Hello and welcome to sitcom geeks. I'm James Kerry. I'm no current and this is episode 125 of our show I know 125 I feel we should slightly raise it back towards a pavilion. Yeah 125 train to Edinburgh.
Oh, yes the intercity 125 So we are going to be talking about characters in this episode Yeah, so we're sort of going back to basics really on this podcast. We're thinking we've done loads of interviews We've done lots of sort of nuanced stuff and but at the moment we're just thinking I'm starting a sitcom from scratch How do I write it last time we spoke to David Tyler about about situations and making sure that your situation is funny Did you have any reflections on that afterwards Dave? Well, I just thought that actually you're saying You know we're going back to basics and actually there's never a bad time whatever level of writing you are whatever experience You have there's never a bad time just to go back and really examine things and that was actually after spending that time with David And you and I talked a bit about the sick aspect Yeah, I realized there was something that I was working on and and I hadn't really put enough thought into that Sit aspect of it and that really so it helped so it doesn't matter if you're starting out Or you've been going 10 20 30 years. It really helps just to go right back to the beginning and look at those things Yeah, and I think some people yeah I think some people can think they need to think of a situation that's never been done before so it feels fresh and exciting And that's okay, you know, and I I set a sitcom in an active war zone which had probably not really been done before So yeah, and also I you know did a sitcom set in management consultants and actually as I'm sure I've said before All of my sitcoms that I've had commissioned other by myself a radio or with Richard for television They've all been I've thought of the situation first and then the characters Which is an unusual way to go about it because actually usually lots of ideas start with characters But so I think if you if you do feel like you've got a fresh angle on a familiar location or if you've got a fresh Or if you've got access to a previously uncovered place then then you want to do that But then the next thing you want to be thinking about is who your characters are so yeah, how do you go about doing that?
Dave? Yeah, well first of all just a reply to that what you're saying there about you know kind of coming up with original sits I'm thinking about the shows that I've watched most in the last year or so in terms of originality Brooklyn nine nine a modern family there about as kind of familiar sits as you could possibly have Whereas the good place which is incredibly original It's not quite satisfying to me. So okay, just prove prove if need be that you don't necessarily have to go very original But yeah generally I start with character and that's a kind of area that's always been my favorite place to be because it feels like a character or two characters Are you know that they're the kind of starting point for everything everything that comes out of your show? I mean it might not be that like you know You can say dad's army is not doesn't start with character But once you start to put those characters into that you make it becomes the special thing that it was You can look at yes minister.
Yes prime minister and say well obviously the the system of governance is a very important It sits there, but actually it's the way those characters are relatable as people that we know even though We don't know the prime minister and so it always comes back to character And you mentioned then about so good just at the start about bluestone for two saying you know not many shows have been set in a war zone and you're right, but we do know the shows that have been set in a war zone I like mash is the obvious example Yeah, and so this is what I'd say with with characters the first two traits I think any character has to have yeah is that they have to be and these are two contradictory traits They have to be original, but they also have to be familiar, which sounds like well How can you be both yeah, but you but we intrinsically know it needs to be both does don't you just to say so I mentioned So going back I'm just gonna be pedantic so I said bluestone was set in an active war zone Yeah, whereas mash was set in the Korean War it just happened to look a lot like the Vietnam War Yeah, so that's that's my little get out of jail free car Yeah, but yeah, but in terms of character then then yeah, you do they need to be you need to feel like you know someone like that But equally you don't they don't they can't feel like they're a stereotype or a hack trope or you know Yeah, I think the first thing I think it's okay to start thinking in cliche's because you know when you look at sitcoms We talked about this before you know like fish out of water square peg in a round hole little man against the world These are all perfectly usable cliche's to describe sitcoms. I mean you wouldn't use them in your script But that they're good ways to start and I think there's two sides to every story is is where I always start with a character because the thing about a character for comedy purposes is Number one how does the character see themselves and number two? How do we see the character yeah, and you know? I suppose David Brent is a sort of the perfect classic example of you know how he sees himself and how other see him is kind of what that sitcom is about and I Think it's you can the way that you can get comedy is you can sort of just take a single word to describe a character and You can say well that that's a good word to describe someone like you could say like mark in people show probably would describe himself as cautious maybe or you know steady as she goes maybe solid he probably described himself as solid whereas Jed would this just would describe him as doll yeah, and you know they're both right You know and and jesus jes will describe himself as spontaneous and mark would probably say no He's impulsive and again, they're both right.
