the Emperor and Atom’s family who are only referenced in name or brief flashbacks.

Will any of these flesh out into something bigger?

How does an author decide what is background info and what is worth pulling to the fore?

My son and I actually discussed it on the walk to school. He’s in third grade, but his imagination never stops. He is at the stage of general fan fiction, but he comes up with his own stories with Star Wars characters.

He had some dead troopers in the background of one of the cells of his comic book and I asked him why they were there.

His response … ‘because there’s a war happening.’

‘Is the story about the war?’

‘Nope, it’s about Yoda looking for Wookies.’

‘Will you write about the war someday?’

He shrugged.

As to the Afkin War … I shrug.

In the real world, I’m about 1/3 of the way through my first rewrite. I know it’s slow going, but I’m wrestling with the plot. I know what fell out of my pan and I’m not sure I really like it. I’m not planning to go full Hemingway and give you 40 options, but I may take a different vector for the ending.

I’ll let you know when I get there.

In the meantime, keep on reading, keep talking to your kids, and keep on flying the Black.