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								<TITLE>From jms re: yr 4/5 (18 Dec 1996 16:10:03 -0700)</TITLE>

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								<H2>From jms re: yr 4/5</H2>

								<h3>Date: 18 Dec 1996 16:10:03 -0700</h3>

								<pre>There's been a fair amount of speculation and concern about the fifth

								season, and how the story is laying out to handle the possibilities of

								renewal vs. no renewal.  Though the ratings have continued to improve

								despite the shifts and changes in the syndication marketplace -- it's a

								very different market than it was when we first debuted -- nothing is

								certain yet about a fifth season. Some at WB say yes, some say no.  My

								job is to pick my way through this minefield and make it all  work, and

								assure the story ending where is was meant to end.  So how does one do

								this?


								Here's the skinny.


								First, you have to understand that writing is a *process*, and that

								process is constantly changing.  Ask any writer, and they'll tell you

								that many times they've been working on a short story, or a novel, and

								they have to edit for space.  This applies to both fiction and

								nonfiction writers.  Sometimes it's done by the writer, sometimes by

								the editor.  On my second novel, the editor told me at the halfway mark

								that we'd have to keep the book down to 100,000 words, which was about

								75-100 pages less than I'd been planning on, so the story had to be

								adjusted to fit.  As a journalist, I've often walked into the office

								with a story in hand and been told, "Okay, you've got 15 column

								inches," or 25 column inches, or 10 column inches...and you just learn

								to write to fit.  Every writer goes through this.


								And in most cases, the average person never knows.  Done properly, it

								should be seamless.  Look at Stephen King's The Stand, cut by almost

								25% by the editors at first, then later released with all the ancillary

								material replaced.  I've read both, and the latter is not appreciably

								better than the former...if you didn't know the material was there, you

								would never have missed it.


								This also happens on a per-episode basis.  At LosCon, I showed a

								finished scene from 405, and the daily of the master shot of the same

								scene, which had another minute or so of material cut from the finished

								scene.  We cut material all the time; if you added up all the material

								cut from the third season, you'd have enough for almost two episodes.

								And we often slide material from one episode into another; we slid

								Ivanova's scenes in 402 into 403, and another scene from 405 into

								406...we've done that in prior seasons as well. Sometimes you go back

								and you *add* material.  Again, it's all part of the process.


								(Interestingly enough, I just bought the new laserdisk of "Young

								Frankenstein," which has about 15 minutes of material cut from the

								movie for time.  I watched it the other night, and of those 15 minutes,

								13 were easily expendable...only one scene was fairly interesting, but

								not really necessary.)


								Okay, so how does all this relate to B5?


								My obligation as a storyteller is to get to the end of the story in a

								satisfying way.  So after we got the year 4 renewal, and knowing that

								the PTEN business situation had the potential to impact us (when the

								network that supports you is no longer there, so now your entire

								structure is shot out from under you...you've got a problem), I looked

								at the structure for the story, and began planning adjustments so that

								it could go either way without padding anything, and without

								shortchanging the story.


								First thing I did was to flip out the stand-alones, which

								traditionally have taken up the first 6 or so episodes of each season;

								between two years, that's 12 episodes, over half a season right there.

								Then you would usually get a fair number of additional stand-alones

								scattered across the course of the season.  So figure another 3-4 per

								season, say 8, that's 20 out of 44. So now you're left with basically

								24 episodes to fill out the main arc of the story.


								Now, that arc is very intensive, and has three primary threads: the

								resolution of the Shadow war, the situation regarding Earth, and a

								series of smaller sub-threads that feed off those main threads.  But if

								you charge right from one to the other, it's going to feel rushed,

								you're going to need some breathing room between major movements,

								particularly after the shadow war. Not so much stand-alones as episodes

								that let you begin to rearrange your pieces for the next major

								movement.  So now you're back up to about 27.


								Okay, so *now* what do you do?  The solution to that came in several

								unassociated pieces.


