Episode 127 - How To Plot Your Sitcom

Hello and welcome to sitcom beaks. I'm James Caring. I'm Dave Cohen. And we are going back to basics on sitcoms and we're thinking about how to write them, where to start, what to do.

We've looked at situations with David Tyler and we've looked at characters a couple of episodes ago. Last week we thought about your first 10 pages, the impact indeed. And so we looked at that partly because we had the deadline for our own sort of competition, but now we're continuing with our theme of going back to basics and talking about plots. And Dave has nine peas of plotting that we are getting to work our way through who's counting.

One of our lessons will be counting. A number of peas. The peas are plotting. And just my initial opening salvo is that although we may be attracted to writing jokes and we may be attracted to characters, the plotting usually takes an awful lot longer.

And you really do need to think a lot about the plots because that's the thing that you're going to hang the jokes off and the characters off. And so very rarely do you get excited by plots, I would say, other than it places your characters and situations where they are and can be extremely funny. And in fact, the first time I got probably excited about plots was actually way before we started doing this podcast. You wrote a series of blogs probably maybe 10 years ago, was it?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just thought about how to come up with plots.

And it was like six blogs in a row. And I just thought, oh my god, this is such a revelation to me of that. I had always sort of sat there and thought, oh yeah, I've got to come up with the plot now. And that's really boring.

Actually, it's a great way to help you when you're struggling with your characters. Well, here's a story. How can I test my character? Here's a story.

And just to summarize that, I mean, you can read the version of it written in my ebook writing that sitcom. But just to summarize it briefly, the idea is that you come up with 100 plots, which I know doesn't sound like a great sequence, but you come up with 100 online plots that aren't that could be anything for anyone. And it could be a bi-parashoot, scotidentist, start a war. They could be, and then you think, well, how would my character do this?

And sometimes they're exciting and you get, oh, start a war. Oh, he starts a war with his labor. Or she starts a war with her daughter. And over what?

Well, obviously, it would be over this. And Sunday, it starts to flow. And sometimes you go, oh, go to the dentist. Who cares?

Well, okay, put a line to that content. Next one. But the way to have that list is to spend time just brainstorming stories. Which brings me to my first P, in fact.

Let's do it. Very nice, radio for sort of link, which is plan. And that's, you know, the more work that you do before you actually write the story, then the more you'll get out of it later. So you may put aside, while you're excited about starting a war plot, you may put aside the visit to the dentist.

But then you start to write your war plot and suddenly the thing about the dentist suddenly becomes a very funny way to get you from the start of your war plot to the next bit. So you've kind of, you think you haven't made any use of that because you've just put a line through it, as you said there. But actually, if you did go to the dentist at that point, then that's going to make that plot funny. Well, funny enough, dang it.

But then also your brain starts working. And my brain has just started working now and I'm thinking starter war, visit the dentist. What if you're convinced that your dentist is a war criminal? And suddenly we're on to Marianne's madman.

Yes, yes, it's been done, I'm afraid, but not as a sitcom. But in a way, you could pay homage to this sort of thing. And then that will make you think, oh, actually. And again, loads of really good stories and sitcoms, especially Seinfeld, are basically true.

And what you then Joe is like, oh, yes, I do remember that for a while I thought my English teacher was a spy. Or I do remember thinking that my, you know, the person that my butcher was a member of an extreme party. And suddenly you've got a real story there that you feel that you can do and suddenly your character is obsessed with their butcher. And so this is an ethical butcher, but they think, yeah, but I'm pretty sure he's a racist.

So he may be organic and locally sourced, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't like coloured people. Also the idea of an ethical butcher. I mean, there's someone who allows the animals to run freely. He kills them himself when he was shetty.

Yeah, and enjoys it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So suddenly you're into your into stuff where you think, well, this feels funny.

But sometimes you think, well, this feels funny, but not for this character or this show, in which case, well, you've written it down. And when you develop your next show, you've already got a list of 100 ideas, some of which were suitable to your previous thing, some of which might be suitable for now. So you're building up almost like a portfolio with plots. Yeah.

And again, it's all planning, isn't it? That's the thing. And plans to plan. Yeah.

And that's, and James hasn't looked at my list yet, but how could he have known that actually number two, number two P, which he just alluded to there is personal. And that's the idea that actually the stories, the best stories are not the story that you tell about when you got, you were late for work and this thing, because that's really boring when you tell it. But a sort of funny thing happens, or something unusual happens around you, and you build, you create a story. That's, this is a mistake I think a lot of people starting out right when they're writing.

