Halo: Ghosts of Onyx - Background and Writing

Background and Writing

Ghosts of Onyx author Eric Nylund had previously written two of the three past Halo novels, The Fall of Reach and First Strike, and went to Halo's developer Bungie with an outline of what he wanted to do next. According to Nylund, Bungie gave him room to write the story as long as he accomplished some "very specific goals", sometimes making changes to the Halo universe to incorporate his ideas. However, he acknowledged the difficulty of fitting his story into the rest of the Halo universe was far greater for Ghosts of Onyx than the other novels as more of the story had been made public and was no longer able to be modified. Nylund mentioned in an interview with IGN that writing a Halo novel had both its positive aspects and drawbacks. "It's better because I have all these great toys and characters to play with," Nylund stated in an interview, "It's not so good because I have to work and play well with other parts of the intellectual property so everything meshes."

Ghosts of Onyx, originally known as Ghosts of Coral, was the first Halo novel to be published by Tor Books instead of Del Rey. Nylund had 15 weeks to write the book, as opposed to the 7 weeks for The Fall of Reach, but he claimed he still "lost sleep... ate a bunch of chocolate and drank too much coffee." Tor's editors also had more time than those of Del Rey and helped "untangle" the complicated plot of Onyx. On writing, Nylund pointed out that "tension is the cornerstone of any good story", and that Ghosts of Onyx would be no different.

IGN's reviewer, Douglass C. Perry, found that by using short paragraphs and many jumps in time " style of writing keeps the pace going, even when nothing much is going on." This technique is used deliberately by Nylund to hasten the pace to avoid "fatiguing the reader and losing them."