JMS on Writing
Volume 16

"Do you, as a writer, think it would be an interesting challenge to spend time creating a character that everyone loves and then have that same person do things, somewhat consistent with his/her past, so that everyone would hate him/her by the end of the series? (Are you now doing)/(Do you plan to do) this?"

Already did it.

Took Londo, did that to him.  But in such a way that you *felt* for him and wanted him to steer away from the dark.

Did the same in the opposite direction with G'Kar.

Will do it a couple more times before I'm through.

Life's funny, ain't it?

jms

      Just about ANY of Harlan's books are worth reading, though Strange Wine and Shatterday (available at most SF stores) are personal favorites, and his latest Edgeworks volume just came out.

      Sci-Fi vs. SF...the former is flash-n-dazzle, monsters eating people, ID4, lots of action and not much thought.  SF is Blade Runner, the first Alien movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Seconds, Charley, others. Science Fiction means it examines the impact of technology on people, or in some way extrapolates to the future in new and interesting or innovative ways.

                                                                    jms

[ Summary: Complains about Lise being a "wimp" female, afraid of danger. ]

       Re: Lise...well, everybody can't be a fighter; we've had guys and the occasional female character who isn't used to being shot at.  I daresay I'm not terribly used to being shot at, and someone who's mainly a civilian would probably react about that same way.  It's just a matter of showing that diversity realistically rather than saying, "Okay, let's have a helpless female now."  Having every female (or male) hard-nosed and laughing off PPG bursts is as unrealistic as its opposite.

                                                                       jms

""Its just that - I'm tired Delenn.  Sometimes I feel as if I've been carrying this station on my back and crawling through broken glass for the last three years"  Knowing some of the travails you've gone through in bringing Babylon 5 to us - the carpal tunnel problems, the dealing with the unknowns of renewal each year, the situation with PTEN / WB / TNT, not to mention the efforts required to write the show - these lines struck me as being very personal. If so, hang in there!  Your work is definately appreciated."

(reluctantly)...Yeah...that was a little bit of auctorial intrusion...sometimes more of what I'm thinking and feeling bleeds out into the show than I'd intended.  (Watch how many times people in the show keep complaining about not getting enough sleep, or why won't people let them sleep, or the like...hadn't realized how often it was going on until it was pointed out to me...probably because I wasn't getting enough sleep by half...)

jms

Moira: excellent points all around, and let me add a codicil to that (I hope I spelled that right, but it's 3:05 a.m. and I'm whacked):

There is a certain kind of literature I've come across which I've always enjoyed, in which they tell you the ending right at the beginning...then, even when you already know where it's all going to end up, they then tell you the beginning of the story, and if anything, it makes it more intense because you know what's going to happen, that these Really Awful Things are going to happen to these characters, and now it's a matter of waiting to see when they're going to happen and how; it's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Similarly, Hitchcock had the notion that it's a wonderful/terrible thing to do to an audience to show them a bomb ticking beneath a coffee table, above which the characters are having tea, and sandwiches, and chatting merrily along utterly oblivious to what the audience knows it ticking right beneath their plates.

It's basically a staple of Greek drama, particulary tragedy: you make sure that the audience has information, sometimes advance information, that the characters do NOT have.  Oedipus, which you cite, is a terrific example of this, in that you have the Greek chorus which basically tells you up front that This Is Going To End Badly.  That is, in general, the *purpose* of the Greek Chorus, in part to relay backstory, but in larger measure to feed the audience information of what's coming and what it means and what the characters don't know so that they will, as result, suffer not just at the moment of revelation, but at all the elements leading up to it.  So you get a double-hit, more bang for your dramatic buck.

(As it happens, btw, I saw Oedipus for the first time when I was in early junior high school, on a class trip...a very vivid and powerful production in a staging very similar to the original setting.  Had a very profound effect on me, and my sense of structure.  That and Marlowe's version of Dr. Faustus.)

jms

[Poster compliments Joe on "Moments of Transition" and comments on how much his writing has improved.]

      Thanks.  I think this concentrated effort has helped me to become a better writer, though I still have a LONG way to go before I'm qualified to carry Serling's or Corwin's pencil box.

