Wow, what a detailed analysis....

Okay, some good thoughts here. Quick responses.

The best way to approach this is to discuss my approach to writing in general. I've now written two published novels, and have a third ready to be written as soon as I have six months to a year to spare (i.e, not for a while yet). My structure is always very tight on these things, in the sense that I plan out the basic *spine* of the novel. I know I'm starting at point A, I want to end at point Z, and I want to hit a certain number of spots along the way. Then I start writing. Once I've committed to that STRUCTURE, everything else becomes expendable or fluid. I've had background characters suddenly lurch into the foreground, and major characters (or characters I *thought* would be major) fall into the background. Sometimes, while chugging along the structure highway, I'll see something interesting just off the main road, and I'll go poke around in there for a while.

Basically, I like being *surprised*. And I think, in general, that readers do as well. At no time do I diverge from where I want to go; the spine never alters. But the details are absolutely fluid.

When I write an episode, I do exactly the same thing. I *HATE* to outline; I think it freezes the story too much. So in general I just sit down at the keyboard, knowing the title of the episode, the primary incidents that have to happen, and a few character moments, and start writing. And things suddenly occur to me, I get surprised by moments when the characters turn to me and say, "Hey, stupid, don't do THAT, do *THIS*." And I go where they tell me. The result is that the scripts I write tend to be VERY tight: they go where they're going, and move like a house afire...BUT there's the real sense that ANYdamnedthing can happen at any moment, because I'm not locked in.

The same applies to the series overall. I know *exactly* where the series is going, the final denouement, the benchmarks of each season, and have brief synopses on most of the episodes. But you have to be open to surprises, have to allow yourself to be pulled one way or another on the details, otherwise you get predictable, and you lose the spark. Also, the reality is that actors are human; there can be contract disputes, health problems, any number of things...so there have to be trap doors built into the storyline for *every single one of the characters* without exception.

The closest comparison, I suppose, would be doing a story about World War II. The individual pieces can move around, people can come and go, live or die, suddenly be revealed to be counterspies...but the basic progression, the storyline of the war, is not changed. (Unless you're doing alternate history, which we're not.) When I write, I basically carry the whole storyline in my head, and I run the episode through that to make sure that it all parses.

It's as if you've flashed back in time to WW II, and you're in a battalion going into Normandy Beach. You know that in the long run, the Allies will win the war...but you look around at the other people in the landing craft with you, and you have no idea which of them is going to make it through to the end. One is set. The other is fluid.

The final destination of the story, and the chief points along the way...none of that has altered so much as an inch. Within that structure I may move some elments up, push some back; you have to find the *feel* of the story as you write it, something you can't prepare for until you're actually writing it. But the structure remains, giving me freedom to roam where I want...if I decide to kill off one of the three really major human characters in year three (and I'm NOT saying I'm planning on it, I'm just discussing hypotheticals), I can do it, and the overall storyline isn't touched.

A destination may be fixed on the horizon...but sometimes the most fun you have is getting lost from time to time on the way there.

jms

On my office wall I have two large areas set aside for quotes, which are on 2x3 placards. I switch them in and out depending on my mood and the situation. (Up now are "The point of no return. That is the point which must be reached." And "To define is to kill. To suggest is to create." All the quotes are about writing in one way or another.)

Another of them, which will get its turn shortly, is "Writers are not necessarily corrupted by money. Rather they are distracted, detoured into other venues."

I don't wanna be distracted. Making TV and telling stories is hard enough without adding an extra layer of nonsense. I make a good living. I agree to license the stuff I'd personally like to have. But money has never really *meant* that much to me, except the freedom to write what I want, when I want, whenever I want. When I left Murder, She Wrote to do B5, I took a pay cut even though the position was higher. My agent said I was nuts. That's fine. Most of the jobs I've had, in the end I've walked off, despite people waving money, when I thought that I could no longer tell the stories I wanted to tell.

After a season on CAPTAIN POWER, when I wrote pretty much anything I wanted, I got the sense that the second season was going to be more in the control of the sponsor. They put a deal on the table for year two; I had no other options waiting. Nonetheless, I passed. When I was on Jake and the Fatman, the company screwed over my exec producers, to whom I owed a great deal of allegiance. When they quit, I also walked, even though this was my first major network staff credit, and I had nothing else pending, and in fact ended up not working for several months.

Point being...nothing *really* matters to me but telling a story, and being free to tell it the way I want. And if I got into heavily trying to exploit every single dime out of B5, approving anything and everything, softened where the show was going to help it get lots of spinoffs....it wouldn't be the story I want to tell anymore. A good part of what this show is, is subversive, and some elements are a bit on the controversial side. If I had my eye on the dollar, I'd've never put "Believers" into production. Or "Confessions and Lamentations" this season.

