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Karen Traviss

Goodreads Author

Born

The United Kingdom

Website

http://www.karentraviss.com/

Twitter

karentraviss

Genre

Thriller, Science Fiction

Member Since

June 2014

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#1 New York Times best-selling novelist, scriptwriter and comics author Karen Traviss has received critical acclaim for her award-nominated Wess'har series, and her work on Halo, Gears of War, Batman, G.I. Joe, and other major franchises has earned her a broad range of fans. She's best known for military science fiction, but GOING GREY and BLACK RUN, the first books in her new techno-thriller series RINGER, are set in the real world of today. A former defence correspondent and TV and newspaper journalist, she lives in Wiltshire, England. She's currently working on SACRIFICIAL RED, the third book in the Ringer series, and HERE WE STAND, book three in the NOMAD series. ...more

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What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Karen Traviss 1. Don't blog/ FB/ Tweet about writing. (Unless you're marketing an actual book, of course.) Just write your novel and get it finished.
2. For those of…more1. Don't blog/ FB/ Tweet about writing. (Unless you're marketing an actual book, of course.) Just write your novel and get it finished.
2. For those of you still in education: pay attention to your grammar teacher but ignore everything the Eng Lit one says. (Well, except what you need to parrot to pass exams.) Whatever they tell you a writer "means," they're almost certainly wrong.
3. You can't teach someone to write, i.e. to tell a story. You're either a storyteller or you aren't. But you can develop your technique, only part of which is your language skills.
4. Don't confuse writing style with story. The words are just tools. The aim is to write only what the reader needs to enable them to feel they're involved in the world you've created, not to jerk them out of it with groundbreaking use of adverbs or sentence fragments.
5. Writing fiction is about people. Invest time in talking to them and having your own experiences. Live a bit. Observe a lot. The actual writing bit is just the output, and only part of the overall process.
6. Do proper research, and not by relying on wikis or what other writers have written. Get out and talk to people who've done the stuff you want to write about – nothing beats primary sources. And you *will* have to do research, because writing about yourself and your anxieties might be great therapy but it's probably only good for one book, if that. The best stories are all outside yourself.
7. Ideas are ten a penny, and ideas aren't stories. Every idea has been done before, one way or another. The real story is in the execution – the way you tell it. (less)

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Hi, Karen. I know I'm late to the party (by about a decade) but I'm reading through the Republic Commando books and loving them. It seems to me that the clones and squaddies in the book act and sound like a British unit, with loads proper British, dry humour it them. Just wondered, did LucasArts pick up on this and ask you to American-ise them at all? If I'm honest I was expecting the clones to talk like US Marines.

Karen Traviss No, they didn't.

I'm *very* picky about dialogue because it's a pillar of characterisation, so if I write an American character, they sound American b…moreNo, they didn't.

I'm *very* picky about dialogue because it's a pillar of characterisation, so if I write an American character, they sound American both in dialogue and narrative. (All of a scene is the character's POV, not just the dialogue.) The same goes for all nationalities in my fiction. In this case, the characters weren't bound by nationality, so I made them sound like the blokes I was used to talking to in the British armed forces. That wasn't just the jargon, it was the attitude and mindset as well.

I have occasionally been asked by editors on other books to make those kinds of changes and I've refused. The characters are the way they are for a reason, and readers are smart enough to cope with differences between cultures, whether they're based on nationality, age, or whatever. It's part of the colour and texture of storytelling. Editors try to dumb down books too often, which is a bit insulting to the customer. In my experience, readers are intelligent and also more than capable of using a dictionary to look up terms they've not understood! :)

And thank you for the kind comments. I'm glad you're enjoying the books.(less)

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Karen Traviss’s books

Average rating: 4.11 · 115,152 ratings · 5,422 reviews · 132 distinct works • Similar authors

	Star Wars: Hard Contact (Republic Commando #1) 4.23 avg rating — 11,784 ratings — published 2004 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Star Wars: Triple Zero (Republic Commando #2) 4.22 avg rating — 8,467 ratings — published 2006 — 26 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, #5) 4.05 avg rating — 8,282 ratings — published 2007 — 29 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, #2) 3.95 avg rating — 8,197 ratings — published 2006 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Halo: Glasslands 4.08 avg rating — 7,431 ratings — published 2011 — 29 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Star Wars: True Colors (Republic Commando #3) 4.25 avg rating — 7,094 ratings — published 2007 — 28 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Revelation (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, #8) 3.99 avg rating — 7,317 ratings — published 2008 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Order 66 (Star Wars: Republic Commando #4) 4.27 avg rating — 6,426 ratings — published 2008 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	501st (Star Wars: Republic Commando, #5) 4.16 avg rating — 5,439 ratings — published 2008 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Halo: The Thursday War 4.15 avg rating — 4,743 ratings — published 2012 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Karen Traviss…

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Karen Traviss's Blog

KINGS OF THE MASTAN – cover reveal

Here you go. The cover for Nomad book 4, Kings Of The Mastan, and a few details. It won't be out for a while yet, but I wanted to get the cover sorted early to make sure the excellent Thomas Wievegg was free to do the art again. He's a busy guy!

