Thanks. I guess I'm just kinda hard on my own stuff. DN was the first novel I'd ever written, and it was a learning experience. I came out of it better able to do the next one, and there are any number of ways I'd go back and improve the first book. Ah, well...as someone once noted, "Art is never finished, only abandoned."

jms

Not the work per se in terms of being influenced, but the attitude that goes into the work, yes. I've stood at Stonehenge at dawn, the place more or less empty, walked along the circular stones at Avebury, and stood in the deep cavernous center of a pre-bronze age burial mound in Ireland...when you do these things, you begin to understand what *time* is, and how we in this country don't really know what that is yet. It can affect how you perceive a lot of things, and in the end, that always feeds back into the writing.

jms

sorta kinda spoilers, I guess....

"So, to sum up, has it been hard making these changes after you and all of the fans have gotten to know them? Or is it simply a matter of: "Well...it's their time...?"

It's both, kinda. In the case of one character, who's been with us a long time, and who...shall we say delicately, is en route to becoming an ex-character by the end of this season...it was hard knowing the actor, because the actor said, "Was there something I did wrong?" To which you can only answer truthfully and say no, not at all, just the opposite...you did a GREAT job, that's why we're offing you. If you'd been just mediocre, nobody'd CARE."

In another case, also later this season, it was *very* difficult for me personally to do it, very emotional...and I wouldn't probably have done it at all if the character hadn't basically grabbed me by the lapels and dragged me kicking and screaming to that point of the story and said, "Look, this is right, you know it, I know it, now DO it." So I did. (And the cast and crew were equally stunned. Of everything that's been done on the show to date, THAT one thing got the biggest reaction; nobody'd eat across from me for two days at lunch after that.)

Bottom line...you've got to go where the story leads you. That *has* to be your first and foremost obligation. If it's anything else -- catering to the audience's expectations, or your own preferences -- rather than doing what the cold logic of the story *demands* you to do...you're finished.

jms

The story kind of came in all at once; and yes, in a way, it's the story I've been preparing to write from day one. The eclectic, weird background I have is what enables me to tell this story this way. This is, I think, my seminal work in the field. To invoke greater names for a moment, Heinlein wrote lots of books, but he's known for Stranger in a Strange Land; Frank Herbert wrote lots of books, but he's known for Dune. I've done a lot before this, and hope to do a lot after, but I suspect that this is what I'll be most known for when it's all said and done.

jms

"I'm assuming when you are the creator/writer/executive producer of a running series that you must spend an enormous amount of time either "doing" things related to it or "thinking" about things related to it."

Absolutely. Even when I'm not actively working on it, it comes up constantly in conversation, or in other ways. It never goes away, and I'm always jotting down notes for future use.

"How does this affect your lifestyle? Can one be in your position and still have a personal life - or is literally everything you do somehow involved with, wrapped up in or connected to "the series"?"

Not if you're going to be this involved with the process. It's really a 24 hour a day job. I haven't seen a movie at a theater in the 8 months preceding the wrap; haven't gone to a party except the B5 christmas and wrap parties in about a year. For the six years it'll take to make this show -- you count the pilot and post-production on the last year -- I went into this knowing that my personal life would pretty much go to hell for that period of time. The show is the single dominant concern; has to be, or it won't be done right.

"Are you able to go out and have a good time and not think about anything to do with B5, or is it always there, in the back of your mind?"

It's always there.

"I very much admire what you do, but feel it must, at some point, drive you a little nuts........"

Sometimes, but only a little. I fought for 5 years to get this show on the air; it's a great privilege, and a terrible responsibility; WB has entrusted me to do this properly, and that's a great compliment. In the media, it's unspeakably rare to get one singular vision on the air, without compromise or committee...I'm not *about* to complain about the hours. I've got absolutely no grounds to complain about ANYthing.

jms

Actually, it's Chekov's rule of playwriting: If there's a gun on the wall in act 1 scene 1, you must use it by act 3 scene 3. Similarly, if you fire the gun in act 3, you must show it in act one. I do try to play fair with the audience, and either hint at or point to what's coming in various ways, so that if you back up all the episodes, it's right there in front of you.