Yeah, and you can see where the comedy goes. It's like Yes, I'm you know jesal go off say look at me. I'm so spontaneous I've suddenly had this idea to do that and mark looks at it and it causes him a problem probably and it's it's impulsive And it just leads to more problems and he either doesn't act because he's done solid Or or he does and you know, he's because he's a naturally cautious person. He makes mistakes that way so you can see how a Person sees themselves and how the other person sees them.
It's the same thing, but it's the same but different Yeah, no I think that's really good and actually the way the character is perceived by the other characters is really important and that I guess Knocks on into the business of relationships because there's no point in having an outrageous character if everyone else is outrageous in the same way You need someone who is not necessarily the opposite, but you want someone who who is not not the same but equally yeah, you sort of what I like about these characters is that What a character would describe themselves as and what we would say they are is really important because it taps into that thing Which I'd say lost in this podcast is no one thinks they're the bad guy Yeah, so all they're trying to do is X all I'm trying to do is this the you know So Humphrey all he's trying to do is to keep the ship steady They don't want to change anything because everything's sort of basically fine and if it starts to escalate and go worse He's trying to stop revolution where it's it's always going to be bad Yeah, at least as far as he is concerned whereas the the wears hacker is trying to change things and he's been elected to do that And so they're both right and they're both wrong Yeah, and that's what you want to set up that eternal conundrum at the heart of the show, don't you? Yeah, well you've also got for her in a similar way with that show you have got Hacker has his own views about how what he thinks should happen and it then becomes a kind of well How much can you have there's only so much you can do and I mean I think we could look at the last three and a half years and see how you know One humans desire to do something is always going to come up against You know the fact that lots of other people don't want that way to happen and you can see how so Humphrey is actually He's not just trying to keep things as they are He's kind of his life depends on it almost and and forgive his life depends on looking like he's doing something Yeah, and you know in a sense we've had that played out literally Over the last two or three months, you know, we had a new prime minister who came in saying I have been Elected to do this thing. I am going to do this thing every day. He said I am going to do this thing I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do it until today when he said I can't do it. Yeah, and you know, and we know we all knew We all saw we were watching and going no you can't do it. It's not gonna happen. Yes, it is.
I can do it I've got gung-ho spirit, whatever. I'm gonna do it. No, you can't do it. No, I can't I'm gonna do it No, I'm not gonna do it.
This is such a classic comedy thing, you know when David Brent says look I'm a chilled out entertainer No, you're not look at me. I'm gonna prove I'm gonna spend the whole episode showing you what a fantastic chilled out entertainer person I am we know you're not gonna do that. You're gonna turn out to be the horrible monster that we all know you are. Yeah, it's um I've kind of gone off quite a tangent there.
No, that's helpful. It's all good. Yeah, but that's that we've been playing out scenes from Yes Prime Minister for the last three months now. Yeah.
Yeah, and yeah, so it's just it's it's trying to have sympathy for your character see how they view themselves and see how how we view them we the audience but also how the other characters view them Which also says obviously a lot about about the characters as it does about the character that you're trying to define So yeah, it's it's such it and it sounds complicated and it is and that's why setting up a sitcom is is really really really hard It's much easier to write an episode of somebody else's show than it is to create because you've just got all of these untried and untested relationships and Somebody brilliant created those people for you as well. Yeah, yeah Well, and not only that or they were very lucky and they survived the initial series and now suddenly it sort of turns out That there's just like that there's just a way in which these characters relating talk to each other and everything and it's fine I think and you mentioned the word sympathetic there that which which we are finding you and I have both found in recent years And I think they find it in America as well that producers have been Mistaking the word sympathetic to being likable or lovable. Yeah, when we say a character is sympathetic It's like we understand why they are like what they are we don't we don't necessarily like the person Yeah, you know literally in the case of CJ and Reggie Perrin, you know, I didn't get where I am today By being by being liked and no, you know, you got there by talking these ridiculous cliches and and just being you know kind of being blunter and more you know kind of more self having complete lack of self-awareness to make yourself The boss and you know thick skinned really. Yeah, we see we know why he acts in the way he does because that's he's the boss And that's how boss is act.