And I feel guilty of doing it myself is when I've written personal shows is that I've wanted to, I wanted to stick to the integrity of the original story, which is ridiculous, because it's a story, it's made up. And so all really all you need is the thing, but the thing that happened to you, that's real, and that's good. And the fact that that's real means that when you start telling the story, it sounds believable. And then you've got these characters that will then act out the story for you.

You don't want to force a story onto your characters. You want your characters to act as they would, because you've created them in a certain way. So that's, but if you've got a story, and as you mentioned, Larry David had lots of them that he puts into Seinfeld. Well, even all of the characters, if you, I've got all of them, I don't own that many DVDs, actually, because I remember thinking that they were overpriced and were probably dated.

But on the DVDs, at least, there is a thing called an inside look on quite a lot of the episodes where the writers of the episode, which was sometimes Larry Charles, and sometimes two other guys. Yeah, and there were lots of different people. And it was often, yeah, I remember my, I used to live next door to this guy who did X, and I remember thinking, oh, that's the kind of thing Kramer would do. Or sometimes I remember one of them was saying, oh, I had this guy who just wouldn't stop going on about this thing that we should do in Seinfeld.

I remember finding how incredibly, and whether that ended up becoming essentially the Banyan character, he was just like, hey, you should do this, or like a annoying person, or whatever. But it is great if it comes from a real place. But then again, you don't need to stick to the story. Although sometimes you feel like the moment you depart from it, it starts to become a bit weak.

But overall, what you're looking for, I don't know what your next piece is, but you're looking for the way in which your characters go in a believable way from this to that to that to that to that until they're in this extraordinary situation as we get in Miranda, where she's reading Mine Camp for Children in a library, in order to get out of being a godparent. And so it's how do you get there without the audience going, well, that's just ridiculous. I mean, obviously the whole show is ridiculous, but within that show, it's not ridiculous. So yeah, so that's kind of the thing that you're looking for, is that story that there's no weak link going from here to here to here to this point to be one to be two, be three, be four, be five.

And suddenly your character is like going, how did I get here? And we know exactly how they got there. And it's because of their character ideally, rather than having stuff forced upon them. Sarah Kendall, who is probably the one of the finest storytellers around at the moment, a brilliant one woman radio shows tell really kind of gripping powerful stories.

But she works very, very hard at those stories and they are made up, but they have a personal truth at the heart of them somewhere. But I knew you listened to it and you sort of think, yes, this could really happen. And actually, you almost think, well, God, did that really happen? She says that she does get people saying to her, you know, well, that thing really happened to you that way.

And now it's a story, this thing happened, which then I went off and I wrote this story about it. And so yeah, remember, it's people's real stories can be a bit dull, but you're making it up. They're just a starting point. So take what you can from them, but then don't get hung up on whether, you know, because most stories are not as crisp and as perfect and delicious as a sitcom story.

And that's fine. And no one expects sitcoms to be truthful quite in that way, even shows that look very, very naturalistic, like the office are every bit as contrived as an episode of my family, or friends, or whatever. They just don't look at it. And so they are still neat in their own way.

But, you know, that's one for another time. Okay, so we'll go to our next P. Well, this P has featured before in my acronym world, as in off up, DeBos Looza, the P in my character, which is, and I'm sorry if I popped there. That's right.

You have a pop shield. So you have a popping shield popping. Yes, that's true. In the ears of our listeners.

It's okay to do. The nine P's of sitcoms. Yes, plotting. Yes.

And not burst your ear drums. So yes, proactive is the word that I'm using here. And yes, it is a character thing. And it's something you just have to be careful all the time when you're writing your sitcom, things happen and characters react.

And it's kind of an instinctive way to write, oh, this thing's happened. I'm going to have to do that. This thing's happened. And oh, they get called for jury duty.

Okay, right. Okay, that's a letter. Yeah, you still have to make sure your character does think your characters invariably in sitcom are the architects of their own demise. And in order for that to happen, they have to do things.

They have to go out and say, this is the thing I want. I want this. How am I going to get it? I'm going to do that.

How's Lee going to this is the pre current series of not going out, but eight series of not going out. How is Lee going to get the girl get Lucy? How's that going to happen? He's going to try every episode.

And everything that he does is just going to cause problems and make things worse and worse. And there might be a little inciting incident where he sees that she likes this or that and he thinks, oh, I could get into that and we could have a shared interest or whatever. Yeah. So you're kind of you are seeding something, but then you want your character then to sort of launch off on a big quest based on that little incitement that's going to cause lots of problems.

