"I'd be interested in how you would answer the conceit (my word) of those who believe that by selling his work (and therefore 'using' the public) a writer has no right to deny access to *any* of his works after death."

That's like saying that if a woman has sex with someone a few times, that person is entitled to have sex with that person forever thereafter, that the person can no longer say "no" having once put out.

Which is, of course, nonsense. The writer's work belongs to the writer, and if s/he chooses to have any unpublished material destroyed upon demise, then that is the writer's right. It's nobody else's business.

Similarly, in my case, I destroy all my previous drafts of whatever I write. Anyone who wants to go through my files and pull out the earlier (inferior) drafts of scripts or stories, looking for my handwritten revisions...you ain't gonna find them. They're gone, trashed, roundfiled.

A writer has the right to release that of his or her work which they desire; it's their work, after all. Nobody else gets a vote on that.

"And doesn't this impinge in part of the Cult of Personality question?"

Only in that some folks believe that they have a proprietary interest in a writer, and that by virtue of spending X-dollars buying books, they *own* that writer, or a piece of that writer, and that that writer is accountable to them, owes them something more than the work, and the respect between a writer and a reader.

Wrong.

jms

Re: the debate...the one thing I'd wanted to mention in my closing remarks, but didn't get around to, was that religion, science, atheism, are all just tools, neither better nor worse than the people who use them. They are part of our attempt to understand the universe and our role in it. They can be used for good or ill, depending on who's involved and what they're after.

jms

[Someone posts a review of Demon Night, Joe's first novel.]

Thanks.

The Synanon game is (more was than is, but that notwithstanding...) used in drug and alcohol counseling programs. If you'll check the psychology wing of your local library, you'll probably find information on it there.

Re: the scene you mention you'd've liked to have seen...it was there, actually. The editor of the book snipped it for length. (I think there were about six or seven substantive scenes deleted to bring it under 100,000 words, which was about right for them size-wise.) With most of them you don't feel the absence; with some, you do.

My appraisal: it's a decent enough first novel. It was strictly learn-as-you-go, having never done it before, and really only doing it to see if I could do it, and because I couldn't find the book I wanted to read, so I wrote the darned thing, never really figuring on selling it. It sat in the closet for something like 2 or 3 years before my agent bugged me into letting her read it. The second novel, OtherSyde, is something of an improvement, I knew a little better then what I was doing. And the next novel, whenever I have the chance or time to write it, should be even better. It's going to be a long one, a 1,000 page contemporary dark fantasy with some interesting edges to it. Got a great title for it, it's all outlined, just gotta find time to write it.

jms

Thanks. Yeah, I like symmetry...both as a word, and as a concept. It plays into the show a lot, showing the balance that the universe tends to impose whether we like it or not. What goes around, comes around.

jms

Supporting cast are *very* important, they add to the sense and feel of a working universe that exists outside the main characters. Again, it's that sense of reality.

jms

"So, I suppose I meant "commemorate" in the way the post office does -- recognizing those who have died."

Specific persons, no. I don't do that. Never have. I think, in the case of someone I know who's passed away, it would be rude. I don't think I could handle it. Over the years I've lost way too many friends, and some wounds never entirely heal. Best to leave them alone, and remember those friends as they were, not as they were bent into fictionalizations.

jms

Thanks. If we come even close to someday being classified as literature, that would be a good thing; a chance to show you can tell a quality SF story for television. But the day they put out a Cliff's Notes version of the series, I'm leaving for the Arctic Circle.

jms

There's another way to look at this, which occured to me as I was writing it, so I structured it accordingly.

Morella: "You must save the eye that does not see."

Londo: "I...do not understand."

I.

Eye.

We never actually saw how she spelled or meant this.

Given Londo's background, one could almost make the case that the discussion was about him. Not saying that's it, but it's a possibility and a subtext.

jms

I try not to randomly drop in significant lines without knowing ahead of time where it's going to go, or where it has the capacity to go. You can't just mess with the audience that way; that was where Twin Peaks went afoul. You just have to vary them; some things are obviously significant, some things only become significant in hindsight (or rerun). It's a hard dance to dance.

jms

Coming up with ideas is easy, as long as you know who your characters are and what they want and what the world is like around them. It's like knowing what a good friend will say when they bump their shin into the coffee table in the dark; you create any given situation, which is itself a logical extension of the world they're in, then drop those characters into that situation...and the story takes care of itself.

jms

"Is G'kar a Paul Atreides type character. in fact is the whole Narn race based on the fremen?"

