Join us for another interview in a series which highlights the winners of awards from our 2401/2024 Awards Ceremony. Our goal is to give you insight into how our fleet’s best simmers write and imagine their characters as well as their out of character contributions and achievements.
This month we’re interviewing the writer behind Lt. Commander Nolen Hobart playing a male Human/Betazoid Hybrid First Officer assigned to the USS Khitomer. He won the Rising Star Award: “Awarded to members of Lieutenant Commander rank or higher who show great promise in many facets of their participation in the group, and to whom we look to as a future leader. Officers who qualify for this award consistently demonstrate their capabilities in leadership and facilitation of their fellow officers, including a recognisable dedication in their In Character and Out of Character activities to enhance the community.”
Williams: Thanks for taking the time to be here. Would you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, the writer. What part of the world do you call home and what do you do outside of SB 118?
Hobart: Thanks for taking the time to talk to me! I live now in Southern California, though I haven’t always. Before that, I lived in the Netherlands, and before that, China. Originally, though, I hail from New England. Outside of SB118, I’m a father and a corporate muckety-muck, which is the reason for my international lifestyle.
What do you most enjoy about writing? Are there any specific difficulties you face while writing? How do your characters’ strengths and weaknesses synergize?
Writing, when it’s going well, is almost like a drug—a stimulant. It brightens up my days, and makes everything else that’s not writing go that much better. It’s almost as good as coffee in that regard. But it’s not always “good” in that way. Some days, it’s a struggle, and a chore, and I think that’s the difficulty: pushing through those negative feelings to complete the writing task anyways, on the expectation (or sometimes mere hope) that it’ll be worth it on the backside. And, to be honest, I find it usually is.
As to my characters, the strengths are usually their weaknesses. For example, early on I established Lt. Commander Nolen Hobart as a very strong empath, which creates opportunities for him to do things other characters can’t. At the same time, it creates problems other characters don’t have, like the time the USS Arrow took on a cargo bay full of traumatized slave laborers and POWs. It was very distracting for him, as are anyone’s strong emotions. I find this is a believable way to write a flawed character (as all characters ought to be!) while at the same time being very easy to track. When I’m bouncing around from my PC to my PNPCs and MSNPCs and back again, a simple character concept or archetype is easier to get into the headspace of than a complicated one.
There are many roads that lead to writing at Starbase 118. What brought you here? Was it just writing, or was it Star Trek in specific. Or something different? In other words, what is the reason you chose to write in a Star Trek group instead of so many others?
Starbase 118 wasn’t my first PBEM. Decades ago, I participated in a number of PBEMs on my old America On-Line and Yahoo! accounts, some Star Trek, others not. As I got further into high school, and then college, I moved away from them, but eventually started to migrate back in the early 2010s, settling first on forum-based PbPs. I got into playing Star Trek Adventures on those online forums, and went searching for more online STA games. Instead, I found SB118, which I recalled from those heady dial-up days. The character of Tristan Wolf was imprinted upon my mind somehow, and I decided to apply to join.
As to why Star Trek? It’s a good question. I’ve written characters in a variety of different universes, from Star Wars, to Pathfinder, to X-Files, to Firefly. Even superheroes. But I think I come back to Star Trek because Star Trek was the first “universe” of stories I was exposed to as a child, and it’s one that has informed my interests, my views, and my life. We would watch The Next Generation every week, even going so far as to tape-record it on our VCR when it conflicted with Shabbat services, and I think what made Star Trek so compelling, and TNG especially, was that it was a show about highly competent people trying to solve complicated problems in a way that was morally and ethically satisfying.
You won the Rising Star Award last June. Can you tell us a little about that? How did your journey here in 118 lead you to receiving the award?
Phew, your guess is as good as mine! I really have them fooled, don’t I?
I’m only half-kidding. It’s been something of a whirlwind since I joined the community in January 2023. I was as surprised as anyone to have found myself where I was in the group by June 2024! As much as the award is ostensibly about me, my contributions, and my future in the group I am absolutely certain that I would not have been worthy of receiving that award had it not been for the guidance and support of my staff, mentors, and crewmates. Joining the crew of the USS Arrow was something of a perfect match, in terms of my personality and writing style, and I really can’t thank enough Quinn (Capt. Shayne), Brian (Capt. Niac), Marissa (Commodore Nicholotti), Justin (LCDR Carpenter), Tim (LCDR Dewitt), and Roxana (LCDR Ohnari) especially, because without their assistance in learning and writing in this group it never would have happened. Being welcomed and treated as an equal from very early on has made all the difference.
Being a Rising Star suggests you have a long career ahead of you. Are there any special goals you are working towards?
It might sound weird for someone who’s received this award and is on the Command Track, but I don’t really have concrete “goals.” In character, I aspire to write interesting stories that people want to read, and most of the time that means not knowing what the heck I’m going to write until I’m just about to write it. Out of character, I want to repay the kindness this community has shown me, and that means addressing the community’s needs in whatever way I can, which means I can never say for sure what that’ll be until I’m just about to do it.
At this moment, I’m in the middle of my final preparations for my Commander practical, and with that comes a fairly straightforward “career path” within the fleet. If the fleet grows enough, there might be new ships launched. If new ships are launched, the Executive Council may need people to step up to command them. And if I am competent and capable to serve as a Captain someday, I want to at least make sure I’m there if the need arises. The idea of commanding a crew is an exciting prospect, but also a nerve-wracking one. Like anyone on Al Gore’s internet, I am loaded for bear with self-doubt. The very last thing I want to do is make commitments to the Fleet that I’m not able to make good on. But the very least I can do is give this Fleet my very best.
And that already brings us to our final question. Do you have any advice for your fellow writers? Anything you’d like to share about your writing process that we may find interesting or helpful?
I would be surprised to learn that my writing process is terribly different from most other people. I follow the same basic guidelines that we tell all new cadets. But maybe where I approach things differently (and always have even as an Ensign) is in how I address in-character challenges. Maybe it’s a function of that self-doubt I mentioned and being unsure about the quality of my own ideas, but I have found that the most personally satisfying solutions to challenges facing a ship or crew have been the ones that my character doesn’t solve, at least not directly.
If I have one piece of advice for writers in this community, it’s to look for opportunities to make your character shine by making someone else’s character shine. Star Trek, at its best, is an ensemble show—again, a collection of highly-talented, highly-competent people trying to solve problems in satisfying ways. And that doesn’t work when you invent an “Easy Button” that you can use to technobabble your way out of something, unilaterally. If you have even just half of that “Easy Button” and allow another writer to come up with the other half, the story has instantly become more than doubly interesting!
Take advantage of the fact that this is a collaborative writing medium. Lean into the fact that you and your crewmates are all pooling your collective creativity into telling a coherent, cohesive story. Not only will you get better stories out of it, but you’ll feel better about the process, too.
Thanks for your time, Lt. Commander Nolen Hobart!
You can read more about Nolen Hobart on the wiki.