Yeah. And that's that's so these are the kind of these are the starting points that when you've got a big story, you need to have the foundations really. And obviously planning is foundation number one where the story comes from, ideally comes from yourself. But proactive is sort of, I suppose it's kind of point number two, isn't it?

It's like, okay, we need to get the story moving. And the best way to get a story moving is for your to get your character saying, all right, that's going to happen. I'm going to move this story. Yeah.

And they have to do it in a way that is believable and within character. So in one sense, it might not be believable what they're going to do, but it is believable for that person to do it. So it may be, I've got a huge credit card bill that I can't pay. And what's the solution?

I'm going to shred it. It's like, well, you might, you might go, well, they don't do that. That's really silly. But if your character is a sort of person that runs away from things like that, well, that's great.

And the shred is broken. They can't shred it. So they burn it and they set for something else or something like that. And that would be my kind of adding to this is the, I don't know if you want to look at this, but this is the lesson I've said this a few times before.

I really learned working on Citizen Khan. And this is the one thing I learned from Adil Ray, who is Mr Khan in particular, his relentless commitment to make his character always make it worse. It's not enough that Mr Khan fails. And he will, he will go off on a plot.

And then it's not just enough that he fails to do this thing and then tries again and fails and tries again and fails and eventually succeeds. It's like he tries and fails and makes it worse. And now he's, now he frankly give anything just to get back to where he was at the start. And now he tries to get back.

And now he's made it even worse. And so you want to be in that situation whereby, so in the cricket episode I rate with him where he sort of brags that he knows, Mowin Ali, that's right. Oh yes, I talk mowing how to bowl googies. How do you think he learns that?

And then when eventually they say, or could you get him to sign a back for us for the auction for the local kindergarten thing? He's like, oh yeah, of course I can. And we know that he's always thinking, oh dear, they really caught me on this. And then at the end he sort of has to, he can't even get the one day international at Edgbasten.

It's completely sold out. He's going to have to bluff his way in. And eventually he kind of, of course he's going to end up naked on the pitch running across, you know what I mean? But you're just trying to make sure that every single step of that way is believable.

And that it's his character's hubris and pride and desire to actually do the right thing because he wants his daughter to have this thing and he wants to be the guy who is the problem solver. Well, that's a new P that you've given me, which is a possession. Right. That the character has to own their story.

Yeah. So, yeah, no, I don't know. But if I take possession, then that crowbars in another P. So, yeah.

So great. Progress is the problem. It just makes it worse. I mean, that's the thing, isn't it?

Yeah. How can they really, you know, just remind me of a very funny story, not that I was just remembering about a friend of mine. I never used this as a sitcom, but it's got to be there somehow. He just always used to, when we were working in Bristol, he just always parked wherever and got parking tickets.

And somebody said to him that if you go in, he had about a hundred parking tickets. So if you go in and you take the latest parking ticket that you've got, then it wipes all the previous ones. He believed it. He went in with this one ticket.

I'm just going to pay this ticket. This is 25 years ago. Things weren't really automated then. But it was like the person who took it was Christmas had come early for them.

He said, Hey, look, everyone, it's a guy who, you know, that's, so, and he ended up, he happened to have, who had some dope in his pocket at the time as well. And, you know, so it kind of, um, reminds me of that great scene. Um, when, um, when Joey is at the, the HSS in, uh, bread. Um, do you remember?

I didn't watch very much. Oh, okay. Um, where he was, um, they were always claiming benefits for something. They were always claiming, always claiming, always claiming.

And it was always the same woman, really hard-nosed woman. Um, and she says, you know, eventually she says, look, he says, uh, yes, let me give you my home address. And she says, I know where you live, Joey, as well. Um, you know, we organized coach tours for the councilors past your house.

It saves us explaining where all the money goes. Which is so great. Um, but sorry, those, all that backlog of tickets just made me think of that. Oh, man, bread with, I love bread, which is, um, I don't quite know.

It was a huge show. People forgotten it got, it was massive. 20 million people on a Sunday night. It was kind of around the time that I was working every night.

Uh, and I, there's a gap in my, uh, TV watching of sitcoms from about the early 80s to the early 90s. Um, and also you can't, you can't pin it on, you're not my cune, you know, you can't say, I don't watch anything from Liverpool. No, no, I wouldn't. I would.

You're from the other side, aren't you? Yes. We have in common with Liverpoolians are, are dislike of Vancouver. Well, there you go.

Yes. Exactly. Okay. So that's me.