No. This is the difference between fanfic and fiction, where you create something on your own. Were the fremen based on a race Herbert read about in someone else's novel, or did he come up with them on his own? (Granted using lots of historical notions.) He came up with them on his own.

But TV people are always asked whose world they borrowed for their material. This is not a flame, only an observation. If I'd written this as a novel, no one would be asking these questions. It doesn't particularly upset me...I simply consider this as part of the ongoing educational process about how TV is made.

Yes, we do come up with our own ideas sometimes.

"he facts that made me think of this are: The sword in the 3rd episode which must have blood on the blade before it's sheathed."

Some samurai have this tradition; that's where Herbert got it.

"The Dust and what it does to G'kar (from this it seems that the dust is very like spice)"

Some say they get the same effect from peyote.

"The whole religeous thing that the Narns love so dearly."

Religion predates Dune.

"Now maybe i think this because Dune is one of my favourite books, and I want to see a connection with it and Bab5."

Bingo.

This is what I've said for a long time...lots of people tend to view B5 through whatever book or saga they're most familiar with, or which means the most to them. Somebody says it's Dune, somebody says it's Lord of the Rings, or the Prisoner, or Blake's 7, or Star Wars, or something else...not because that's what it IS, but that's the filter through which they *perceive* it. It's a frame of reference issue.

There's nothing wrong with it, it doesn't bother me, like I said...but the problem really is with what's perceived, not with what's written, or how it's written.

Sort of a case of Shroedinger's Saga.

jms

...sigh...I'm gonna regret this, I know it, I just know it....

C'mere. Siddown. Lemme 'splain.

I resigned SFWA (back before it became SFFWA) for the reasons you cite, and over the whole Dramatic Nebula issue, which was for me the defining moment and the proverbial straw across the equally proverbial camel's back.

A number of us -- me, D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, Mike Cassutt, Harlan, others -- attempted to get SFWA to restore the Dramatic Nebula, which had been dropped for a number of years. In the course of this, I received more abusive, vitriolic, hateful pieces of mail and email than I can begin to describe to you. It rivals or exceeds *anything* ever sent to me in any flame war. All from other SFWA members. One quote I remember vividly is emblematic of the whole: "I work my ass off writing for pennies a word, while all you hacks in TV churn out crap for thousands of dollars a page. You and your LA buddies will never get a Dramatic Nebula as long as I'm alive."

And that was the nicest letter I got.

It was explained to me, in mail, email and the SFWA journal, that scriptwriting wsan't really *writing*, it was just typing. That TV writers weren't really writers. That you can't read a script unless you're trained, so you can't vote on it. That since TV/film is often a collaborative form, you don't know who contributed what, so how can you give a nebula? And there's George Martin's argument, that SFWA should give Dramatic Nebulas to scriptwriters when WGA allows prose writers to join.

And the responses to this...it *is* writing, you *can* read the script easily, it's just the margins that are different. Editors often contribute structure and ideas and other material to the books they edit, but I don't see that stopping regular nebulas. And SFWA was built around a particular *genre*, anything in that genre is or should be acceptable; WGA is built around *form*, the script, and any genre within that form is acceptable. We're talking apples and oranges here.

I was even willing to remove myself from all future DN consideration to remove the notion that I was doing this to get one myself. It was the principle, for one vital reason:

At that time, SFWA allowed scripts to qualify you for membership in SFWA. Scripts were fine as far as SFWA was concerned as long as it brought in more in the way of membership dues. If it brought money INTO SFWA, then it was writing, and qualified script writers to join SFWA. But when it came time to give out the dramatic nebula...nope, suddenly it ain't writing no more.

It was a clear contradiction, and a bald-faced double-standard. Hypocrisy at its most blatant.

So finally, when the move to restore the Dramatic Nebula was vetoed, I quit. The final irony being this: over the 10 years or so I'd been a member, I'd written maybe 7 or 8 letters to be published in the SFWA Journal, which appears quarterly or monthly, I forget now. There were (and are) people who had something in almost every issue, often for pages at a time. I sent my letter of resignation to the Journal, and it has never to this day been printed. Because once it became clear that I was no longer going to continue paying dues (though I was still a member at the time of the letter, and for several months thereafter, until my prior payment ran out), they really had no interest in hearing anything from a scriptwriter. They later tried the exuse that it was too long, but it was exactly the same length as the majority of letters that appeared in the Journal.