He's a sympathetic character in that sense of things They don't want to necessarily be friends with them. I think if a character is it's just really really awful and hateful then that that's quite a hard work Yeah, and you could possibly have a character who is like that and who is really? Hard to like but yeah, we we we sort of and also I think this is the point at which it is worth having a an actor possibly in your mind Playing them because that will automatically sort of warm them up a little bit Yeah, just because you know, I remember pitching a show with a character who was you know a bit of a monster Well, no, she was actually monster and they were just like no, I don't think we'll like this person And I thought oh actually we do like people like this even though on the page was a concept They might seem like a bossy boots or a know it all There's and that therefore you need the casting of someone who is quite charming who can get away with it So it is worth having someone in your mind when you're creating these characters, but who could play them obviously, you know, it is useful But obviously there's a very small chance a that the show gets commissioned because that's just the basic numbers of the thing But be that that actor will be willing and available but it at least gets you it gets them talking in your head It gets it gives them a voice doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, I think I might have mentioned before comedian I used to work with a lot in my stand-up days and called Richard Morton Who's a very very jolly cheeky chappy, Jordy delightful lovely person always fun to be around and just seems like the most innocent Lovely person and he his act is just the filthiest most disgusting Horrifically lewd act of anyone that I've ever known by long long way, but he gets away with it because he's just such he's got such a sort of nice cheeky Chappy, right, yeah, and so you know that that that kind of plays against it I just just go back to what he was saying as well about you talk about some free, you know He's not it's not that he's a bad person.
He wants that thing but it's the thing that he wants that is a problem and And that's that's how sometimes you get you get a monster because they're trying to do something They're like they're flawed character. They're trying to do something that So I'm probably not the right one here But you know they're trying to be something that they are not and Phil Dunphy is trying to be the perfect dad and he isn't you know He's a great guy, you know, he's a lovely guy and he's a lovely dad But he thinks he has to be something else. Yeah, that's kind of yeah Yeah, and I guess what what you need to be clear up when you're creating Phil Dunphy is not just he wants to be the perfect Dad you then have to sort of think well what is the perfect dad? But actually you don't even need to answer that you need to answer the question.
What is his version of a perfect dad? What is this what is this impossible standard in his mind that he's trying to live up to? It's his dad. It's actually his dad and his dad is brilliant casting on the rare again the moment you see him for the first time You're just like oh my goodness Now we know now we know but we sort of always knew so when you meet his dad It's not it's not a surprise at all in that sense.
It's just a wonderful like oh, yeah And so he's always gonna feel like he's he's you know, not good in he's never good enough in comparison Yeah, so it's just a question of making sure that we've you've got answers to all of these questions And you need to interrogate these characters from every every angle, don't you really? Yeah, yeah And a simple way of doing this if you're stuck really is just get them to do something make them make a decision Yeah, and see where that leads and because that's If your character is just there doing stuff reacting to all the other people or the stuff around them Yeah, unless that's something about them I mean there is I suppose there is a sort of element of that to mark in in peep show He is a bit of a kind of you know sort of buffered around by circumstance But then generally the circumstance has been pushed on him by chess So yeah, and it's only when he pushes against it and then that kind of raises raises the stakes of the story So but he still does he is decisive himself. He is always sort of trying to do things I remember the early early series where he was you know kind of always playing against as Jeff I think at work Oh, yeah, and you know, this guy Jeff was just always this is you know He was just kind of always losing to this guy Jeff who wasn't that particularly charismatic or clever or anything But he just kind of had marks number and just knew how to take the piss out of him and knew how to wind him up And so every decision that mark made to try and get one back on Jeff was always backfire on on mark But generally in peep show, you know, it's Jeds, so you create a character They created this character. He's impulsive.