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

It's a fair question. I'm going to try and deal with it as best I can. The problem, first and foremost, is trying to explain the craft of writing to someone who isn't a writer. This isn't intended as a slight; if a brain surgeon tried to explain his work to me, I'd be about as much in the dark. I have no idea where music comes from; I can sit with Chris Franke for hours, trying to understand that process. I never will. I'm not hardwired that way. I *am* hardwired for writing. So it's not a judgment, just a minor truth.

The creative process is fluid. Has to be. Consider for a moment the position in which I find myself. Let's say I'm writing a novel. I start with a fairly clear notion of where I'm going. Six chapters in, I get a better way of doing something, so I go back and revise chapters 1-5, so it now all fits; you never see what went before. Now, compare that to a situation where you're publishing each chapter as you go, and you can't go back and change anything. (This is pretty much the situation Dickens found himself in, as he published his works chapter by chapter; you can never back up, only go forward.)

At the same time, because we're using actors who have real lives of their own, to whom things happen -- broken limbs, health problems that may preclude appearing in a given episode, sudden career changes, you name it -- you have real-life obstacles constantly in your way.

The closest thing I can compare this to...is if you're on stage, in front of a large audience, and you have to do a very elaborate dance...and all the while people are throwing bowling balls and chainsaws at you. You either learn how to accommodate all that, and keep pretty much on rhythm, or you're dead.

This show was originally conceived in 1986/87. About 10 years ago. Back then, all TV episodic stuff was done pretty much from one person's point of view, your nominal hero. Yes, you'd occasionally dive outside that for a quick scene with other characters, usually to set up something, but for the most part, it was about that one person. In MURDER, SHE WROTE, Jessica Fletcher was always at the heart of every episode; you had the occasional guest character with whom she'd interact, and the recurring supporting cast, but none of them ever changed, and none of them ever really took center stage for more than a few minutes at a time. That's how TV has been done up until now.

Novels, on the other hand, are often omniscient in narrative structure, and you blip in and out of multiple points of view. THE STAND, for instance.

Now, I've done both; I've written novels and I've written TV. When it came time to pull together B5 initially, you go into the "okay, who is the TV point of view character" question. Which was Londo's narration, and which was the way I'd learned to write TV all these years. Once the series got going, it quickly became apparent that I'd have to learn a whole new way of writing TV that was a lot more like what I'd been writing in my novels, which were multi-POV huge stories. It's a kind of writing that's never really been done before for American TV; and I had to somewhat invent that style or form of writing as I went, in front of millions of viewers.

You can't prepare for something like this, as much as you try, because it's never been done before.

(On reflection, probably the closest thing to what I've been doing here was the miniseries The Winds of War, in terms of the multiple viewpoints involved.)

Also, in the last 10 years, I've become a better writer, learned more about my craft, added more tools to my toolbox. That means being able to perceive better ways of doing things now than I could've seen before.

So here we are. I sit at my word processor with my notes from 1986, and I see a better way of doing something from those notes...do I go with what's there, or do I strike off and do the better approach, PROVIDED that it still takes me where I want to go in the arc? To ignore it is to be inflexible.

I've stayed fluid. It's the same way I write a novel. You're just seeing the *process* acted out right in front of you, a process which normally the public never gets to see. That, I think, is some part of what you're reacting to.

Also, you have to be careful in how you define an arc. There have been definite arcs of character all through this. Look at Londo when we first met him...and look at him now. Same for G'Kar, Delenn, Franklin... look at Sheridan when he first arrived: happy go lucky, smiling, glad to be there, fresh fruit and a hot shower, able to take care of anything and everything, how bad can it be?...and look at the dark, haunted, almost overwhelmed figure we see now.

The story has also arc'd, peeling off layer by layer. The Minbari war leads to the secret of the Grey Council, which leads back to the first shadow war, which leads to the current shadow war, each really on a direct line one from the other. The slow corruption of Earthgov, the death of President Santiago, the rise of Clark, the fall from Earth...all of it a very definite arc.