Also, I'm 40. I'll be 41 in July. If B5 goes its full 5 year run, I'll be 44/45 at the end. And I will have said pretty much everything I want to say in TV. At 45, I'll probably have 20 years in me to write all the novels I want to write before the game is called on account of darkness. I really don't want to waste that time running a franchise when I should be telling stories. You find your story, you get on the stage, tell it and get the hell off the stage.

Finally, I'm leery of money past a certain point. Rod Serling wrote, in "The Velvet Alley," "Here's how they get you: they bring you to Hollywood, and they pay you vast amounts of money for what you write. Slowly, your standard of living begins to rise to where now you NEED that income every day to maintain it. And then they threaten to take it away from you...and then they own you."

'Nuff said.

jms

The environment came first, then the broad sense of what the story was going to be, then the characters, then how the characters fit with the story, and how the story fit with the characters.

jms

Joseph Campbell is good if you're looking to analyze something AFTER the fact; to do so before the fact, or while you're creating, makes the result too by-the-numbers. You have to try NOT to become too aware of the myth-process in fiction, or you become like the centipede asked which leg goes first.

jms

The two keys in creating characters for TV are: allies and enemies, you create people who you know will come into conflict with one another, because conflict is a huge part of drama, not the whole of it, but a necessary ingredient. So you also build some who can be sympathetic, or funny by turns, but you don't want to minimize or throw away a character, you add a layer of depth to it to give meat to the humor when used.

It's kind of like planning a military campaign, really.

The world and the characters of B5 kind of came together at the same time, one feeding off another until they took on a life of their own. And building both was a joy.

jms

Yes, you're correct, the alignments in B5 vary depending on whose agenda is in force at that moment; and they change with time. But in general you always need conflict, especially in TV, and to varying degrees in other works. It's the seed from which drama emanates. When I was on Murder, She Wrote, you couldn't just have Jessica go to somebody and get the information easily. There had to be some conflict involved, there had to be *work* to pry it loose. Otherwise it just falls flat.

jms

Re: "he writes at close to Asimov's speed."

One thing I miss here, and wish there was more of, was more on the task of writing. I think there's a good opportunity here for more on the technical side of all this...the writing, how the different departemtns (departments) come together, all the production stuff nobody tells you.

So on the writing speed issue, a little something that may be of use.

Mark Twain said, "Never write a scene until you have finished it to your satisfaction." Meaning in your head. You should always play the scene over and over in your head, filling it out further and further each time, until you can play it like a movie. Then, when it's all worked out, you sit down and transcribe it.

This is kinda how I work. I finish a scene, load up what I need to do in the next scene...and distract myself, here on the boards, doing something else, and gradually filling out the scene over and over until it's crystal clear. Then when you sit down to write it, it goes quickly.

Also helps to type 120 wpm, but the other helps a *lot*.

jms

Putting the characters through pain is never a problem for me. That's where all the *interesting* stuff happens. And growth only comes through pain and struggle. So it's for their own good, really.

jms

Nothing can be storyboarded until it's written in the script first; so usually it's something like

EXT. NARN HOMEWORLD (CGI)

A giant space aardvark emerges from a jump-point, snarling and spitting.

There's only been one case where all I wrote was, "They fight. Ron, go nuts." Other than that, it's always scripted shot-for-shot, often as:

ANGLE - SHERIDAN'S STARFURY

As it blows TOWARD CAMERA, and we

REVERSE - HIS POV

The giant space aardvark turns, prepares to fight.

jms

This is a grey area. The WGA says that the show owns the characters and the situation unique to the show; but the writer owns the physical script. The studios say they own it ALL. This will probably never be clearly resolved.

jms

Re: advice on getting your foot in the door.

Have a persistent foot.

Write constantly. For anyone and everyone.

Patience, determination, direction and strength.

And never follow somebody else's path; it doesn't work the same way twice for anyone...the path follows you and rolls up behind you as you walk, forcing the next person to find their own way.

jms

I didn't look to any writers or other works for inspiration for B5; I came up with the story mine own self. To "look for inspiration" always sounds deliberate to me, "Hmm...whose template can I use...?" I don't work that way. It's basically the product of all the stuff I've seen and read over the years, my interest in politics, philosophy, literature, sagas, SF, language, culture, history...it's this huge, honking stew which I more or less fitted into the B5 statin.

jms (station)

Everyone always tells you it won't happen, you're wasting your time, it's pointless...because that's how they want to think, because someone achieving something makes someone who may not have done so feel self- conscoius, because they KNOW you and as it says in the New Testament "A prophet is without honor only in his own land and among his own people," and because overall the system is designed to keep you IN. A writer by nature removes him- or herself from the system of 9-5 office type work. Over time you make your own hours, your own schedule, you select who you work for... you're outside the normal space/time continuum, and between you and that goal is one hell of a lot of surface tension.

