I've been on as much as usual; sometimes I have more to say, sometimes even *I* get tired of my own "voice" after a while, and figure everyone else must as well.

jms

I use Movie Master for my scripts, Wordstar 7.0 for prose. None of the files are very big individually, only en masse.

jms

"do you ever find your characters almost outright refusing to go where you want them to? this happens to me from time to time, where I want her to go one way, and she decides to go another. It's rather annoying."

Yes, but it means you're doing it *right*.

Yeah, it happens. Every once in a while, a character will go left instead of right in my head, and I'll try to yank him back, and he'll refuse to go, and I'll get into this sort of weird mental dialogue trying to find out what the hell's wrong and what's going on. I've now created the characters sufficiently well now that they're alive, and I've come to that point now where, if a character says "I want to do X" in a script, I'll tend to go with it, figuring it may work and take me in some new directions. Every once in a while, we'll get to the end, and it won't work, and I'll have to backtrack to where we went off the road...and, natch, the character just sits sullenly in the back of the car, refusing to admit he read the map wrong.

But when it *works*...the character surprises me, and if I'm surprised, the odds are good that you're going to be surprised.

jms

It's just a mental quirk; how does an actor remember every line of dialogue in a play, plus all the stage movements, prop locations, stunts, and the rest? I've always had a very good visual memory. If I go to your house once, I can usually remember the layout years later. Take me to a strange city, drive me across town and drop me off, and as long as it's light, I can find my way back again on foot with very little in the way of errors.

...

Writers are living compilations of moments, which they reinterpret and revisit, carving them into characters and stories. The more you can remember, the more you can recreate how you felt, the better you can turn around and invest those same feelings and reactions in your characters. The problem is that all too often, we go through our lives unaware of so much that goes on around us, we don't *pay attention* to our lives. And we miss the moments. And in the end, the moments are all we have.

"First, I've heard the actor who played General Hague was supposed to continue with the show but ended up going someplace else."

That's correct. He bailed at the last minute, even though we had first dibs on him. Not much point to forcing an actor to stay if he wants to go; you just get an unhappy set and a less than stellar performance. That situation led to changing a grand total of 3 lines. Anything in Hague's situation is what's called a "moveable piece," meaning it can be easily assigned to others.

"Second, I've heard the actress that plays Delenn was supposed to remain fully Membari but didn't like the heavy make-up"

Nope. That was never the intent. She was *always* going to make this change. and is now part-human.

"Third, the Sinclair thing. We all wonder if he's supposed to be back or what (probably, "or what")--especially based on the "Babylon Squared" show where Sinclair is the apparent leader of the Good Guys (tm)."

Watch the two-parter. We'll talk afterward.

"I heard Bruce Box...(uh, I'm too stupid to spell his name correctly) isn't happy with the ratings, etc."

Point being...? Bruce is happy with the show, and staying with it; like the rest of us, he wishes the show got more attention here in the US on a par with what it gets overseas, particularly in the UK.

"I'm wondering...how do you deal with these things and keep the necessary consistency? Are you just "rolling with the punches" and letting the changes take place but keeping the main story idea intact? That's my guess. Perhaps no one actor or person is essential to the story?"

As a writer, doing a long-term story, it'd be dangerous and short-sighted for me to construct the story without trap doors for every single character. Because Stuff Happens. An actor can get hit by a meteor, walk off, whatever. So I deliberately and very carefully constructed this puppy to be more or less airtight no matter what happens. You want to drive from LA to San Diego. You figure on taking the 5 freeway all the way down. Only when you get to the Slausen Cutoff (insert joke here), there's a traffic jam...so you get off, take some alternate streets, and come back again right back on track. Same thing here.

That was one of the big risks going into a long-term storyline which I considered long in advance; you can't predict real-world events, so you have to compensate for them and plan for them in advance. Otherwise you could paint yourself into a corner.

Similarly, there are story changes that come up at me by surprise, which make total sense, which result in actor changes. As a writer, you have to be flexible enough to recognize a stronger, better path when it presents itself; to be so rigidly locked into your prior structure eliminates spontaneity and the chance to explore new routes. This is exactly the same thing that happens when you write a novel; you learn things 1/2 way through writing a novel you can learn no other way.

