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The screen in the hotel lobby reads ‘Big Fish’.
“It’s Big Finish,” I explain. “There’s an extra ‘NI’ in there.”
The lady at reception smiles in a baffled sort of way. “Of course.”
“Can you correct that for me?” I ask.
I tell her it’s essential the people coming to the meeting don’t think they’ve come to the AGM of some angling collective by mistake. It’s important to me to get this right; I’ve stumped up for some conference space in a hotel off Russell Square, where I’ll be fulfilling my role as story editor and lead writer on the third series of Stargate audio dramas from Big Finish Productions. They’ve put us in a windowless basement room, which, although rather charmless, will later be supplied with coffee and cookies. The underground vibe is good, though – It’s like Cheyenne Mountain down here, all winding corridors and odd little chambers. Very appropriate.
And the at least the sign on the door is spelled correctly. I prepare for my team of writers to arrive, mulling over the odd stipulations in the hotel’s room contract. For some reason, they are very specific about the fact that I’m not allowed to bring a flag…
I’m back at reception five minutes later after locking myself out of the room while looking for a spare water glass. The screen is still wrong. The receptionist promises to change it; six hours later it will say ‘Stargate / Big Fish’.
A working method I learned early on in my writing career was something the folks in Hollywood call “the writer’s room”; it’s largely an American thing, although in recent years more UK productions have picked up on the idea. What you do is gather all the writers on your show in a single place and have them ‘break’ their stories before they settle in to the first drafts. That’s not ‘break’ as in ‘smash into pieces’ (although that does happen sometimes) but more along the lines of ‘dismantle’; everyone discusses the storylines and the arc of your particular series, cross-pollinating ideas, finding weaknesses, patching gaps and so on. If all goes well, at the end of the day you have a stronger story, and the sense of a real collaborative effort from everyone involved. The writer’s room means that everyone gets a say, and everyone can feel that they have an investment – not just in their story, but in the series as a whole.
There’s a few reasons why I chose to table this meet; getting as many of the creative team as possible in the same room pays dividends down the line, breaking down boundaries and giving a sense of shared purpose. But there's also a vital narrative reason; with the third series of Stargate audios, we’re producing two trilogies of episodic tales with a connective arc, so it is important to know your writers can dovetail with each other – some of the people we have are old hands at this, others not so much, and finding the right team dynamic ultimately means making a better series. We walk in the room with only the roughest of outlines in place, but by the end of the day we have six hours of action-packed Stargate adventures ready to be written. And what’s great is that we’re all energised by the whole experience – everyone is ready to go home and start writing straight away. That’s probably the greatest thing about the writer’s room concept; the inspiration that emerges from the mix is often unpredictable, sometimes crazy, sometimes brilliant, but always stimulating.
Back in 2000, I wrote the script for a Star Trek space combat shooter for the Sony Playstation called Star Trek Invasion (which did not, for those of you who are readers and have long memories, have anything at all to do with the 1996 crossover novel series entitled Star Trek: Invasion!). 
Along with a bunch of fellow LJ'ers, I have a story appearing in the forthcoming Star Trek anthology Seven Deadly Sins, which has now got a colour cover and been officially blurbed...
Here's a quick round-up of Jim stuff that happened while I was away (mostly Judge Dredd-related) ... 