Friday 26 May 2023

This Blog Is Moving

This blog has been my Sitcom Geek home for 13 years. I started this blog in 2010 when the world seemed very different. Although people liked to laugh back then, they really need laughs now. So writing sitcoms isn't a waste of time. It is, in fact, a public service. So let's keep going with it.

And people love sitcoms. A good one that's reliably funny for over a hundred episodes, and bears repeat viewing is a truly wonderful thing.

So although Dave Cohen and I wrapping up the Sitcom Geek podcast, I plan to continue writing about writing sitcoms. I can't not do it. I just find it endlessly fascinating. I am a sitcom geek.

To be honest, I've never liked the aesthetic of this blog and I've lived with it. But now's the time to move to another platform I've been using already. So I'm going to continue writing about sitcoms over on Substack.

See you over there. And please subscribe and you'll get an email in your inbox containing the article to read at your leisure. Hopefully it will help you write better sitcom scripts.

Here is an obviously fake picture of people pretending to move house. That box is clearly empty.


Thursday 18 May 2023

Why I Abandonned Writing a Novel. Twice.

I started writing a novel in lockdown. Who didn’t? I had some characters from a play I’d written. I had an exciting new story and situation. How hard can it be?

Answer: Hard.

I got lost in the weeds, my research got out of hand and I realised I should be writing it as a pilot episode for an hour long action-adventure comedy drama. You know, a British Moonlighting-meets-National Treasure kind of thing.

So I abandonned writing the novel.

My agent sent out the script, and there were crickets. Nothing. Not a bite. No interest. No-one wanted me to be writing hour-long mainstream comedy drama with my half-hour sitcom CV.

So after a while, I had a brilliant idea. Let’s turn that one-hour screenplay back into a novel. Now I’ve got the characters, and a beginning, middle and end. Just turn each scene into a chapter of the book. How hard can it be?

Answer: Easy. At least I thought so.

But after my wife read the first 15000 words, and then a friendly publisher who was prepared to indulge me had a look, it turns that I had to learn a harsh truth: I don’t know how to write a novel.

So abandonned writing that novel for a second time.

Anecdote over.

I have, at least, delivered on the title of this blogpost.

But why have I beclowned myself before your very eyes?

It is to make this point: a moderately successful comedy writer who’s been making a living for over 20 years working with stories, characters and jokes, has a lot to learn about writing. I can’t just turn my hand to writing novels. It’s a lot harder than it looks.

After all, if a novelist said to me that they were writing a sitcom, I’d smirk and think to myself ‘wow, you have no idea how hard it is!’. But I wouldn’t say that, in the hope that they would ask me to help and that I would be paid (after all The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and Men Behaving Badly began life as novels).

I thought I knew how novels were written. After all, I read novels – for my own pleasure and to my kids. And I know how stories and character work. I can do jokes. But there’s more to it. It’s all about meeting expectations. Like this blogpost.

If I want to master this form, and write a presentable novel that someone might actually finish, I need to learn a new set of skills, study the genre, take advice and learn.

If you want to learn how to write a sitcom, you can learn by trial and error, and waste months of work like I did on that novel, twice over. Or…

… you could just do a course, one that’s been put together by someone who’s been doing it professionally for over 20 years. It’s called Writing Your Sitcom and it’s available now.

If you take the time to do what the course says, your sitcom script will be better – and will probably be better than 90% of the scripts that turn up to the various writing competitions that pepper the calendar. Because you've actually learnt how to do it. And then you can do it again. And again.



Wednesday 15 February 2023

What is a Plot Not?

Plotting your sitcom is really hard - and in the sitcom scripts I read, it's usually the main problem. Maybe the situation works. Maybe the characters are good. But it's hard to tell because nothing's happening. Plots show us what the characters are really like and if your situation is going to give us reliable results.

We talk about plot on the latest episode of the Sitcom Geeks podcast - and if you want to get FREE access to a webinar replay on the plotting, join my mailing list and you'll get instant access to a ninety minute video that should really help you find your plot. (Plus at least three other videos not available anywhere else).

So sign up HERE and you could be watching the replay in minutes!