I've been writing and selling since I was 17. In all that time, I've never once followed an outline beat-for-beat once I got into the main writing, whatever the final venue. No outline survives contact with the enemy. It's a *guideline* that keeps you on track when you waver, and serves as base camp, providing security when it strikes you to go off and explore a path you hadn't noticed before.

jms

The cold, hard and rather ruthless answer is...if you're not sure, if it's just something you're kinda thinking about...don't do it.

The only ones who have a chance of making it as writers are those who can't *not* write.

"I am trying to find out what I can do with my life and writing sound like fun." It's not fun, as you mean it. It's agony. It's the hardest thing I do. It takes *years* of work, every single day, day in and day out, before you get any good at it at all. It takes suffering and pain and paying your dues and fighting every single day first to prove you have talen to yourself, then to prove it to others, then to finally begin making a living at it. It's not a case of, "Well, look over there, *that* looks interesting, maybe I'll do that."

Either being a writer means everything to you, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you shouldn't do it. It's not a question of knowing "what you want to do." You *know* it. It's just a matter of the will and strength required to *do* it.

Unless that describes you...try something else.

jms

1. What gave you the idea to create a show with a time line?

I wanted to do a saga; sagas take time to tell. The Lensman books, the Foundation books, Dune, others...they can take from a few years to hundreds of years to tell. (I love "A Canticle for Liebowitz," which compresses an amazing timeline into one volume.) Doing decades worth of story would be impossible for TV's format, but a one-to-one year-to-season structure was do-able.

2. What were some of your first ideas for this series?

I don't quite understand the question.

3. How good of a chance does B5 have for being renewed?

50/50.

4. How is Harlan Ellison doing?

Much, much better.

jms

I write pretty much all the time, day or night. I prefer night writing because the phone rings less often, and I can blow through a lot of work without interruption. Lately, though, I find that I do get a little tired come around 2-3 a.m., which I didn't used to, so some of it has switched back to daytime or early evening. My advice is to just find what's most comfortable for you as a time to write, and stick to it.

jms

the curious thing...the interesting thing...is that in just about everything i've ever written, yes, i generally follow where i want to go, end up where i want to end up, but once i get *into* it, once the characters come alive on the page, i inevitably find better ways of doing things, stronger and more muscular paths to the story, more interesting side roads.

also, this original story was worked out in 1986/87; that's nearly ten years ago. in those ten years, i've become -- or like to think i've become -- a better writer, learned more, written more, picked up some new tools i didn't have then. so you have a situation where the writer in 1996 looks at the writer in 1986 and says, "No, listen...there's a better way. Yes, we'll still get to Disneyland on time, you'll still have plenty of time to ride the haunted mansion...but if we go *this* way, we can stop off and also see Knotts Berry Farm, and the Winchester Mystery Mansion, and maybe even Hearst Castle on the way."

the destination is still the same..but i've found a *lot* more interesting ways of getting there. which, after all, is what an outline is for: a safe home base that allows you to wander off, knowing that you can always return to it if you get lost.

jms

Janet: thanks. It's just always seemed to me that if you're going to create a fictional universe, you should do your homework. Now, having said that, there are plenty of areas where I haven't fleshed out some stuff as much as I'd like (and no, I'm not telling you where they are; it's nothing you'd notice, really). But I could do that every day, 24 hours a day, and still not finish everything...a universe is a BIG place. Still, the more I can do, the realer the show becomes.

jms

There's a little of lots of things in the writing, it's hard to pin down any one of them; I don't sit down and say, "Okay, now to use some psychology on this." A writer is like a sponge; you pick up lots of colors and strangenesses, then when you come to write something, you squeeze, and everything comes out together. I write what the dark and scary parts of my brain seem interested in writing about.

jms

Yes, I think Kosh sort of "hit the wall" when he saw that Sheridan wasn't going to go away; I think finally he was ashamed, and recognized his fear, and in a sense the air went out of him, and he reconciled himself to what had to be.

