4. the star wars universe

I love it when a fic invents its own Star Wars things and planets and words and gadgets. I don't see it a lot, but I personally think it's so much fun.  It's also really amazing to see planets that are already in the Star Wars universe mentioned, or when a senator (who is usually anakin's love interest) is from a newly made planet by the author.  It's so cool seeing everyone's creativity. Come on, guys, Naboo is great, but overused! (You can still use it though.  I'm guilty.)

Inventing a planet is really fun.  You can make them up so easily. For example, in front of me right now is a pillow, a McDonald's toy that is Snoopy on Schroeder's piano, and a paper towel roll. Here's my three examples:

Planet: Pillia. (Pill-ee-uh) Cold, houses a species of large birds, whose feathers are often found on the land.  The Pillians specialize in medicine and tend to be Force Sensitive, but not often Jedi.  The chiefs of many villages on Pillia have the ability to see the future through dreams and are skilled at analyzing other people's dreams, too.

Planet: Sn'roede (Snuh-road). Home to many cities and a people passionate about music and the arts.  These people thrive off of their own creativity and are very well off from the planet's thriving economy, but are very humble and always looking to share their love for the arts with visitors and other communities.

Planet: Rillia (Rill-ee-uh). A dry planet covered in rocky desert with lots of wind.  Not many people live on the planet— it's breathable, but not extremely habitable, as the dry land makes finding food and water difficult.  One thing that does grow on this planet are these trees whose leaves are bright white and fabric-like, and the people who live there harvest these leaves and sell them to other planets for fabric-making.

(feel free to steal, idc!)

See? That was honestly so so easy and so much fun.  Inventing Star Wars planets is genuinely the most fun part of writing Star Wars fanfictions.

Another amazing resource is Wookiepedia, the official Star Wars fandom wiki.  You can literally go to the planet list and pick one, and it's already got a climate and a little bit of history and culture for you to build off of, and you can have some events take place there, whether that's a clone wars battle or the birth of your mc.

Link for Wookiepedia in comments >

Another thing that tends to bother me is when people bring Earth things into Star Wars.  They don't drink coffee, guys, they drink caf.  They don't play poker.  They play Sabacc.  They don't play chess, they play dejarik (that holographic monster game we see them play on the millennium falcon in A New Hope). It's so easy to find food for them to eat or drinks or games or even different species they can have as pets on Wookiepedia.  You can even make them up, just please guys be creative! It's so so so much more fun!

Also another thing that gets difficult for me and I'm sure other people experience this too, is writing battles and lightsaber fights. My best tip for this is to read Star Wars books, because honestly, those authors have it down.  My personal favorite rn is Brotherhood— and it also has a couple battle sequences and lightsaber fights too, which is so amazing.  You're going to need those, especially if your character is a Jedi, and reading the Star Wars books and seeing how their scenes flowed, what words they used, and all that good stuff was so inspirational and amazingly helpful.

Amazon link to Brotherhood >

Now, if your character is a Jedi, in most fanfics, they start out as a Padawan.  And every Padawan needs a master.  If your mc is a Padawan at the same time as Anakin, their master cannot be Obi-Wan.  No master has two Padawans at once, it's too difficult.  Plus Anakin is a handful as it is— the Council wouldn't be doing that to poor Obi-Wan.  It's super cool when you pick another Jedi Knight or master from Star Wars, because then you get to totally study an under appreciated character which is always great.

Another thing I literally LOVE to see (that I totally should have done in my Anakin fic, would have been so fun) is when peoples' Jedi mcs have an oc as their master.  I've seen a couple with that, and I love learning about this new side character that means a lot to the mc.

Another one of my helpful resources has been fantasynamegenerators.com— they have a Star Wars section that literally has every species and planet and thing for naming you could ever ask for. Everything from clones to wookies to droids to Alderaanians.  Please don't give your main character a name like Susie or Megan. No offense to Susies or Megans, but it's not a Star Wars name exactly.

Link for fantasy name generators (Star wars homepage) >

"Ok but what about Luke? That's a name you hear all the time! And his uncle's name was Owen!" I guess I have nothing to say to that.  But usually, most of the time, we hear a little more exotic names.  You can choose a common, Earth name, but don't make it too common.  There's a Goldilocks zone there.  I just feel like Anakin and the love of his life Barbara or Anakin and the love of his life Olivia kind of takes me out of the universe. Sorry to all the Barbaras and Olivias lol.

One of my most favorite name resources is actually nameberry.com, which is meant to be a site for parents to pick out names for their children, but I be using it all the times.  It has this super cool advanced feature where you can choose gender (or gender less) ethnicity, if you want it to be a rarer name, what you want it to start with, even meaning.  Nameberry is cool also because you can make an account and heart names so that you can use them for future fanfics or other characters in your book, plus they tell you the meaning and sometimes the history of every name, and there's some really amazing, rarer names that I love to see used in fics. 

Nameberry.com link in comments >

Nameberry advanced search link >

Overall, just try to immerse your readers in the Star Wars universe as much as possible. If they wanted to have a real world fic, they would have read one of the many other romance books on Wattpad, but they came to you. Give them what they deserve, I know you can do it!