                                                                    jms

"Finally, the diversity of cultures on Babylon 5 must be a satisfaction for you as a writer to have so many different voices to express. "MoT" for me was almost like seguing between playwrights -- Damon Runyan (Garibaldi) to Oscar Wilde (Bester) to Aeschylus (Minbar). One of the things I have found most appealing about Babylon 5 as a whole is that the language is similar to the language of the stage.  That seems rare in a television milieu defined for the most part by diseases-of-the-week, talk-show spew and courtroom maneuverings."

      Yeah, I like that part a lot, being able to write in lots of different voices, lots of different styles.  You have to remember that I cut my teeth writing dialogue back when I was writing plays and getting them produced.  I love theater, love plays, and love really well done or rich dialogue.  So it echoes that now...which as you say isn't necessarily the style of dialogue seen on most television (which is why a few react weirdly to it), but I like it, and it's my show....

                                                                    jms

I think the main differences are in the writing, and the scope of the production.  (And we're doing 2 TV movies, not 3.)

You have to pace the writing differently if you're going to cover 2 hours, and you can be a little more ambitious.  The first one produced (slated to be aired second), "Thirdspace," is going to have the single most elaborate EFX sequences of the series to date; George worked it out that there are as many EFX shots in that one movie as in the *entire first season*.  He is convinced I'm trying to kill him.  (Like it's my fault that petition started circulating around....)

The prequel, "In the Beginning," is much more ambitious in story-scale, covering about 40 years backwards and forwards.  The key there was to take a situation where everybody *thinks* they know the backstory to the Minbari war, and show that they don't quite know it after all...to put in some surprises.  I think we did this.

Because we also get to spend more time in certain locations, we can do a little more with them, make them a bit spiffier.

I think they'll both go over well, though my personal preference is for the prequel.

jms

"I was also struck, upon the second viewing, by how LONG that monologue was -- and it was on TELEVISION no less!  That was such a theatrical, stage moment; almost unheard of for tv, unusual even for B5."

Thanks...I love those sorts of moments.  I like to push it as far as I can.  My background is really in the theater, from the perspective of dialogue construction, and those are the kind of scenes I enjoy most.  I figure, if it's interesting, let it go on as long as need be; if it ain't, no matter how short it is, nobody's gonna care.

jms

       See, Burhaan, this is what makes me nuts.

       When we have shows like "Rumors" or "Epiphanies" lots of people post message saying, "What's wrong with the show, it was going great and now it's slowed down."  Then we have a show like "Fire" or "Surrender" and then lots of people start posting messages saying "What's wrong with the show, it's going too fast."

       It's like having a driver sitting behind you in the car alternately saying "Speed up!  Slow down!  Faster!  Slower!"

       Yes, some threads have been isolated from year 5 a bit, but all in the accelleration has not been overmuch; year 4 would've ended at 418 in the original notes, so you're only looking at 4 episodes difference.

       This is the latter part of the story no matter how you look at it; so you have to start speeding things up a bit in places because that's what the latter half of a novel is *for*.  Let's all remember basic literature 101: introduction, rising action, complication, climax and denouement.  It gets tenser and faster the deeper you get into it.

       Why this is striking people as unexpected is utterly beyond me.

                                                                       jms

Take it as read that anything I say on this has a vested interest, and is utterly subjective, and therefore not to be trusted.  That stated:

I've found, over time, that this particular job -- running a show with a fair amount of visibility -- will either make you into a monster, or calm you down.  I've noticed, as you have, that my messages have grown overall a lot less intemperate.  Other people around me have noticed that I don't get angry as often, hardly ever anymore; I'm fairly serene in most things (mainly I think by utterly disconnecting from my life, a requirement to get through the load of work involved)...and they have suggested that I've more or less mellowed out.

Yes and no...primarily, I think it's this: what I set out to prove, I proved.  What I wanted to do, I did.  Once you realize that, you come into a certain kind of calm.  I am, or like to think that I am, just as intense now as ever before, but I'm definitely *calmer* now.  The work is out there now...I can relax.

jms

"You set us up to cheer for Sheridan and Boo for Garibaldi then in one episode you turn it all around. You give us the Edgars/Garibaldi side of the argument which you make very reasonable and you seem to show how hard and unyealding Sheridan has become (what I wouldnt have done to been a fly on the wall for the conversation between Franklin and Sheridan)."