In fighting for the rights of script-members of SFWA on the DN issue, and the perception of scriptwriters in general, I was insulted, abused, targeted, slandered, ridiculed, threatened and harrassed. While there are many fine individuals who belong to the group, as an organization is is provincial and small minded and insecure and jealous. Any John Norman GOR novel would theoretically be eligible for a Nebula, but 12 Monkeys would not. If an SF novel sells 35,000 copies, it's a great thing; 100,000 is a *terrific* thing, much ballyhooed by the SF establishment. B5 has a hardcore audience of between 10 and 15 *million* people.

So bottom-line...yeah, I left SFWA because I got tired of the contempt the organization and many of its members held (and still hold) for scriptwriters. When it came time to accept the Science Fiction Weekly's award for "The Coming of Shadows," I stepped into the SFFWA suite (where they were to be given out) just long enough to find the guys involved, and get out again. And the award was presented out in the hallway, because I didn't want it to happen there. As I told the organizer, I wouldn't go into the SFFWA suite for this if I were dying of lung cancer and they were offering free chemotherapy at the door.

jms

Publishing the scripts in book form is something that I'll have to consider later, there will probably have to be negotiations with WB over it.

There's no real advice I can give to an aspiring writer that would mean a damn except to write, keep writing, keep sending it out, and don't stop.

jms

All good points...might even be true. I have nothing to do with 'em anymore, so it's moot in any event.

The new season starts this week.

There's one other aspect to this whole thing which was brought home to me in something Ellen Datlow said on MSNBC the other week. She pointed out, with deadly accuracy, that once upon a time, movies tended to mine SF novels for their stories. Now, it's movies and TV that drive novels, with endless ST books, books based on movies, novelizations, the whole Star Wars Empire stuff, on and on and on. You'd think that an organization of SF writers would want to be more involved in the mass media that was changing the way their field buys books, and what they buy, since it has a direct effect on their livelihood.

By working *with* the media, they would have a better chance of helping SF film and TV producers understand what SF is, and what books are out there they can option. That could lead to more movies based on books, more option money for writers, and so on. It's a provincial attitude that is going to continue to do them great harm in the long run. But SFWA, for all its SF trappings, is remarkably short-sighted when it comes to alternate storytelling technologies.

jms

Basically, nobody sees anything until it's in first draft form. Harlan functions on an as-needed basis; if I have a question, or if there's an area which could benefit from his input, I call him in, but for the most part, the scriptwriting is a one-person affair. The job of the writer is to listen to the small voice in the back of his head, and too often too many voices just get in the way.

jms

"Do you think that you write at both the conscious and subconscious level simultaneously."

I think any writer has to operate at both levels at the same time. You learn to trust your instincts. There's a certain point when you're "in the zone," to use a sports phrase, and the logical part of you is structuring the plot, and the illogical, intuitive part of you is filling in the corners. You have to be open to both voices for it to work.

jms

I think I pretty much agree with the comments, criticisms inclusive. OtherSyde was my second novel, and I was still learning my craft, so it has some rough edges, though overall I think it works.

Re: some dangling threads and a hurried sense to the last third...again, I agree. The book was about 100 pages over what the publisher decided what he wanted to put out, and sliced off a lot of threads, and hurried a lot of the other stuff. Which is one reason why I haven't let the book be reprinted since; I'd prefer to go to the longer version...and I'm embarrassed to say I don't know where the draft is. (Or the files.) I think the longer version worked a lot better.

jms

[ Summary: The fellow author and member of the SFWA offers some more insights and opinions. ]

I think your points are valid...the question, for me, is *why* they are valid. Yes, what you describe is what the studio folks *think* is SF. Because they don't know any better.

Lemme take this away from SF for a moment to make the point. For the last 45 years, the networks and studios thought cop shows were all of a piece. If you really sit back and look at them objectively, most cop shows were more adventure shoot-em-ups than anything else, the bad guy has a plot, the good guys try and stop him...they had very little bearing on reality. The occasional exception, like a Hill Street Blues, was just that, an exception and not repeated. The networks thought that's what a cop show WAS. Police Story and Jake and the Fatman and Cannon and all the rest.

Then along came a book...Homicide: Life in the Killing Streets, which was trotted over to the networks with startling speed. It was a gritty, inside look at how this stuff *really* works. And as with one voice, the networks said, "Oh, so THAT'S how it works," and then you instantly had the Homicide TV series, and NYPD Blue and others fast-tracking to be real cop shows.