It's not just a matter of "living in interesting times." What makes a story is *causality*. A sequence of linked events. "The king died, and then the queen died" is not a story. "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is a story. It is an arc, however small.

Finally, I'd just note the posts -- public and private -- from folks who have sat down and watched the *whole show* as a unit, once per day, or several per day...and the linked aspect, the real *arc* of the show, becomes far more apparent when watched that way right now. It's there.

jms

The other thing to bear in mind is that I can't really be responsible for what expectations you bring to it, since I can't see inside your head. (Or if I could I wouldn't tell you...and stop that, you'll go blind.) All I can do is tell the story that's in my head.

jms

It's a very careful and deliberate dance. The reality is that many of our directors add a lot to the show in terms of visual style, pacing, and in working with the actors to bring out the story.

The way it works...the director gets the script. The director and I talk about the script (several times). The director then also has his own meetings with the various departments, telling them what he'd like to have as visual elements (sets and lighting elements and practical on-set effects like squibs, sparks, exploding walls, that sort of thing). He walks the sets, diagrams out the angles, works out the shooting schedule with the first AD.

In most cases, the script is written in master shots, i.e,

INT. MEDLAB

Franklin looks at Delenn's lifeless body. Sheridan enters, exchanges a serious look with the doctor. Garibaldi enters carrying popcorn.

And there the director can frame the shot however he chooses. In some cases, if I want something in particular, I call out the shots. As in....

INT. ZOCALO

Morden waits at a table as, in BG, an as-yet unidentified NARN approaches. Morden doesn't even look up as he approaches and pulls something out of his pocket.

ANGLE - A KITTY

freshly skewered and ready for broiling. It's little kitty eyes loll up at us.

MORDEN

smiles and pockets the kitty. Nods, as we

WIDEN

and the Narn continues on his way, and we PAN OVER to a sign on the wall: "Kitties Cannot Hide," as we DISSOLVE TO:

In those cases, the director shoots those specific shots.

It's once a director hits the stage floor that the main difference and quality comes through. A good director enhances a script, brings out nuances in performance, helps elucidate the story, keeps the camera moving...the ones I tend to favor are the directors that transmute one shot into another...going from a three-shot to a two-shot to a closeup and a reverse all in *the same camera move*. Ah luvs that kinda stuff.

jms

Mainly, I think I was just trying to avoid it...put it off as long as possible...but the character knew, even more than I did, that this was the right time to do this. It's a very hard thing to do this to a character; the only way to get that kind of emotion into a script is to feel it yourself as you're writing it, and that's a painful thing to do. So I was avoiding it. But he outfoxed me...as usual.

That's Vorlons for you.

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

The only problem with walking you through "The Coming of Shadows" is that, well, the production process has gotten so blurred that I barely remember much of it. The problem being that one doesn't just do one at a time, you basically work on 8 episodes all at the same time, in varying degrees of preparation or completion, and so there's no clean point of demarkation. One flows into the next, into the next, into the next....

I can, though, speak in generalities, and that might be something of possible interest to people. I'll divide it up into sections, so that if anyone is interested, we can discuss the various parts and pieces in subsequent messages. An episode is produced in the following stages:

1) Writing. Not much to discuss here; you just sit and bleed onto the keyboard.

2) First Draft Script. It's sent to department heads (costume, wardrobe, CGI, prosthetics, often the director). Preparation begins. (Hereafter just "prep.")

3) Final Draft Script. Full distribution: cast, crew, casting, everybody. We are now fully in prep.

PREP: Meet with all department heads, discuss and approve designs for sets, prosthetics, other episode-specific areas. Full prep lasts 2 weeks. Meet with director to have a "tone meeting" to go over every scene to make sure we both understand what everything's about. Individual visual effects meetings, art department meetings, other meetings.

