The Cassutt Files
Interstellar Object Lessons

One of my recent projects has been a nonfiction script about ... well, about the whole dang universe. My conversation of late has been filled with terms like quasar, X-ray galaxy and even proplyd.

I've not only been researching astronomical objects, but also learning about the processes that formed them: Start with the Big Bang and try to get your head around the idea of an object that expands from the size of a marble to a whole universe in a trillionth of a second.

Then delve into black holes, galactic jets, pulsars, supernovae, giant gas clouds, accretion disks, brown dwarfs, the whole rich stew of Very Large and Important Items that make up, at most, 4 percent of the universe.

Then try to figure out how dark matter and energy—the other 96 percent—relates to it. (Failing, of course. But greater minds than mine are at work on the question even as I write.)

Well, I often call myself a sci-fi writer. Is this not the sort of material one must confront? Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross and Paul McAuley—speaking of greater minds than mine—tackle concepts like this before lunch. So even if gamma ray bursters do intimidate me, I'd never let on.

What revisiting these mind-boggling concepts has done, however, is show me how little I know about writing.

Creation is impossible without pain

What, you say, is the possible connection between colliding galaxies and imprinting LaserJet ink on 55 pages of paper? How can macro-cosmic processes detected across billions of light-years have any relevance to an episode of network television?

First of all, none of what we call existence—your computer, my computer, our organic forms, our hands and hearts, the sun, the moon and the sky—would exist without these violent events. Had a supernova not cooked off in our corner of the Milky Way a few billion years back, a star with the properties of our sun would not have formed. No sun, no planets. No planets, no Earth. No Earth, no ... us.

As that great contemporary philosopher, Moby, once sang, "We are made of stars."

But beyond the physical lies a metaphorical connection. These violent interstellar processes serve as a model for mundane, small-scale, human-sized activities.

Birth, for example, is painful and violent. (Or so my wife screamed at me on a couple of occasions.) The result? A baby, new life.

More to the point of this column—literary creation is painful and violent, too.

Worse yet, the universe seems to suggest that there can be no creation without it.

I like to think of myself as a peaceful person. Genial, even. When I'm on a writing staff, I usually get along with everyone. Even the person (and there is always one) who is shunned because a) she can't really write or b) he can't write this particular show or c) she only got this job because she's married to an important network executive or d) other.

(Just as a sidebar, in recognition of the particular role a writing staff plays in the success of a series, the Writers Guild of America has instituted an award in that category. It was won by the team behind ABC's Grey's Anatomy.)

I like to work regular hours. I have been known to proclaim that if you can't get your writing done between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., there's little chance you're going to get it done between 6 and 10.

The very talented Steve Roberts, of Max Headroom fame, used to call me the Swiss Clockmaker ... and I don't believe it was a compliment.

Beyond an insistence on regular hours, I have tried to make everyone's life easier. Production, for example—line producers are often beset by clever scripts that everyone loves, but that cannot be filmed in a seven-day schedule.

So I tried to write a production-friendly episode of a series: The concept was one everyone was enthusiastic about but staged in a limited number of sets, with every dramatic scene pared down to the minimum cast (usually two people). The result was, in short, a clever sci-fi play.

And it could have been shot in five days at a figure substantially less than our pattern budget.

My boss called me in, waved the script in front of me. Loved the story, the dialogue. But there wasn't enough variety in the sets and locations, he said. It looked too ... simple.

I thought he was nuts, but now, with years of hindsight and new revelations about the universe behind me, I realize this: that producer NEEDED to fight with the production side to create the best possible episode.

I am usually willing to listen to any suggestion for a script, from a producer, another writer, an actor, even studio executives, ostensibly following the premise that television is theater ... what works on the page doesn't always work on the stage ... that writing scripts is a collaborative process.

Blah blah blah. I've used these phrases so often they are now part of my DNA.

And I've been wrong, wrong, wrong.

Great conflict creates great art

I'm not the only person to attempt to impose order on and eliminate conflict from the process of writing. The founding editor of The New Yorker magazine, Harold Ross, spent years trying to regularize his editorial processes ... and was foiled at every turn by such uncooperative folks as James Thurber, E.B. White and Wolcott Gibbs.

Ross failed. But we remember the magazine.

Michael Crichton tells of an episode early in his directing career, where an actor was proposed for a lead in a film—and Crichton gently demurred.

The producer brought the same actor back for another meeting. Crichton still shook his head, politely suggesting that, no, this guy wasn't quite right.

The producer brought the actor back a third time—at which point Crichton exploded with a violence equivalent to a nova if not a supernova, red-faced, screaming, "I do not want this actor in my film!"

Silence. Then the producer shrugged. "OK. I didn't know you were serious."

Creative conflict is no guarantee of success, of course. I know of incredibly bland, middle-of-the-road series where the exec producers hid behind closed doors, meeting with writers only by ones and twos, because everyone was fighting.

Nevertheless, the old thesis + antithesis = synthesis model seems hardwired into the universe. You, the writer, must have an idea, a concept and a vision ... and some entity must not only disagree with it, think it too daring, too odd, too expensive ... that same entity must FIGHT with you.

Without violence, there's no creation. No forward progress.

Don't blame me. Blame the Big Bang.