That's a fantastic way to get a proactive character to do things to cause Problems and to get into scrapes which is the phrase that's um, it's a phrase that James Acasta uses, you know, the stand-up Yeah, he's always a lot of his routines They are you know, kind of the minutiae of life, you know, buying buying a banana a prex shop He turns into this sort of epic story. Yeah, yeah His I've seen it's not under like a two-minute routine about his cheese grater, you know, he's got he turns The tiniest tiniest things into his epic Problems really because he is who he is and you know, he it's kind of you just think yeah, we know we know people like that You know, there's nothing, you know, he's not gonna He doesn't want to be seen to be in the wrong in any way and you know, and so he gets into scrapes doing that and you get a character like Larry David in kerb or George Costanza in Seinfeld take you pick, you know And they they they get into scrapes because they just misread That the signals around them and they think oh that person wants me to do this and it's kind of no They don't they want the opposite. I don't care I'm gonna do it anyway, and so and so that's again This is all that you know making your character do something and this early stage when you don't necessarily know who your character is yet This is a good way to to work it out. Yeah, and those little sketches I think are a thing worth doing So as you was talking about you know, give them give them make it make a decision or imagine them all in a car And then you get a flat tire and what do they what you know?
Do they take charge do they insist on fixing it themselves today? Are they sort of person that would insist that you phone for someone are they the sort of person that would actually just go? Oh, right stuff this I'm gonna hit you with the next car that goes past If you if you literally cannot think of what they were doing that situation You need to kind of go back and work out your character or Use the situation to define your character and just go wouldn't it be cool if they were the kind of person that does this in that Situation or that and then let that inform who the character is so so in a way use those sketch sketches as it were Which may yet turn into scenes in an actual script which is which is fine But if you've got a situation and you've got some characters so work out some of the things that might happen in that situation and work out What they would do in that situation and then if you can't do that then are your situation your character isn't quite right yet? Yeah, yeah, I think that's right And if I was saying I was kind of imagining different characters like a Dean from yeah battle faulty Well, yeah beating the car.
Yeah, it's like yeah, it's one of the great all-time You know sitcom scenes is they created a character who would literally run off and then come back with a branch and beat the car Yeah, and that would that seems perfectly in character Yeah, no, that's another aspect of a character really isn't it? I mean, you know how many people can honestly say they have witnessed somebody who's cars broken down go and get a piece of Tree and whack the car with it and obviously not but when you watch battle faulty doing it you just think yes I mean, yes, you're laughing obviously and but at the same time you think yeah, I can totally see him that guy that guy that I've invested in And I know his character now I can just imagine that that is his response to the car breaking down Yeah, and so that that is another element is is that we have to kind of we have to believe in the character We don't have to think that this is a real thing that they can actually do You know, well rather what I mean if you don't have to think this really funny thing happened to me in my life I'm gonna write it verbatim and you'll find that pretty soon the story kind of fizzles out because our lives generally don't really Follow the pattern of a like a three-act story or a sitcom character or something So but you know, you can see an incident you can maybe like you know over here an argument on a bus or something And create a story around that you've heard the language and the rhythms and you can take those And it'll be believable because those were things that were actually said and you can kind of build around that But I think that is a mistake again new writers sometimes make is they think right? I'm you know, I've I'm gonna write I'm a 20 something I've been out of college for 10 years and I've got a job on a bit But I'm gonna write a sitcom about a bunch of 20 something people and you know, hey somebody hit that and wrote friends I'm not saying don't do it But be aware that you need to take a few leaps and with your characters away from just oh, it's about me really I'm you know, I'm personally me. I'm probably one of the worst offenders.