SHOOT: Seven 12-hour days, weekdays only. Script is shot out of sequence, going by sets. (I.e., all Medlab scenes are shot first, then all C&C scenes, and so on, to minimize camera/lighting moves, which take a long time on any show.)

POST: 52 days (average). Director does first cut of episode, then John Copeland and I make the final producer's cut. Visual EFX, CGI and roto work are all inserted. Sound spotting meeting with Chris Franke and sound EFX guys to spot where music/sound cues are. Other meetings. Final audio mix and delivery for insertion of commercials, credits, closed-captioning and satellite uplink.

Any of those areas are fair game for further inquiry.

jms

Thanks. The voice-over is something I mentioned here a few months ago as a tool I was adding to my toolbox to use as counterpoint, or segue, in ways I hadn't tried before. I use it again here and there, though the key with any new tool is not to go nuts and use it all over the place when a better one, maybe the one you already had, is better suited to the task.

jms

"The "arc" is fully alive for you now, I think. Without these characters living and breathing inside your mind I don't see how one man could write as much as you have over the past two seasons. What I *have* noticed is that all the actors now seem to be responding to the story you're telling."

Yeah, it's kind of a funny thing...the deeper we got into the season, as the actors saw only one name on script after script, and they began to understand what was coming, and it's all *very* consistent...the sense of this being a novel really came through for everyone in a very profound way. You could really feel a change in everyone's attitude, though it'd be hard to put into words. A sense of, "This is it, this is the story, we're moving now, we're doing something nobody's ever done." They know how hard it is for anyone to write this many scripts, which is why it's never been done before, and I think they not only respected that, but felt they had to rise to the challenge and give just as much at that end of it. Usually you tend to hit a slump energy-wise in your third year; not here. Everyone's just hitting all cylinders.

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

The real drag about Twin Peaks is that, apparently, as told to me by some of the writers who worked on the show, they really had NO idea where they were going. They just kept throwing stuff out there. I was vastly disappointed.

jms

"just wanted to know how you came up the idea to do Babylon 5 it's a complex storie and it amaze me how one person could think of something like that."

Caffeine. Lots of it.

jms

Beth: I quite agree, didn't mean to imply otherwise...it would've been nice to see some of those scenes, it just wasn't practical. And you have to make hard choices. As someone once said of writing, "You have to kill all your darlings," meaning the nifty little things you'd *like* to do, as opposed to the things you *have* to do.

jms

"Where does the run sequence then come from? How much does the decisions on how the Bs run in and out, affect how you sequence the As? Some of your Bs get to be major elements down the line, so how aware are you of this when you're selecting> Do you end up getting there and looking back and *then* realising where you were going, and deliberatly weaving from then on - or have you always been aware of when weft turned warp?"

Where does dance come from? Where does music come from? Where does making love come from? How do you instinctively know what to do?

Beats the hell out of me. I just listen to the music....

jms

"These ideas, I assume, are all related to B5 characters and their story. Or do you get ideas for a new story involving a purple dinosaur with a high annoying voice who just specializes in eating little teeny tiny children?"

That's certainly a story whose time has come. I'd go see it.

"Point being, we already know you suffer from multiple personalities: JMS, Kosh, Delenn, Sinclair, Sheridan, Garibaldi, Ivanova, and Marcus, and then the plethora of recurring characters who all run around with their own voice. Just how many are you? Is it a set number or are you constantly adding new characters for stories you'd like to write after B5."

Like every writer, I imagine, you constantly find your brain firing on different things. If I'm not doing B5 stuff, it goes chugging off in search of other things. Over the course of the last season, in addition to completely rewriting and revising my scriptwriting book, due out this fall, I outlined a couple of books, wrote a 2-hour pilot for a major company, developed another project with Warners (both of which are happily dormant for now), wrote up premises for several other series, about half a dozen movie outlines (two of which I'm currently writing in script form as I wait for renewal), and other stuff.