They can course correct *real* fast if you know how to approach them. Do the studio heads *really* appreciate cop stories now more than before? No, not really, their eyes are still on the bottom line of finances. But they now allow these sorts of stories to be done.

You can do the same thing with SF. We've done a little of that with B5, and now there are more shows coming up with long-range story arcs, from Space Cases to Dark Skies to others now in development. We've done stories in aresa not usually considered covered by SF, from religion to the death penalty to other areas. We've educated. Not a lot, I'm not exaggerating our influence, but a little...and that's a start. More could be done if the SF publishing community got off its butt and addressed the media rather than running from it or deriding it or simply ignoring it, in the belief that if they close their eyes it's not there anymore.

SF writers, more than anyone else, should understand the dangers of not keeping up with changes in technology in the areas in which you work.

jms

"1)I've noticed that, according to the Lurker's Guide, you have written the first eight episodes of season four. Are you planning to write the entire season? I hope so. Season three kicked ass. I can only assume that the Hugo must have revitalized your writing spirit."

It was a big help, no mistake.

"2)How does it feel to be in a class of sci-fi writers that produced such classics as Star Wars, Alien, 2001, and of course old Harlan's classic Trek episode?"

Well, that kind of approbation is granted by time and time alone, not by the person doing the work...if the show survives and thrives twenty years from now, as is my hope, ask me again then. Now, it would be presumptive of me to do so.

"3)Did you get a chance to read the WWWF Grudge Match a few weeks ago?"

No....

jms

"By "incident", I meant perhaps a Roddenberry-esque communication breakdown between producer and writer"

No, I get along with me fairly well most days...someone has to. Of course, there are some days I won't talk to me, stalk out of the room whenever I walk in, and there was that time I locked me in the closet until I forced me to finish a script, the embarrassing moment when we both showed up for a meeting dressed in the same chiffon number and answering to the name Dorothy...but other than that, no, no noteworthy incidents to report.
\

jms

The script which, I hope, WB has included, for "The Coming of Shadows," is written exactly the same way I write *all* my scripts, whether for B5 or Murder, She Wrote or any other series. And there's really no one way to do this, which is something I make clear in the book...you find the style that works for you. I've seen, and bought, scripts that were very spare when it came to camera stuff, and scripts that were chockablock with them. Ain't no one answer in this business.

jms

to some extent, yes...when you write for the stage -- which is where i began -- you don't generally have access to high-tech efx. you've got two people in a room, talking. and you have to know how to make those conversations interesting, focus on the dynamics of persoanlity and dialogue. so i'm very comfortable with that sort of environment.

and, from time to time, somebody'll leave a note suggesting that the only thing that "saves" b5 is the computer graphics, or the big action scenes, and i'll write a killer two-person scene in a small room just to honk 'em off.

jms

exactly. writers do things for the damndest reasons sometimes, known only to themselves, which is why i don't buy a *word* of this candyass deconstructionist nonsense....

jms

[ summary: comments that jms was sneaky for telling us all, when bruce boxleitner first took on the role of john sheridan, that jms would let sheridan go for a while and then drop him down a well. ]

Yep. I wanted everybody to fall for that "oh, he's a standard good guy, hero model type" approach...then yank their blankets, and deeply intensify the character.

Glad it worked.

"I had no idea you meant that literally!"

And sometimes, I'm being far more straightforward than it would appear. Because I know everyone overlooks the most obvious stuff.

jms

Thanks. I labor over titles a long time...I can't actually begin writing an episode until I have the title worked out; dunno why, it's just one of those glitches. And yeah, it's a good and in this case, very apt title.

jms

[ Summary: Picked up a copy of JMS' new scriptwriting book and is enjoying it so far. ]

What might be interesting, next time you pick up the book, is to fire up a copy of "The Coming of Shadows" and go through it with the script in hand...it's a good way of seeing how you lay out a show shot-for-shot. And since there's stuff there that was cut from the episode, you can also judge on what was left out, and why, and whether it hurt or helped.

jms

It's a funny thing...just to show you how sometimes even jms can be just a LEEETLE bit slow on the uptake....

I've known, at some level, for four years that we're a syndicated show, that we don't have the usual network censors to deal with.

Then, this season, it finally hit me..."waitaminnit...we don't have CENSORS! As long as it doesn't use the words you absolutely can't say on TeeVee, as long as it doesn't directly involve nudity or blood and guts, I can take things *CONCEPTUALLY* as far as I want."