You know, just about every sitcom I've ever written is basically about me I say that not as a kind of rampant David Brent egotist but as a sort of classic sort of middle-class Indecisive kind of my persona I feel is a sitcom character right who has yet to have been used right or yet to have been done successfully Although I do think probably most of the characters that Martin Freeman plays are kind of a bit like that really now So I have to find my my way of doing it that's a bit more original Well, yeah, I would be dubious about it It's a I think it's a problem if the central character is you and I had this exact problem I did this little show for BBC Radio Wales called be lucky and I did a person I was having problems with the lead character because he wasn't quite active enough and I did a personality test for him I just imagined him sitting a personality test and answered as he would answer and discovered that he was an INFP Which is exactly the same personality type as me and so I realized that I was always gonna let him off the hook I would always make him too nice or too reasonable or too this or that because because I was you know, give myself the benefit of that Which I should do but so I would say you want to try and get away from those characters You sort of don't really want to agree with any of the characters in your show and actually the truth is somewhere in between all of the All of the arguments and ways of going about things and usually, you know, I think what's it coming when it's going? Well, it's like when the hero goes off and does the wrong thing You can just go well, there is a case to say you could do that and that character would definitely do it that way So it's not an active insanity because otherwise you're then into the realm of the logic police who you just think no no one would ever do that And there's always a telltale sign of that when when there's a line where somebody says in a show or script Oh, I panicked you think generic panic made you do something that was funny, but I'm very convenient for the plot And I just always think that's a bit of a cheat really and that shows you that you've not quite done it right But you know, he's just said and done I guess yeah, but I think Where I would say differ with with you in terms of the kind of the personal element I suppose what I have a tendency to overanalyze myself and that's kind of partly what I find in that is I can look Back on certain incidents and see where I had I displayed like a total lack of self-awareness Right and I and I can then it did then the character is sort of built on that incident as opposed really as much as as as it's kind of as it's me You know, Dave 61 North London whatever, but it's like this is this is what I was like at that age And I did that thing and that's kind of if I take that and lack of self-awareness is a is you know quite an important aspect I think of of character often It's you know, you often see it in sitcom characters And it is like if you if you are unable to see about yourself what other people see and again comes right back to this thing saying at the beginning about who you are Who how you see yourself and how others see you and someone like adena in Abfap Has no self-awareness that she is you know, she is trying to be something She desperately trying to be the more the harder she tries to be the thing that she wants to be the more obvious It is that she isn't that thing and sometimes I look at things that I tried to be or tried to get And it can be like a very small thing like, you know, I tried to be a certain type of writer and the harder that I tried at it The more I failed well, you know, there's a there's a reason for that And that's that I wasn't being honest with myself about who I was and why and so that's I kind of without getting too deeply into psychoanalysis in order to create your characters I do think you can find in your own personal Study of yourself you can find incidents. Well, why did that happen? Why did that go wrong and what what if I was to take that and turn that into a character?
Yeah, and no one else no one else can do that because you're the only you're the only one that did it you know You know in detail. Yeah, no, that's that's true. So that you want to make the most of your own sort of insight in your own Yeah, your own predilections and make the most of it and write that in to one of your characters But yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't again doesn't always have to be It just needs but it depends on way and that's the other thing is that sometimes when you're creating these characters you may discover That the show is not about this character, but but those two characters the relationship between those characters rather than You know, and the show isn't about the location, but this relationship I mean I remember I first came up with huck 33 about Let's it comes to him black sheep ark and world war two and because I liked the geeky aspect of it But actually I realized that in black sheep ark everyone's a geek And so therefore you don't stand out for being a geek and actually the show needs to be about something else And it's through talking to my wife that she was kind of telling me more about the social history And it always puzzled me that after world war two the the winning prime minister Winston Churchill lost the election with a landslide and the reason for that was the fact that rich and poor had served together in the war and everyone had seen how the Half lived and thought well this can't go on. Yeah, and so I thought oh well the show is actually about how the other half live and so you've got um And so you have a privileged wealthy sort of Oxford professor of linguistics and a pulled him up to himself up by his bootstraps Jordi played by Tom Goodman Hill and the other characters played by Robert Bathurst and then he oh great Well, that's I've now got two characters who I can write who I can see arguing more or less permanently Oh, and it appears to be essentially only when I laugh with People in Glover and Figgis, you know James Boland and Peter Bowles.