You're right about the mentor; sooner or later, the mentor has to step aside (or fall by the wayside) for the others to grow into the hero's journey. Originally this was slated to happen a bit later...I think, on some level, I was reluctant to do it, because to write this kind of stuff you have to *feel* it yourself, and I think I was avoiding that as much as Kosh was avoiding his fate. I didn't want to go through writing that. So I kept putting it off. I knew it *had* to be done...but not yet....

And that's when, for lack of a better explanation, Kosh stepped up and began to pull me in that direction in the script. It was time. His passing shouldn't be frittered away or minimized; it should happen at the right moment, and this was that moment. It's almost impossible to describe this to a non-writer, but the character, this fictional construct, was simply determined to have his way, and that was the end of it. I kept trying to dance away in the script, to go back into safer waters...but each time was pulled back in this direction, until finally I had to admit that yes, this was the right time, and the right way, to do this.

And Kosh fell.

But what finally convinced me was the realization that this was not only right for now, but right for *later*...though you won't know what that means for a while yet.

jms

"For scripts that are given to other writers do you find you do much if any mental picturing of the episode? If so, how does that affect the writing process between you and the other writer?"

No, you only get into that part of it when you're going to sit down and actually WRITE the sucker. It's a matter of bringing in the freelancer and (assuming s/he hasn't come up with a story independent of me, which happened about 4-5 times in toto) saying, "Okay, in this episode the giant blue penguins of Rigel 4 steal Ivanova's shoes," or handing the person a few paragraphs to several pages with detailed story notes. Then the person goes away.

The first "mental picture" I have of it is when the writer brings back an outline based on those notes. This is always hard for me, as is the first draft script, because the characters rarely talk like our characters talk. They don't sound right, don't always behave consistently, there's bits of backstory that contradict what's been established, and that has to get fixed. So it's like seeing a distorted picture, and your job is to bring it closer into focus.

(This is an inevitable aspect of freelancing. There simply isn't time to learn all there is to know about a show before you begin writing; you have to come in, do it fast, and then move on to the next assignment if you're going to make a living at this. That's the Freelance Life. I hate the Freelance Life. I like to stay around, get to know the characters, rummage around inside their heads and find what's there. Freelance scripts almost always tend to be about the guest star character; if you look at mine, most of them don't really tend to have a big guest character, with some notable exceptions. I find our regular characters more than sufficiently interesting.)

What's most ironic about the freelance situation is that you often have people who say, "Straczynski oughta use more freelance writers, they bring in perspectives he doesn't have." They cite the "moment of perfect beauty" in Peter's script, Londo's "my shoes are too tight, and I have forgotten how to dance," the alien abductor courtroom scene in Grail, Deathwalker's comments about how she plans to create her monument...all of which are scenes or sections I wrote and inserted into scripts by other people. (One of my best lines for G'Kar is one I'm not credited for, in Zicree's script, "The universe runs on the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." I actually saw some messages noting that jms never seems to be able to write something that succinct. Well, actually...I did.)

jms

Wow, talk about lots of questions....

1/ Going in to a new episode how do you decide what the B plot will be? Do you write the B plot concurrent with the A? (The two plots often seem to contain thematic counterpoint.)

In breaking out the season in advance, I have a selection of arc stories and non arc stories worked out. (In his Starlog interview, Larry DiTillio, prior story editor on the show, mentions going through the lists of stories I make up each season.) In looking them over, it's easy to know which are A stories and which are B stories by the relative size of the story and how much time would be required to tell it. A lot of time = A story, less = B story. If a story is strong enough that it doesn't need a B story, it's left alone. If, on the other hand, it's a bit slim, or if I want to do more of a slice-of-life episode, then I pull in a B story.

Once I've decieded this, I look for a B story that's an interesting counterpoint to the A story; if A is very dark, B tends to be lighter. Sometimes I try and come up with a dramatic counterpoint or ironic or thematically similar sub-story.

Once this is done, I write both at the same time, much as you see it, right through, going from one to the other, not writing them separately. I need to do this to be able to feel the flow of the story, where the segues are, and to create counterpoint and tension. It needs a certain kind of rhythm, and if you write them separately you won't get that.

2/ You say that you play out a scenario in your head before putting fingers to keyboard. How much of an episode do you tend to picture before writing anything?