That, for me, is really the point of the exercise...it's very easy to make a straw man as your antagonist.  More interesting is to give the person good reasons, or what he considers good reasons, for what he's doing.  To present a reasonable case before the viewrs.  "Well, yeah, y'know, he has a point."  Makes it far more interesting and realistic. 

It's all greys.

jms

Yes, the bar scene was something where we wanted to try something a little different; we wanted a very savage sequence in the show, and it was scripted to be violent, with the strobe and flashing lights, and the slow-motion, and the rest.  The director came in and added some very original touches, in that he decided to go for a variety of film uses; we did off-speed, slow-motion, and step-printing of sequences, in addition to bringing in a still photographer to intercut that material with, so that it was an unsettling series of images.  We scored it to add to the sense of unreality of the first part, and then to emphasize the brutality of the take-down, which is described in the script as "like a lion being pulled down by a pack of wolves," which very nicely fit into the way that Mike shot that scene. 

jms

[ Summary: "What book, or books, have had the most influence on you as a    writer?" ]

      As a writer, the influences would really tend to be early ones, so I'd cite Eric Frank Russell, HP Lovecraft, Bradbury, Ellison, Tolkein, Clarke and "Doc" Smith as being at the top of the roster.  In terms of television, it'd be Serling, Matheson, Corwin, again Bradbury and Ellison, and Charles Beaumont.

                                                                    jms

Nope, not a problem.

This was a lesson I learned over on "Murder, She Wrote."  If you are SO obtuse in your story that NObody can figure out what's going on, then you've botched your job as a writer.  The thing is to put all the information out there in plain sight, so that afterward you can back up the videotape and it's all right there in the open.

If you do this right, some people will figure it out, some won't, and some will have a sense of it in general, but no specifics.  So if some work it out here, that's fine, and besides, this ain't a mystery show.  The mystery ain't what it's about.  And for all the correct guesses, there are just as many or more incorrect ones...so as long as the bell-curve maintains its shape, I'm happy.

jms

[Comments on how ordinary the interrogator looked in "Intersections"]

      Exactly.  The banal face of evil.  You look at most of the guys who ran Treblinka, or Bergen-Belsen, and they're largely ordinary looking guys, who could be accountants or repair men or car salesmen.  They're *us*...and this was designed to remind us of that.  The evil, mustache-twirling villain is too easy, and too far from the truth of it.

                                                                    jms

I think that some people sometimes look in the wrong part of the picture, or apply subjective opinions in ways that are offered as fact...and this can sometimes get in the way of things. 

The person, for instance, who said that the story was botched because, at the end, Sheridan saw that he was *not* going to die, and that the Drazi wasn't dead, and thus never had to worry about being killed anymore, and that this therefore, quid pro quo, rendered the whole thing toothless. 

See, I have relatives who were in Europe during WW II.  I'm basically only about one-and-a-half generations American.  And there was this game the Nazis used to like to play with prisoners...they'd take them out and have them dig their own graves.  They'd stand there in the hot sun, and watch as these prisoners dug the holes that would hold their own bodies.  Then, when the holes were of sufficient size, they would stand behind the prisoners, put guns to the backs of their heads, and pull the triggers...on empty chambers...and laugh as the prisoners fainted.

Did that do anything to lessen the horror of the situation?

If anything, for that moment when Sheridan was about to die, or thought he was, death was an escape, a release...so the end says to him that he will not have an easy way out of here, that death is no escape, that he cannot get away from here until he breaks...that they're going to keep doing this to him again and and again and again until he breaks...and the Drazi being there at the end didn't say "we won't kill him," it says "the conversion you thought you got, the victory you thought you got, was meaningless." 

But because somebody thought that death was the worst thing you could do to somebody, and that Sheridan thus knew they wouldn't (probably) kill him, then they couldn't hope to break him.  Death would be a mercy.  To stay alive under those conditions, that's what's hard.  But his opinion of what he thinks is right became a criticism of my doing it *wrong*.

Anyway...a writer learns that people will respond with wide variations to what he writes.  Some will like it, some will hate it, most will be neutral, no matter what you do; and some will get it, some won't get it. You just get used to it.

jms