Yeah, great Yeah, it's interesting that I have I don't want to go on about this because I have talked about it quite a lot But as this novel that I've been working on that I did spend most of last year Not actually coming up with sitcom ideas and in the last couple of weeks or so I've been coming up with new sitcom ideas And I realized that part of what the novel writing has taught me is actually it has allowed me to create people who are nothing like me So I have actually for the first time managed to move away quite a lot from Just being about me because partly because this novels about me and I'm bloody sick at the site I started reading about me age 17. So I In looking at the other people around that character, I've Organically found that I've been creating new very new people very different people to any types that I'm used to Creating and that that's been quite a liberating thing for me So yeah, so it's coming away from just being a personal thing as well It's it's been quite quite a good thing for me really yeah Cool. So what are some of the other things that you might need to think about creating creating characters? Is there any sort of exercise?
So you know one thing is put them in a situation and just sort of see how they get on or any other sort of hacks or tips Yeah, I mean it's always worth doing very dull scenes for instance I mean if you're doing like a couple, you know the most successful Comedy show family comedy shows, you know, there's usually a scene in the bedroom It's not necessarily an intimate scene, but it's like what are these couple like in a bedroom? Or if it's siblings, you know, what are they like around and did a table and you know, so it's they're very kind of banal Kind of things but like so you can get some quite good You might find that one of these turns into like a really interesting scene You know, someone goes to buy a newspaper what kind of newspaper do they read? I know people don't read newspapers anymore But if people still read newspapers, what would they read what and you know, where what sort of place would they go to to have a drink after work? You know, so those those kinds of things I mean just a couple more things I would just add about a character one of the one of the crucial things being That they never learn from their mistakes And I think that's something that's worth bearing in mind that it is and again It's a difficult one in the nowadays everybody's saying oh, you've got to have a narrative arc to your you've got to have drama to your comedy And how can you have a drama if a character doesn't move if they're stuck in the same place?
But you've got you've got this contradiction now with comedy that you know nothing ever changes But you've got drama and in drama everything does change So you kind of have to find a way that the character learns from the mistake just long enough Until the next episode when they will have forgotten everything and it will make sense that they've forgotten everything because that's the kind of person they are And so yeah, so you do have to that's the kind of thing I would add since the last time I spoke about this is you do have to kind of You have to somehow kind of put put a narrative arc on top of it But without changing the person which is which is a pretty hard call really isn't it? That's a new thing isn't it? Well, I don't know. I mean you do need to give them a little bit of a journey without changing them I'm just going back a bit.
I mean I um when I developed think the unthinkable I didn't know what I was doing at all and they weren't podcasts back then all the internet really to be able to tell you Um, I just read Stephen King's book on comedy and that was it and you were lucky I've got it in my hand right now. I have writing comedy by Ronald wolf Um, but what I did was I um created a little cv kind of thing I wrote, you know with with pen and paper actually cut out of a magazine What my characters might look like? Um, and worked out what they would order what coffee they would order and worked out Um, all these sorts of things. I didn't necessarily work out, you know parents and backstory and everything and again two think of black backstory Backstory is fine, but but for goodness sake, don't put it in the pilot episode Don't put it because we want ultimately we want to know where these characters are going or where they think they're going And only say where they've come from if it's if it's really essential to where they're going But ultimately we we sort of don't want to know really it doesn't matter Yeah, I think one thing one exercise that I would find very useful if I were you listening to this now is that james and I have been Creating a sitcom on our patreon podcast and it's called soup to nuts at the moment, but we've um, we're kind of making a bit of progress now I'd like to think but there are kind of about two or three episodes sort of around that where we're starting out to create it and we do have Some some slightly frustrating episodes where we're trying to create a character and we're talking around it and we've got all this stuff in mind and we say Oh, yeah, but they have to be proactive.