Quite a lot of it, actually. Once I know the basic story, I cue the "video" up in my head and start playing it over and over, gradually becoming able to see the images more and more clearly, filling in the blanks between scenes and the like. Once I know where all the pieces go, I begin writing. (On some occasions, as a writing test, I'll launch in with just a general sense of where I want to go and charge through it for the adrenalin rush...sort of like an acrobat performing without a net. This works particularly well when I know the episode is going to contain surprises, or should have a sense of immediacy that sometimes can diminish if you think about it too much in advance.)

3/ Is it purely experience that allows you to develop a script that will fit within the time frame of each episode?

Yeah, it's just doing it. I almost never look at the page count as I write, it's just a matter of *feeling* it, knowing how much time is passing, and when you should begin racing toward the climax. Sometimes I'm a few pages over, but usually I can nail it spot on.

4/ What percentage of time - roughly - is spent in the head, writing the script itself and revising afterwards?

Hard to say. I have them on a back burner as I'm doing other stuff, waiting to go on script #whatever. Even though I'm not consciously working on them, I know that subconsciously it's bubbling away. Once I start actually typing, I can finish a script in anywhere from 3-4 days (if I'm in white heat over the story, in which case my door is locked and nobody DARES bother me) to 10 days. Revisions take only a few days, mainly for production purposes.

5/ When writing a script you must be roughly aware of where the ad breaks will be; do you initially ignore these or do you write to fit them?

No, you need to write to the act breaks so that you end each act on a hook; again you need to have that sense of how the acts flow at top and bottom.

6/ Is there a writer's term for the coda that completes each episode?

It's called a tag.

jms

"Do you get ideas uncontainably leaping out at you for script n+2 while you're working on script n?"

Constantly. And while en route to work. And while in the shower. And...well, you get the idea.

If I'm writing script n, and something hits me, I grab the nearest thing that isn't on fire or moving, and scribble it down, with the result that my desk is constantly a snowstorm of bits of paper and post-its. The really big ones get post-it'd to my monitor at the B5 stage and my home office. By the end of this season, my monitors looked like hedgehogs....

jms

"Here's a different kind of question for you: When you sit down to work, I know you're not entirely in charge - the characters are - but how do you participate? When I write fiction (admittedly not often), it either flows out onto the page as though someone else were using my hands on the keyboard, or nothing happens at all, no matter how long I sit there. You don't seem to have any "nothing" time. Did you *develop* a sustainable creative process, or were you just always this way? In short, can you train - or at least successfully invite - the Muse, and how do you do it?"

Hard to say...it's like any muscle, the more you use it, the easier it gets to use. I think a part of it stems from the fact that I have very little in the way of barriers between me and the writing. Too many people who want to be writers feel that when they sit behind the keyboard, they have to do something different or other...that somehow WRITING has an overlay of some sort, that it's different than talking. But in many ways, it ain't any different.

The best writing (IMO) is natural writing, where the words on the page flow very naturally, very smoothly. Every once in a while, you pull out all the stylistic tricks, you thunder and lightning all over the page, when needed for effect...but it's the writing free of artifice that seems, for me, to work well. If you hang out with writers long enough, the really *good* ones, you learn soon enough that most of them talk exactly the way they write.

Lemme give you a forinstance...when Asimov was first struggling as a writer, he had lunch with his agent one day. He was having a hard time describing things, using language to paint pictures. The agent said, "You know how Hemingway would describe the sun rising in the morning?" No, Asimov said, leaning in...how? "The sun rose in the morning."

There's virtually nothing between my brain and the keyboard; I'm hardwired that way, which is why I can't dictate scripts...I write through my fingers. I write pretty much the way I talk. A lot of folks hereabouts have seen me at conventions, and they've noted that the me you see here is pretty much the me they see there, and the me that's just *there* all the time.

If you stop thinking about *trying to write*, and just write...the way you have to stop thinking about the next step you make, and just *dance*...the way you have to forget about technique and just make love...it all comes together. You don't Try To Write. You just write.

As for story ideas...it's just nothing I've ever had a problem with. As long as your characters are all distinct personalities, the stories you write will be as distinct and different as they are. Find out who the character is, what he wants, how far he'll go to achieve it, and how far somebody else will go to stop him...and the rest takes care of itself.

jms