								First came the word of the two B5 TV movies for TNT, which were

								envisioned as taking place within the arc of our main story.  Suddenly

								I had 4 hours into which I could slide some of this material.  One

								sub-thread I'd been planning on was a 3-episode arc that would look at

								how the Earth/Minbari War started, and Delenn's situation at the start

								of the war, joining the Council, that sort of thing.  Now I was able to

								split that out.  So in the series I can, in an episode, get into

								Delenn's role in the war and go into the background of how she got to

								know Dukhat, how she got into the Grey Council, and so on...all the

								stuff you'd need to see prior to the war. Then the two hours covering

								the rest, the progress of the war itself, could be covered in the

								two-hour movie.


								With the *benefit* that we'd have a little more money for the movie

								than we would for two conventional hours, so we could do *more* in the

								way of EFX, production value, and so on, which you're going to need to

								really sell the E/M war.  So strangely enough, and as tends to happen,

								this has put us in the position of doing it *better* than if I'd

								dropped it into two standard-budget episodes, as was my original plan.


								Another sub-thread wouldn't have been introduced until late in year 5,

								in part to set up the possibility of a sequel (which, as I've stated

								from the very earliest days of the show, was always in the back of my

								head) and which would stand on its own in any event; a thread designed

								to illustrate the notion that the duration tends to be a lot longer

								than the war. (You'll understand that one later.)  That sub-thread

								would've filled about 3-4 episodes.


								Now, again, having the second 2-hour movie lets me slide that piece of

								story into that category and cover nearly all of that ground in doing

								so. The remaining material could (and will, one hopes) be covered in

								the actual sequel itself.  (If the sequel never ends up going, the

								material will be sufficiently stand-alone to still work on its own.)


								Then, finally, you take the stand-alones you pulled out earlier (which

								nobody would miss, not knowing what was in them), and the final couple

								of sub-threads (not yet introduced or implied in the main series) and

								slide them into the sequel series, CRUSADE.


								So if we *had* to collapse everything into a fourth year, it would all

								fit perfectly.  If word came that there *was* going to be a fifth year,

								you commission some scripts early, drop some of the stand-alones back

								into the slot, and bring up the sub-threads that would otherwise have

								been transferred into the sequel.


								Bottom line is...you're covered either way.  You end up where you

								wanted to end up, the main threads get dealt with, secondary or

								tertiary threads have other venues in which they can be dealt

								with...you're solid.


								There's nothing particularly extraordinary or amazing in this...this

								is how all writers work, since there are always going to be varying

								constraints in length or venue.  Writing is a process, and that process

								is such that it is infinitely variable while still proceeding where you

								want it to go.


								So that's where I am currently.  If I know the fate of the fifth year

								by late February or early March, I can then flip either way and get out

								cleanly. Worst case scenario is that I might have to write alternate

								scenes or alternate endings for scenes in the last few episodes if the

								word comes much later than that, just to give me the flexibility to

								adjust the story in editing, which would definitely take place after we

								wrapped, at which time we have to have word by contract.


								None of this could've been done in three seasons...we had to have a

								minimum of four to give us the flexibility of cutting either way.

								There's no point to reading a book that leaves you hanging for an

								ending, and B5 was meant to have an ending.  At this juncture,

								finishing off script 15, I feel very comfortable with the way all this

								is laying out.  The flow is there, and I know we'll get where we need

								to.  No matter what happens, we're covered. We can handle year 5

								without padding, and handle year 4 without shortchanging the

								storyline. Granted it took only slightly less planning than the

								invasion of Normandy, but it works, and that's the crucial thing.


								Anyway...I've gone on for longer than I'd intended.  I hope that this

								will answer some of the questions and concerns raised about the

								situation, and explains how you do some of the planning for this kind

								of thing.  Again, this online experiment is about letting people

								understand the process of telling a story like this, and of making a TV

								show in general.  As I've noted before, telling a story of this nature

								for television, with all the exigencies and real-life surprises

								involved, is like doing an elaborate step-dance while people are

								throwing live chickens and chainsaws at you...but I knew that would be

								the situation going in, and it was only a matter of whether or not the

								story was worth the grief involved in telling it.


								And it most definitely has been.


								jms


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