Just Start Typing

So today I'm starting a new script. I have 35 blank pages ahead of me that need to be filled with people talking, stuff happening and jokes. This is the part of the job that freaks out most normal people. A long time ago, Mitchell and Webb did a splendid Edinburgh show (yes, I said 'a long' time ago) in which Rob's character was trying to write a play. He sits at his type writer (yes, 'a long' time) and stares at it blankly. David comes in and asks him what he's up to and Rob says 'I'm trying to write a play. But I don't know what to put.'

The fact is that most writers do know what to put - roughly. In fact, being told what to do is our least favourite thing. We like the freedom of a blank page on which you can write 'The Prison Guard kicks the prisoner to death' or 'Leonardo Da Vinci grabs his helicopter and flies off into the sunset', depending on your mood or intention.
 
Besides, you don't start with a blank page. You're writing a script based on an outline (unless you're Carla Lane who, let's face it, was more successful than most current comedy writers combined). My outline is a fourth draft of a show and character that I've been mulling over for several months. The outline contains lots of jokes and bits of dialogue. And it's 3000 words long. The finished script should be less than 6000 so, if you like, I've already written half of it. The least I can do is turn the outline into talking and stage directions and I've got something half-decent. And other jokes will come. I know they will. They always do. I've written or co-written over a hundred half-hour scripts for TV and radio. And the jokes do turn up - if I've set the show up right. But every time I think they won't - because the times they don't is because the show is flawed and the outline needs more work. Or you need a fresh idea. But that doesn't happen all that often.

The opening scene is the hardest because you're priming the pump. You're setting stuff up, establishing story and character so that it'll be funny later. But it needs to be funny now or they won't stick around for the end. We want to hear the audience laugh four or five times a minute from the start.

But I can do this.

I've done it before. I can do it again.

I should be fine.

I should make a start.

Any minute now.

Once I've closed Twitter, having checked it.

And closed Facebook.

And my email (wow, the Mac Mail package is useless. What's that all about?)

And now I need to find the right mood music on Spotify. Something familiar, but not boring. Ideally without lyrics. Bach? Scott Joplin? Chicane?

It's all in place. So, erm, I should probably update my blog. Hence this post.

But I've done that now.

So, I should just start typing. It'll get funny. I'm sure...

What I Learnt from Back to the Future

I was making a risotto earlier. And I was thinking about the Back to the Future films. These two things are not connected. But they were happening at the same time. There are lots of things worth noting about these films, but for this blog, let us note two.

Good Set-Up
Time travel is, of course, preposterous. Clearly impractical, and doubly so when you throw in the hopelessly ill-conceived Delorean car. And yet, two words make it believable: 'Flux Capacitor'. Genius. Normally time travel isn't possible, but the Doc invented the Flux Capacitor. Now I believe it's possible, even with a heavy car made in Northern Ireland that couldn't make 88mph if you drove downhill with the wind behind you.

Think about it. Flux Capacitor. Neither word is silly by itself. Both words already existed. Blended together they sound plausible. We have a look at the thing - and it resembles a DNA coil, a hydrogen atom and some ovaries behind some emergency glass. Suddenly, all plausibility issues vanished with those two words. We have leapt from the lunatic world of Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science, dodged the apocalyptic craziness of Matthew Broderick in War Games and landed in Hill Valley in 1955. This is the power of words.

It is amazing how often a form of words can get you through a ton of exposition, back story or plausibility structures. I'm not sure how much we can learn from this, since these things tend to sneak up on you as a writer, but when you stumble across them, use them. If the audience are prepared to shrug and go 'yeah, I buy that', move on and explore your characters, tell their stories and do the jokes. The more pressure you place on this, the more silly it appears. So don't. Move on. The audience have.

Bad Set-Up
As I was stirring the risotto, one of my favourite lines from the third film popped into my head. It's when they're seize the train so it can push the car to 88 mph. According to IMDB, it goes like this:

Doc: Reach! 
Engineer: Is this a holdup? 
Doc: It's a science experiment!

It's a pleasing line and it gets a laugh, but on inspection, it's quite annoying. Why? Because of the set-up line. Crazy-haired Doc has a mask and a gun and ends up at the controls of a train with the driver/engineer. He sees the gun and the lunatic, and then says "Is this a hold-up?" Really? He said that? What a curious thing to say. You'd beg for your life, or something. You wouldn't say "Is this a hold-up?" I believe a Flux Capacitor before I believe that.

Any set-up line that you don't believe could be said naturally is going to take the air out of your joke. It may be a really good joke, but the clunky set-up will undermine it.

If you have that, spend an extra five minutes on it. How could the Engineer's line be more natural? Is there another character there who could say something to help that set-up? If they're not there, could they be there? By this point, it sounds like the joke's not going to fly and it's falling apart in your hands. That's no bad thing. You've found a weak point and can now make it better. Think of another jokes. This is already an extraordinary situation ripe with possibilities so it shouldn't be hard. Five more minutes.

Hey, no-one said it was easy. But then again, thinking up jokes for people to say on hijacked steams train in the Wild West so a Delorean can reach 88mph and take our heroes back to the future isn't exactly work, is it?