Heh.

Heh-heh-heh....

jms

"The Complete Book of Scriptwriting" is out, yes, and can be ordered from the UK via Writer's Digest Books, or www.amazon.com.

And yes, the characters do somewhat live in my head, and I check in with where they are at various points, and write it down. It's very weird.

jms

I was in kind of a rush when I noted this before, and as I've been asked to post more specific information....

My scriptwriting book, THE COMPLETE BOOK OF SCRIPTWRITING, was first published in 1981 by Writer's Digest Books. It quickly became one of WD's top selling books, and a standard text at a number of colleges and universities. Several updated editions came out over the next few years, but after that I let it go out of print because it needed a complete overhaul to keep up with the changing marketplace. Unfortunately, I was hip-deep in work, and couldn't get to it all at once.

So I made the revisions over a three year period...and when you have that much time, it goes from light changes to a complete rewrite. The book has now been 80% rewritten, stem to stern, with another 100,000 words added to the book, with chapters on animation, agents, warning signs, the Writer's Guild, and others, in addition to the main chapters on breaking into writing for TV, film, radio and theater.

It's the book I wanted someone to have written when I wanted to break into scriptwriting.

The book also now includes the complete script for the Hugo-award winning B5 episode, "The Coming of Shadows," with segments cut from the finished episode for time.

The book has just this past week hit the stands, and can be found at your local bookstore (ISBN# 0-89879-512-5), or at www.amazon.com, or by calling WD books directly at 800-289-0963. It retails in hardback at $21.99.

jms

Without commercials is always a preferable format for one-hour. It's just more intense that way. (But for something longer, some kind of break is good, even plays break up by acts and intermissions.)
\

jms

[Mentions that the phrase "the dawn of the Third Age of Mankind" was not mentioned in the season 3 opening narration]

By not mentioning it, now you're mentioning it, so to get something mentioned maybe it's better not to mention it, or mention not mentioning it, or by not mentioning that you've not mentioned it let someeone else mention that you've not mentioned it.

By the time you finish the preceding sentence, the word "mention" will have lost all meaning.

And we'll get back to this issue in season 4.

jms

Thanks, generally, everything is scripted. (See the "Coming" script in my writing book for an example.) But the director adds a lot in framing and pacing and camera movement and other areas.

jms

[ Summary: Enjoyed "And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place," and is surprised that a self-described athiest would use gospel music as a "good" counterpoint to the evil of Refa and his demise. ]

Thanks...and I don't allow my own personal beliefs (or lack thereof) to redirect or influence the show; then it becomes propaganda, and I have no interest in that.

jms

It never gets easy...it just gets difficult in different areas.

jms

[ Summary: Asks if JMS worked in the voice/intentional mode when writing "Othersyde." The voice/intentional mode is when some of the writing is well thought-out, and some of it comes from a little voice in your head and you don't even realize it. (This is my term, BTW -- BB) ]

I can't answer that, because the two elements are always the same to me. It's like asking a centipede which leg goes first. I don't know how I do what I do, I just kinda do it.

jms

Thanks. A writer's job is to stay vulnerable, and explore everything in the writing...the drama, the tragedy, the comedy, the weirdness...it's all part of the package. I just sometimes put a little too much out there, I think.

jms

"What I want to know is, when the muses fly away and bring the dreaded monster of writer's block on you, how do YOU deal with it?"

You're going to kill me when you hear this...but since I started writing and selling at 17, I've never, ever had writer's block. It's finding time to write it all, and deciding which thing to write, that's always been hard. But (not to tempt the universe here), I've never had writer's block, and can't imagine it. Even if it ever did hit, I've got so much outlined and premise'd out in the files I could work off that for literally *years*.

jms

[The following is excerpted from an IRC transcript]

JMS: Write 2 pages a day. Don't think about how big it is. Just do it in small bites. Never look down, never let them see fear in your eyes.

How do you flesh out your characters?
How do you make them real?
JMS: That's the easy part. All you have to do is create them as realistically in your head as you can, by investing in the emotions and feelings and the kind of personality you have within yourself.... you slice off bits of yourself and invest them into other characters. That way you *know* them, and when you drop them into a given situation, there's no doubt about what they'd do... it's like imagining your best friend (if you don't have one, borrow the best friend of the person next to you) walking across the living room late at night, and banging their shin on the coffee table.... because you know your friend, you don't have to *hesitate* to know what they will say when this happens. It's just a process of getting to know them yourself.