Every writer has been told, at some point, "You'll never make it, why waste your time?" Ninety percent of the time, they're right. Ten percent of the time they're not. But you won't know which camp you fall in until you try.

jms

I started writing at 14; started selling at 17.

One warning re: 300+ page books at this point...if nothing happens, and it may or may not, it can be a big stumbling block to get over. Don't let the smaller stories get away from you either. It's good to do a variety of things.

jms

The differences between screenwriting and a novel...would take a book to communicate. Suffice for now to say just that the strengths of a novel are all internal (internal monologue, POV, narrative descriptions), and the strength of a screenplay is all external (dialogue and visuals).

Which is why the best novels often make the worst movies.

jms

I could probably adapt the B5 storyline very well to a novel, since it would provide the chance to expand on a lot of stuff. Whether or not that ever happens is anyone's guess.

jms

It took 5 years to sell B5.

jms

Re: things you don't expect to happen...that's kind of one aspect I was after here. By way of comparison....

There's one great thing about The Shining, despite some other flaws in the film: they set up Scatman Cruthers (sp?) as the one guy who understands what's going on...he gets the Shining, he's a potentially heroic character, and when all hell breaks loose, he's the one to get into the snow plow, cross terrible weather, we're all sure he's going to get there and fight the menace...he overcomes weather and nonsense to get there...he blows through the front door, ready for action.... and gets an axe in the middle of his chest and dies.

I *loved* that, and always kinda wanted to something of that nature, where you set someone up to be that kind of character, the future, whatever, then you yank it back and let the audience say, Oh, hell, NOW what?

jms

Let me just start off by disagreeing with your thesis, that the length restrictions and format of TV writing tend to mitigate against good writing. By that same token, sonnets (which use a very strict formula or format) can't be good, or haiku, we should toss out iambic pentameter altogether, and short stories, often considerably shorter than a half-hour TV script, must also be unable to contain quality writing.

The form doesn't matter. It's what you bring to the table.

Similarly, the issue of rushed writing...many of the classic SF tales of the 50s and 60s were written as fast as humanly possible because back then writers were paid a penny a word, and you had to really crank the stuff out there to make any kind of living. It was quite common for writers of many of the SF magazines of the time to go into the publisher's office, see the cover for an issue a few months down the road, and on the spot come up with a title, a story premise, go home, write it, and bring it in the very next day.

We're talking here margins. Margins aren't important. It's what you choose to fill the margins, the care you exercise, the passion you bring to the page, that makes the difference.

Yeah, a lot of TV writing is pretty marginal. Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. How many novels are turned out each year that sink of their own weight in zero time? How few novels are really and truly substantial? How many short stories? Out of all the SF novels and short stories and short-shorts and novellas and novellettes published each year, how many will survive on the shelf 5, 10, or 15 years from now?

Mark Twain said, "If you would have your fiction live forever, you must neither overtly preach nor overtly teach; but you must *covertly* preach and *covertly* teach." That, to me, is one primary ingredient; it must, at its root, be *about* something more than car chases and bomb blasts and shootouts. On some level, however cellular, it must instruct and ennoble and elevate and enrich, make us question or consider.

Then there is the basic level of writing style, but that is a very personal flavor. Hill Street had an elegance of simplicity, the writing was often raw and piercing on a sheer gut level. I loved it. When I sit down to write, I tend to drift toward a somewhat more literary-sounding or theatrical style, probably because of my own influences.

It comes down, really, to whether or not you have the inclination to sit down, whichever style you use, and stare at the screen for half an hour until you find just the right word, the mot just, that serves better than any other possibly could. Some writers will do that, some won't. David Kelly does it on ER and Picket Fences and other shows. So do the folks on The Simpsons. And many other shows. A lot of folks dump on TV, ignoring similar failinlgs in literary SF or other genres, but like any exercise in accepted cliche, the reasoning is flawed and often (though not always) unjustified.

As for my personal list of writers whose work I admire...Kelly, as noted, definitely. Mainly, though, I grew up on the genre TV writers of the 50s/60s, like Rod Serling, Charles Beaumond, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch (that should be BeaumonT, not Beaumond), Ernest Kinoy, Harlan Ellison, Joe Stefano, and though he was fading from view by then, Arch Oboler, and the kinetoscopes of Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose and others. Later, I added Norman Corwin to the list, as a chief point of inspiration, stylistically. (There are a number of writers who call or consider themselves "Norman's Kids" in that we've learned much about writing, and the integrity of writing, from Norman Corwin...including Ray Bradbury, Charles Kuralt, Walter Cronkite, Stan Freberg, and many others.)

jms

Every show is on deadline, to one extent or another. As for the rest....