It's just what I do.

jms

That's the great thing about being alive...there's always a new trauma waiting just around the corner for you to learn from and draw upon.

jms

Thanks; foreshadowing is tough, because it implies the audience is going to BE there x-years down the road to Get It, and you have to risk the audience going "huh?" one time too many and wandering away...but nothing good comes without risk.

jms

Your observation is correct; the structure of B5 to a great extent is that of the novel, which is, after all, what's being attempted. So you go from introduction, to rising action, to conflict, complication, climax and denouement. A novel for TV.

jms

They're all favorites. If I had to pick one, it might well be Londo, simply because of the scope of the character, and what he lets me write.

jms

Well, Zathras appeared in Babylon Squared, so you might have seen him there. Beyond that...no, the actor came to what was written on the page and made it come to life, but didn't invent the character. I just sorta thunk him up. It's what I do.

jms

Who said there was a mystery about Sheridan going to Z'ha'dum? Kosh seems to treat it as a fait accompli; so does Sheridan. It seems fated that he will go...the question is when, why, and under what circumstances, with what results?

See, sometimes the story works in the shadows (so to speak)...and other times we're right out in the open, we hand you the playbook and tell you we're coming right up the middle. And *that's* when you've got to really worry.

jms

When they shot the scene itself...no, not a lot of emotion in the Kosh sequence in his quarters, because it was all very technical, bits and pieces. But in the hallway scene with Sheridan, and the later scene with Delenn and the others...yes, very much so.

It was *extremely* difficult to write. As a writer, the only way to evoke a feeling in your audience is to feel it yourself and communicate that honestly in the text. It was just awful.

jms

Actually, both those questions are answered in the next installment, so I'll let that answer for me.

Yeah, I lov language, the way it can snake around behind you and turn into something else when you're not looking. The alchemy of metaphor and the well-chosen allusion. Banging words together is half the fun.

jms

No, I don't laugh about it...it's always an interesting, sometimes fascinating process. If there were any consistent error I've seen, it's the tendency to focus on the little tiny things, and thus miss the big things I've just wheeled onto the stage in full view. If you're going to do this show right, you have to play fair; so the person standing way in the background of a scene, just passing by, an extra, isn't likely to be very important, for instance...but people seem to leap after that one. I sometimes get cute in my foreshadowing, but I try not to be obscure.

jms

"1. In the unthinkable, will you wrap up the storyline this season, or is that too late?"

After the conclusion of this season, there are basically 3 major movements remaining in the symphony (for lack of a better description). They fit comfortably in 2 seasons, leaving room to do the usual routine of starting each season with 4-5 standalones, and layering in other standalones along the way, some non-arc personal stories, and so on.

If they came to me, put a gun to my head and said, "Okay, year four is it, wrap it up," yes, it could be done. You just yank out the standalones and interstitial stuff I put between major movements, and shove the three pieces together. It's not what I'd *prefer*, obviously, but it could be done.

jms

"One would find it hard to believe that episodes like "Severed Dreams", "I&E","A Late Delvery From Avalon" and of course, WWE could be written by the same guy. The pace, dialog, everything are adapted so well for each episode."

Suddenly I'm having an identity crisis....

I like to try different styles for different moods. I also like to vary the tone of the show; one will be more comedic, as with Sic Transit Vir, others much darker, like Ship of Tears. I enjoy trying new things, risking a bit, failing on occasion, but learning in the process.

"You previsouly said that after B5 you would get "back" to writing. What in Gods name are you doing now? If this isn't writing, I sure as heck don't now what is."

Actually, the theory would be to get back into writing novels and plays, assuming B5 runs its full course.

jms

Some folks catch double-meanings when they're there...some don't...some find double meanings when they're *not* there. Art is a participatory sport.

jms

"When I saw "A Late Arrival at Avalon," Marcus's line asking "Who is Morgana La Fey" got me to begin speculating that Anna Sheridan was alive and that she was working for the Shadows. My question is whether or not Marcus's line was intended that way--i.e. as foreshadowing that a significant female figure not presently on the scene (Anna?) would arrive at B5 to play Morgana to Delenn's Lady of the Lake?"

yup.

jms