But it can help. :)

When I first went about writing my spin-off, I made a conscious decision to make both Agent!July and Library completely new; this meant that I after I made sure I knew the tools and basic concepts that I had to know, I was giving myself wiggle room in case I messed up on procedure somehow- because a vet would know what they're doing! Newbies wouldn't!

And as far as developing an agent, it's just like developing any other character: You start off with the basics and then add more and more as you go along. To use an example, think about the Harry Potter series. We get introduced to our main characters and all the secondaries, and we learn more and more information about them as time goes on after the basics are established. That's how you go about characterization, because if you throw everything at the reader at once, it's a bit of an info dump and overwhelming.

Not to mention, characters can change things up on you or decide to do something else that you hadn't exactly expected in the first place! I started off with very general ideas about what I was doing with July and Library, and they ended up going in far more specific (and more than somewhat different) directions than I had expected- July became more erratic and slowly more and more reactionary in missions and in interludes, while Library ended up being the calmer one, but also the one who ended up starting to steer things around and make the plans.

-July

"Two newbie agents" is a possibility, but it isn't a must. Off the top of my head, Wobbles the clown used to be in the A/V division (and worked in the Nursery) before transferring to Floaters; by the time we first see Agent!Des he's been around for a while (how much time, I'm not certain — I'm still toying with that); and, of course, Jay and Acacia weren't newbies at the start of TOS.

I agree with the gist of this: write one agent-team to let both us and yourself get to know them. It's worth remembering that Iximaz wrote a lot of Rina-Randa and Rina-Zeb missions, and that my Dafydd-Selene(-whoever) missions were almost all written before I used any other agents. Stick with one team, and let them reach their potential.

hS

Natalie’s older brother, Matthew - Floaters


A cold, calm, reserved Gray Jedi - Department of Intelligence


Jossk Noda, a former Trandoshan bounty hunter - Department of Mary Sues


Silentflame, a warrior cat, my very own Angst!Sue - Troll Division, then transferred to Department of Geographical Aberrations

Acornleaf, another warrior cat Silentflame's mate - in one of the non-action Departments

I was thinking Za'kiir and Natalie could recruit the last two at some point.