How To Write A Star Wars Movie

This article is about the story, characters, and dialogue, not the past. It is also about giving you some theories behind the story and characters.

It is my hope that the next movie goes out and creates some excitement for the next trilogy of films.

If that happens, we will likely see a debate about whether this is really the last time we'll see Luke Skywalker or Kylo Ren.

A bigger question will be, will we have enough people interested to continue the franchise, or will the popularity of the saga dwindle? I am hoping that, by writing this article, it will spark a conversation. Let's get started.

This is the first article in a three-part series.

A Star Wars story

We must remember that George Lucas, the original creator of Star Wars, did not write a Star Wars story. A story is what one can imagine from something.

He had Lucasfilm create storyboards for each scene and wrote the dialog, but George never actually wrote the story. Michael Kaminski, author of Creating the Star Wars Universe: The Script, the Origins of the Prequel Trilogy, explains why:

The story needs to be drawn out, all the way through, so the dialogue has to move and have meaning. So you have to work up to that.

He was very much a storyteller. He was a storyboard artist, with a background in film-making, and worked on some of the earliest Star Wars storyboards.

He made some big mistakes, and it cost the prequel trilogy a good deal of the energy it would otherwise have had. When you see the last prequel, it's clear that the episodes should have been three.

George Lucas made some mistakes, but he was a true storyteller.

George Lucas

The point is that George Lucas could have written a story. What we saw in the original trilogy is the result of some of the conversations that he had.

My theory is that this is why he named the characters Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Their names give you the understanding of the power of the Jedi and of Vader.

Star Wars Characters

Star Wars characters are not portrayed by actors or "actors". Luke Skywalker was not an actor; he was a Jedi Knight. His words are his only words. Darth Vader, is a character, but he was played by a man named James Earl Jones.

When people say the voice is James Earl Jones, they are playing the part of Darth Vader. He also made other parts, but the basic acting role is Darth Vader.

The specific abilities that each Jedi Knight has are completely within the realm of a mind. It doesn't matter what the actor's voice sounds like, their actions still match the physical skills of the Jedi.

Jedi can fly, hover, read minds, and be invisible. If Luke Skywalker had sounded like an actor and not an actor pretending to sound like Luke Skywalker, he would have been a terrible Jedi Knight. The only way to do it justice is to see it happen.

These are just some examples of what is possible with the concept of the mind in fiction. How many times have you seen that some role in a film was performed by a voice actor, yet it looked like a real person?

How many times have you seen a person play a person?

Voice-over & performance

Star Wars uses voice over for all the female characters. That's great, but it doesn't work for all roles.

In The Force Awakens, we don't hear what Rey says. We only hear her actions and her body language.

If you can't hear what she says, why bother with a voice over?

There are other approaches to voice over. A very nice feature of The Force Awakens is the various scenes where Rey is using the Force.

These scenes were animated with the words being cut out of the backgrounds. In the edited version, you see the scene but not what Rey is saying.

Being inside a character's mind is not a physical act. It is a mental one. That is why it doesn't work well in every story.

A storyteller can use the power of the mind to control an audience. Just like a magician, they can use trickery to make people believe in things that aren't actually there.

What is true is that in writing a book, the mind has its own agency and is capable of telling a story that cannot be captured in words. The words are only there to convey meaning.

What is voice over?

Voice over is a performance. What the writer is writing is the words and the voice. The words are still in the physical realm.

What is unique about voice over is that the words are in the mental world. When the words are the words of the mind, they are perceived differently.

The words are in the mental realm, not the physical one.

A mistake that many people make when they start writing is thinking about the physical words instead of the mental words. A writer might think "Write what you know".

You can think about what you know, but you won't have what it takes to write about what you don't know. The writer who wants to write about what he doesn't know is wasting his time.

The writer who wants to write about what he doesn't know will do it without outside help.

A good voice over is not a voice over. It is a performance that reveals more of the inner mind of the character.

That is the purpose of voice over.

If the audience is going to be told the story of the characters through the words, then we as readers want the author to tell the story in a way that makes the words come alive.

They want the author to tap into the world of the character and use language that draws the reader in. The key is to convey the essence of what the characters say.

If a writer cannot tap into the essence of what the character is trying to say, then why bother with voice over? If the words of the book are not in sync with the actions, then the audience will be confused.

They will not be able to tell what the characters are saying. The mind is in the physical world, but the mind is also in the mental world.

The mind is capable of magic. When a character is trying to convince another person, he is relying on physical actions.

He doesn't care that the physical actions don't match his mental statements.