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

"With Comes The Inquisitor...how obvious was it to you that G'Kar was
going to be the counterpoint to Delenn and Sebastian. was it an immediate
connection, or did you have to sit and look, and then think "Ah...that's
the one?"

That one was a pretty easy one.


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

"How do you cope with how different that movie is from the final product?"

Happily...in 90% of all cases, it ain't that different.





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

"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

"What about personal demons? You said once that Sheridan's father was not
like your father. Is it something like you would have wished him to be?
And Ivanova's father, the same? If this is too personal don't answer it,
but I just wonder to what extent your personal demons have to enter into
your writing process. O, and in what forms. How far into those parts of
yourself that hurt the most do you have to look?"

Suddenly lately I'm getting all these questions that leave me staring at
the screen for minutes at a time, trying to come up with an honest answer.

(several more minutes pass...AOL is getting its $ from me tonight, that's
for sure.)

Okay, I have an answer...well, I have a *reply*, and as we all know, while
all answers are replies, not all replies are answers. This is the best I
can do.

I have this theory that there are five kinds of truth. The truth you tell
to casual strangers; the truth you tell to your friends; the truth you
tell to only a very few intimate people in your life; the truth you tell
yourself; and the truth you will not admit even to yourself.

(Note: some people have distorted this to mean you tell contradictory
things to different people; no. Just the *extent* of the truth, how deep
the blade cuts, is the operative issue.)

On reflection, the answer to this one falls into the category of the fifth
truth. There are some questions I'm just not prepared to deal with yet,
not in any specifics, anyway.

In general terms...yes, that aspect is always there, if you're writing
honestly, and telling a story that matters to you. Sometimes, that's
painful. There are some scenes this season that were very hard to write,
because of the personal stuff that went into them. The trick is to not
bleed too much onto the page so that you obscure the words, or it becomes
simply self-indulgence.

An example far enough away that I can look at it now...in the first season
(for the old timers still around), when Catherine Sakai and Jeff Sinclair
got together again for the tenth time, there were some fairly emotional
exchanges. The one where she comes to his quarters, unsure why she's
really there, starts to leave...that whole exchange is pretty much word
for word a conversation I had in real life. (There's a lot of that in the
relationship stuff in this show; it shows up here and there.) It was
something I was even then still dealing with, and worked out via the
script.

When we got ready to shoot that section, and the scene when they first
meet, the director, actors and I went off to rehearse that one privately.
I practically had to nail my feet to the stage floor to stay through it
all. Finally, when we were all comfortable that the scene felt right,
everybody headed out, and I pulled the director aside. I said, "The scene
is fine; you need to know that now so you'll understand...I won't be here
the day you shoot this stuff. I won't be anywhere *near* this set. I'm
still a little too close to this." I just couldn't be there.

So yeah, sometimes the writing gets very personal. Unfortunately, I don't
know any other way to do it.


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