"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