Rebecca Eschliman <76072.2345@compuserve.com> asks:
> How do you keep it all straight as you're writing new episodes?
> Do you have some sort of an external memory-jog like an erasable
> marker board (with different colored markers) or an industrial
> suppy of Post-it notes? Or are all the details of the B5 universe
> maintained on strictly internal storage?

As I make the changes, in large measure I just keep it all in my
head, though a few things get written down and put on post-it notes
around my home office monitor. It's like a number-cruncher program;
you make one change, hit return, and it incorporates all the
permutations of that change down the line. That's kind of what I do in
my head. I change one item, let the ramifications ripple through it
all, and now it's all there. By doing this every time I make a slight
modification, it lets me see what impact it may have down the line, so
I can avoid making any changes that seriously conflict with the larger
storyline. It's a headache -- figuratively and literally -- but the
effort of doing so keeps me on track.

After that, it's mainly a process of remembering what happened; I
treat this as the history of the Babylon station. This is what
"happened" in the universe I created in my head.

Problem is, this occupies all the available RAM my brain seems to
contain. I have zip memory for anything else that I can consider even
remotely expendable, like appointments, remembering to pick up dry
cleaning, bringing a magazine to a friend's house who'd requested a
copy of something, on and on. If it ain't involved with B5, it just
slides outta my brain.

jms

Gerald Himmelein <100417.3703@compuserve.com> asks:
> Bad news for John Ostrander, then?
> Or will you make some room in your brain to fit that project in?

No, I wouldn't be doing the Grimjack project until *after* I'd
finished this season's scripts in late February.

jms