Next P we are, uh, not necessarily in order, but a point of no return is the, um, is, is the next one. And that's a point where you are three quarters of the way through your story, and all is lost. Yeah. All is one, in fact.

Um, and it is a problem. I do find that, you know, one of the things that excited me when I was reading your six, uh, the answers I was thinking about, uh, just how hard it is to, uh, and how infrequently you watch a sitcom and that it really does actually properly, uh, tie up all the loose ends. Um, yeah, and, and, and, and, you know, but you get to that point three quarters away in where, oh God, it's not going to work. And I've watched great episodes on my favourite comedy shows and things and moments where, um, that's the end of the show.

Um, that, that moment, uh, is, it's like everything's gone wrong and it's, it's sort of okay if you know the characters and you're familiar with them and the whole world, yeah, it is. And it's like, we know we'll be back again next week. Yeah. I think that's leaning on the format a little bit too heavy.

Yeah. And I sort of think, actually, I want, I want to get back to where we were at the moment you're at the, you know, we know you all get back to where you were, because as you say, because it's the format and, you know, oh, it's just a double lovable, uh, character X or whatever. Um, and I do read a lot of scripts where they, they, and they built beautifully to that moment, but that, and then that's the end of the sitcom. Yeah.

It's not enough. It's like, you need another twist. You've had your first twist that took you to this place. Yeah.

That's the result of your character's pro activity that's taking the name, they've gone step here and they've made this thing worse and they've, uh, it's like, like you say, citizen can't, you know, the, the little lie at the beginning. Yeah. Suddenly he's got to justify it and he's got a bigger lie and a bigger lie and again, Lee and not going out, you know, another bit, and the lies just get bigger and it really, and you get to this point where you think, oh God, it can't get any worse. And then it gets worse again.

And there you are. And you've got three or four minutes left. You've got to get back to, yeah. Oh, and here's the cricket bat.

Yeah. And you know, how do you get back to that? And that is, that, that is the, that is a difficult thing. So I mean, again, when you're planning, it's not enough just to get to that, to get that point.

And it takes a long time. It really does take a long time. And actually, I'm disappointed if you're reading scripts that do that because I want it to, you might have gotten away with that in the 80s and 90s when people just thought, well, sitcoms just reset at the end. So we're not going to worry too much about it.

Yeah. And actually they were, they were probably slightly stronger purists and did resolve things and get them back. But we now live in an era of story arcs and series arcs. So you really can't do that now.

You really can't completely blow up everything at the end of an episode and expect to be able to go back to normal at the start of the next. That really doesn't work. And I think therefore, people are less ambitious in their plotting because they are frightened that they can't get out of the plot. But actually, I think you should embrace that.

So the obvious example I think I did a blog about it is, and I'm still not even quite sure they get away with it, is the episode of Black Adder where he executes somebody early. And then the, the wife comes to visit this guy, and he has to, he has to pretend that this person, they've already executed it still alive. And so it's Black Adder with a bag over his head. It's the ploppy episode as well, you know, and all that kind of stuff, and where he's executioner.

And even that, they slightly have a cop out at the end. But also, you get that one in, in-coming capability with Dr. Johnson, where he's like, where's the big paper-y thing that's strange? What like the thing that we burn?

Yes, the big paper thing's like the thing we burn, we burn it. Right. Thank you, Bull, Dick. He goes out and chow.

Oh, no! Sorry. You know, and he's, he's going to have to write a dictionary. It's a really funny episode.

So you kind of want to make your life as hard as possible. And I feel that people don't do that. There's a show which I quite like the first series of, wasn't blown away by it, sort of quite like it was Motherland, and series two is just on at the moment. And the first episode of series two surprised me so much.

And what surprised me so much about it was that I was surprised, because it was beautifully plotted. It was very, very funny, very, very intricate plot, and it kept you guessing right the end. And the final scene, it went the opposite completely. I went, oh my god, I did not see that coming.

And yet everything that had gone before had suggested that that would be an option, but it had been beautifully disguised. And then, and so we're at the end of the episode, and that's it. And then there was a brilliant call back joke from something that happened earlier. And so not only did we get our very satisfying ending of an episode, but then we got the punch line at the end.

And that was, in fact, that's another P that I've mentioned, is having a punch line. And I've written about this before, and actually having a, it's happened so rarely that I kind of remember them. And that episode of Motherland, I will remember, because it just, it had a perfect story. And it resolved beautifully with about a minute and a half to go.