(Newsletter subscribers – you've already seen this one last year. I haven't changed anything, but I've added a slightly longer synopsis.) Read more of this blog post »

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Published on January 08, 2024 03:19

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Series by Karen Traviss

Star Wars: Republic Commando (5 books)
by

Karen Traviss (Goodreads Author)

4.23 avg rating — 39,423 ratings

Kilo-Five (3 books)
by

Karen Traviss (Goodreads Author)

4.12 avg rating — 15,679 ratings

Gears of War (8 books)
by

Karen Traviss (Goodreads Author)

4.17 avg rating — 13,600 ratings

The Wess'har Wars (6 books)
by

Karen Traviss (Goodreads Author)

3.95 avg rating — 6,419 ratings

Nomad (3 books)
by

Karen Traviss (Goodreads Author)

4.50 avg rating — 1,242 ratings

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Karen is Currently Reading

Karen Traviss is currently reading

Falklands War Heroes: Extraordinary true stories of bravery in the South Atlantic

by Michael Ashcroft

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Dec 20, 2021 04:13AM

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Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 3

by Hiromu Arakawa

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Aug 12, 2018 10:58AM

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The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes

by Gordon Welchman

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Apr 28, 2016 11:50PM

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Karen’s Recent Updates

Karen Traviss answered V's question: As a big GOW fan, I appreciate your work and what you’ve brought to the franchise with the books. Who is your favourite character that people wouldn’t expect and what things do you think you’d change about the story about gears of war? As a fan I have a lot I would change but yeah. I had to have a long think about this and what I could safely say, so what follows is very generalised. That's because I'm still under an NDA because I've been involved with the E‑Day game as a consultant, and I've also not even looked at some parts See Full Answer
Jun 27, 2026 05:45AM · 1 like · like
Karen Traviss answered Douglas Joseph's question: When you finish Ringer book 3, will there be 'callbacks' to the earlier books to help those of us with poor memories? Or will a reread of books 1 and 2 be required? Thanks! Hi. I'd say re-read the books. (As I have to do every time myself, in fact.) I'll give everyone plenty of notice when book 3 is actually ready to roll. I'm grateful for everyone's patience. I did a "story so far" just once, in the front matter for Th See Full Answer
Jun 27, 2026 05:04AM · like

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Quotes by Karen Traviss (?)

“Ugliness is an illusion, gentlemen. Like beauty. Like color. All depends on the light. The only reality is action.”
― Karen Traviss, Star Wars: True Colors

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“If you take a shot at someone, you keep firing until they can no longer return fire. Wound them, and you have an angry enemy who knows your position.”
― Karen Traviss

41 likes

“So you want a knife, a nice sharp knife. You hone that blade to its limits. It even cuts through stone when you want it to. It saves your life. And then you're outraged when it cuts you accidentally. You see, knives don't switch off. And neither do people, not when you hone them to a fine edge.”
― Karen Traviss

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Polls

NOVEMBER SCIENCE FICTION: This poll decides which two books will go on to the run off poll for November 2015's Science Fiction BOTM.

The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough

16 votes, 19.5%

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

16 votes, 19.5%

To Live Forever by Jack Vance

16 votes, 19.5%

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

14 votes, 17.1%

Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos

8 votes, 9.8%

City of Pearl by Karen Traviss

6 votes, 7.3%

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

6 votes, 7.3%

82 total votes

2 comments

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
SciFi and Fantasy...: January Sci-Fi Book Noms	36	128	Dec 14, 2009 06:33PM
The Sword and Laser: Top favorite authors!	127	817	Mar 06, 2011 02:38PM
SciFi and Fantasy...: May Science Fiction Nominations	12	39	Apr 26, 2011 11:06AM
The Sword and Laser: Video Game Based Novels	29	83	Aug 11, 2011 10:28AM
Brain Science Pod...: Books and Ideas 44 : Karen Traviss	1	7	Nov 12, 2011 06:58AM
The Seasonal Read...: Fall Challenge 2011 Completed Tasks - DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS IN THIS TOPIC!	2251	797	Nov 30, 2011 09:05PM
100+ Books in 2026: Aga is reading also in 2011	202	391	Dec 31, 2011 05:59PM

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Karen’s Quotes

“I know genes are a big deal, son, but they're not the be-all and end-all." Rob slowed to a halt at the lights, wishing the dickhead behind would back off. "If they were, you'd be in a seafood salad and I'd be in prison.”
― Karen Traviss, Going Grey

tags: destiny, genetics, identity, self-belief

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