Yeah, okay. Well, they'll do this and that when we say, um, but there's that sympathetic, you know Are we gonna believe that person? So we we've been kind of talking talking our way around that stuff and I don't know I've Been listening to it all again actually recently. I listened to the whole the whole lot and I And I'm aware that we kind of you know, we think we've solved something and then you come back and I know it's not quite solved But then there's another point where you think well, it doesn't matter that we haven't solved it Yeah, let's just get down to writing it and and and see if we can solve it in the writing and that's you know, that's also a kind of hard Decision you make you something you have some points.
You have to go. Yeah, I've got to I've got to have faith in my abilities a writer to push this forward now So maybe that's the other thing is you know, you don't worry about it being 100 right before you start writing Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah, and you just need to get going at some point and you just need to Um, yeah, make some choices and then go back and do it again and it's If you you know, people I think we just have this idea that because you're seeing the very final version of the very final edit Of a sitcom episode most of which let's be honest aren't that good? But if you are watching, you know, you are seeing you are seeing the fourth edit of the of the ninth draft of the fourth outline Of a show that people are already deciding is a running, you know, is up and running So it does and then you know, I'm a bit into I love documentaries about art and art theft and what art crime and stuff When they x-ray these pictures they discover that there are other pictures beneath them or that there was a whole this person's arm was Completely wrong beforehand.
Do you think all blind me? How on earth could could van you know could could um, whoever it was van dyke made a such a stupid mistake? Well because it takes time to get it right. So I think have an ex- Talk about that have what oh really?
Okay? Okay, yes To make that painting apparently, okay But but the point is no, even if they do it fast as well It takes a lifetime of experience to know and so the people who can work quickly with the brush as Leonardo da vinci did with the last supper Which was planted on the plaster and you have to paint it fast. Well, that's fine But that wasn't the first thing you did was it? So you just need to be be prepared to kick it around and think about it and think about it and think about it and then write some things down and then go back to it And then go for a swim and you'll have another thing about it You know, this could be this or suddenly, you know, you think you've cracked it and then you kind of have but then you you need to crack it again And then you need to crack it again.
Yeah So yeah, but I would suggest going to joining us on patreon would be a great idea and then you can access over Well, I think there are our 13 episodes of soup to nuts as well as well as plenty of other content including first-ten page challenges So patreon subscribers at a particular level the are they the makai's level? They they can the real makai there. Yeah, so they can give us send us the first-ten page of their script And we do a special podcast only about that and only for patreon subscribers But we also have a competition, don't we which we can enter In conjunction with british comedy guide pro who hosts this podcast on their servers and make it available to you If you join bcg pro you can enter our script competition for which the prize is being on this podcast whilst we critique your script If you can bear to do that if not we'll critique it and we won't drag you onto this Still a bit of time to go that's the 17th of November is the deadline for that I'm also running a couple of classes around that time about for sitcom writing and also writing for gags and Writing just generally how to write jokes and how to write characters and stories and that's you can find all that on my website Davecoin.org.uk Yeah, so loads of good good advice there as well just have a click around and so also Dave's written an excellent book called how to be averagey successful comedy and also the complete comedy writer Which you can also find details of on Dave's website and I've Yes, I've had all good computers. Yes And my book is also an ebook called writing that sitcom which does take you through the whole process of thinking up the show And then you know how to write that first draft and then what to do with it So that's all writing that sitcom.
Yeah, that's on the patreon as well as an audible Yes, so you can either buy that off my website or via amazon as a kit for the Kindle Or if you join us on patreon, then I'm also doing you might get it free and also I'm doing an audible version of that and we're still for about halfway through that at the moment So hopefully that's enough to be going on with and that is episode one two five The express train that is this podcast if you want more details about the sitcom Competition the script competition go to bcg pro and have a click around and have a look at that and hopefully All the information you need will be there and I think that's it and next time we'll be talking about plots, won't we? Great speech you next time all right. Thanks very much. Bye.
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