It's hard to say. I know that my style has changed somewhat since B5 began, and the approach I take *to* the writing has changed a bit, but it's a very hard thing to put into words. It's like learning a new little trick during sex...you're not quite sure where it came from, it's still the same concept, but something about it works a little better for you.

In one way, because it's my own show, I'm no longer having to yoke myself to somebody else's conception. Whenever you're working for a writer/producer above you, a certain measure of your time is spent in second-guessing, however much you may also be trying to expand that character at the same time. "

"Okay, I'm going to go this far, but I know if I go *too* far, the guy's gonna lean on me, say the character wouldn't do that, and I'll have to go back and restructure."

So that problem doesn't exist for me now. In some ways, it's given me greater latitude and confidence, but at the same time it's caused me to be *much* more intensely critical in examining my own work. I know that creatively, I'm pretty much out on my own here, and if I don't take great care to be sure that the work is up to par, there's nobody to backstop it above me. "With great power comes great responsibility." Peter Parker.

Probably the main thing that's happened is that I've grown slowly comfortable enough with things to begin taking real chances; doing scenes without any dialogue whatsoever (the Emperor's fall in "Coming," certain long segments of "Twilight"), and some fairly intense monologues; it's let me be free enough to do some radical stuff visually, to stretch to the limits of what I think I can do.

What happens, if you're a writer who cares about your work, is that you write along at one level for a certain amount of time, you hit a plateau, this is as good as you are...but you keep poking at the edges, and after a while you get frustrated, because your reach is exceeding your grasp, and you know this should be *better* than it is, but you don't quite know why, or where, you can't conceptualize it...then suddenly you break through the ceiling, to another level, and your writing changes from that point on...until the next time.

I'm very aware of having gone through several of those since starting the B5 series.

jms

No, I was responding to a note re: midpoing in the series from a total point of view, i.e., on a 5 year run, year 3 is the midpoint, and in fact, in another month or so, I'll have written episode 11 of year three, which is the *exact* halfway point on that axis.

I put *zero* faith in the Syd Field school of thought.

jms

I do have certain linguistic elements that I tend to re-use to subconsciously define the characters a bit. Londo tends to use verbal prologs a lot, "It occurs to me," "You know, I was thinking," that sort of thing, which connotes that he's always working through what he's going to say before he says it, and puts the pronoun I or Me at the center of his way of thinking. I often insert "Yes?" in his dialogue ("A great shame, yes?" "A terrible thing, is it not?") and variations to hint at the notion that this is a person looking for acceptance, validation, agreement.

Where Londo tends to put his personal pronoun at the beginning of his lines, Delenn has a tendency to put them at the end of her sentences, de-emphasizing personal importance. Sometimes it lends her a kind of prolix speech pattern, but that's an inevitable consequence of that kind of structure; sometimes the verbs also get shoved back in the sentence, giving things a somewhat Germanic structure.

So some elements of phraseology, grammer, even phrases per se do tend to recur, but I try to keep them mainly to that person, or to that group, as a device to reinforce identity.

jms

Well reasoned. An analysis of some of the stuff in Jungian terms, as I've noted here before, is not entirely unproductive.

It really is a hodgepodge of bits and pieces, a Frankenstein monster assembled from elements of myth, and archetype, and history that I've been kind of subconsciously assembling over a long, long time.

Certainly the issue touches strongly on the whole question of who we are, how we define ourselves, our place in the universe (as we perceive it, and as we are *able* to perceive it, stuck as we are in th metaphorical fishbowl).

One of the problems, I feel, when film makers or novelists use Joseph Campbell's approach to storytelling is that they're going by the numbers in terms of the *action* involved (okay, the hero has a trial to endure, enters the cave, and so on), without looking to, or paying attention to, the philosophical/mythological underpinnings of the actions, what they MEAN in a larger context, what they are meant to tell us about ourselves and the world.

So it's an ongoing process to redefine the myths, and in so doing redefine the way we perceive ourselves. Or something like that.

jms

You learn to write by writing. You learn to write better by never settling or getting too comfortable with your own work.

jms

Mike Cooney: not much on foreplay, are you?

If you pull out all your stops in the first season or two, Mike, where do you go from there? First time out, we saw just one shadow vessel; then we saw two; then we saw fighters; then we saw fighters and shadow ships, three, then four. There's a reason for this progression, though I can't get into it now.

If you blow everything out this early, you've got nowhere to go. So this is being paced logically and carefully.

Me, I *love* foreplay.

Changing topics for a moment....

Episode #5, "Passing Through Gethsemane," guest stars Brad Dourif, and is being directed by Adam Nimoy.

jms