Middle Deckers – Biography Writing

Across Star Trek shows, movies, and stories, we’ve seen an enormous amount of focus on senior officers, and there is now a whole show about ensigns on the Lower Decks, but between ensigns and commanders are lieutenants: the section and department heads that do the day-to-day work of managing operations aboard starships. These middle-deckers are neither fresh out of the academy nor highly experienced officers with dozens of years of service under their belts, so the storytelling potential they offer is being able to take from character archetypes associated with the levels above and below them.

Creating characters below the level of senior staff is an excellent opportunity to introduce foils for your main characters. For instance, if you have a stuffy and uptight science officer, their deputy might be the opposite. On your command, you probably know who the Chief Engineering Officer is, but do you know who their Assistant Chief is? Or the Head of Warp Systems Engineering? For this competition, you’re invited to write a robust, fleshed-out biography of one of your command’s middle deckers—a lieutenant or a lieutenant junior grade who holds a role no higher than assistant department head.

To submit to this competition, simply provide a link to a character on your command that meets the above description. This biography must be created after this competition opens and before it closes, so there is no reusing of existing characters. This will be judged based on the publication date of the character within the BFMS.

It is highly recommended that you complete the Character Creation Program as practice for this competition, but you may not submit a biography to this competition which has received feedback from the Academy staff. You can see examples of middle-decker biographies here and here.

NB: the character submitted for this competition does not have to feature in a story submitted for the Middle Deckers — Fiction Writing competition.

Criteria

• Write a robust, fleshed-out biography of one of your command's middle deckers—a lieutenant or a lieutenant junior grade who holds a role no higher than assistant department head.
• This biography must be created after this competition opens and before it closes, so there is no reusing of existing characters. This will be judged based on the publication date of the character within the BFMS.
• The biography must be complete, with something in the overview, personality, appearance, service record, and image fields. (The quality of the image used will not be assessed in judging.)
• The biography will be assessed on its uniqueness, the mechanical/stylistic strength of the writing, the appropriateness for the setting and genre of Star Trek, and the realism of the character's history, service record, abilities, and personality vis a vis characters seen on screen.
• Using generative AI in this competition is forbidden.