And then the last minute, this thing happened, and it's like, oh, fantastic. Right. So punch line, it does come back to working really working hard. I've made it, and in fact, it was an all is one, rather than an all is lost moment, that we'd got to two or three minutes before the end.

So I think that's, I could appreciate the work that went into that story. And subsequently almost the next episodes have been slightly disappointing, because nothing could quite match that peak really. There's a great episode of the IT crowd, where Moss ends up working in a bar in the theatre. Okay.

And I remember what happens now. So I've ruining the moment there, but it just had the most perfectly brilliant ending. In fact, I might have just me saying Moss working in a bar might have ruined the whole thing. So I think that was the sort of the payoff.

So well done. They've not only could you not remember what the joke was, but you've ruined it for anything who watched it. Yeah. The episode of IT crowd, I was thinking of the countdown episode.

Oh, that was great. Yeah. So the last, the last episode, I think, was that. I'm not sure it was.

It's in the last series. Yeah. The last episode, I seem to remember, might have had a court scene or something. Right.

It was. And I didn't go a bundle on the last one, actually. I remember thinking that actually the thing that's called it was the plotting was not, I think was slightly sloppy, even though you've got great characters and great jokes. I was thinking, oh, this.

Yeah. And also even, I think there was, one of my problems was the fact that there was a jury there, but this was a civil case and civil cases aren't decided by juries. So you've done a civil thing and dressed up as a criminal thing. Right.

And that's not how the law works. The logic. Yeah. That's a logic.

Professor logic kind of in a, maybe that didn't matter. I think you could have fixed it with a line or with a couple of lines or something. But for me, I think you just want to be, and that's why the plotting takes ages. And I think you, and so when people say, oh, apparently in 40 towers, they spent half the time on the plots, increasingly, you just would think, well, yeah, that sounds about right.

Yeah. Who's writing drafts for that long? Because it's also, once you write dialogue, you don't particularly want to have to change it. You don't want to sacrifice your favorite jokes because an entire scene is made redundant because you've changed the plot.

It's like, yeah, the plot, right. So that by the, because writing, because I mean, the reason that I always say that planning and all this stuff is so key is writing a 35 page script, is really hard. And therefore, you want to cheat. And the way to cheat is to have a really good outline.

And the way to have a really good outline is to have a really good story. And you want to cheat. The way to have a really good story is to have 100 stories to choose from and have, and one of those stories will feel so perfect for your characters and your situation that it doesn't feel like work. So I'm basically trying to cheat at every part of the process.

And that comes back to all the things that we've said so far. If it's a, if about the character owning the story, the character is proactive. They're making the story happen. So a plot isn't just a, it's my birthday.

It's, it's, it's this character, you know, and the plot and character, you, if you want to keep those jokes, then those jokes are intricate, they're intricate to the plot and they're intricate to the character. In your ideal world, every joke tells you something about the character and it moves the story on. I mean, it doesn't happen that often, but that's what you're always striving for that. The more, the more that that plot and the character, you know, you're not, obviously we separate out, we talk about character and we talk about plot, because it's easier for us.

But actually, it's hard, you know, it's hard to sort of separate out the two. Yeah. But you know, when you're, when you're thinking about plot, you've always got what is it about the person that that, and again, the danger of making, you think you've got a great, funny plot and you're, you're crowbarring it around the characters. Well, you can't do that.

Either your character is this or they're not that. And if they're not that, then the character is not properly drawn enough. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. I've got a P, which might not be on your list. My P is propped. I don't know if you have, so one of my theories is ideal to have a hot prop.

Yeah. Where you have a physical manifestation of something that is at the heart of the story. And ideally, it's not a McGuffin, where it doesn't really matter what the prop is. It really does matter.

Yeah. So, you know, this is a, this is a little statue-ed that belonged to my grandmother. And if it gets smashed, I'm essentially vomiting on her grave. Yeah.

Or this is a thing that was given to me by my first wife. Or this is a letter which is a stain on my character, and I would like it to be destroyed. Or, you know, this is, I need a certificate from this person in order to open the gates so that my life will be fulfilled in this way. Dr.

Johnson's Dictionary has already mentioned. I have to give back an entire dictionary. I wish I'd put that in my list in my book. Oh, well.

When it gets second edition, second edition, when it's re- you know- Well, if they read your book, the complete comedy writer, and my book, how I think that's it come, then I've got a chapter I think on Hot Props in right. Because in Bluestone 4.2, we have a tin of cashew nuts that the pardry is sent by her dad. And she's just like, my dad refuses to acknowledge that I have a nut allergy. And so I can't eat these.

And so she gives them to Nick. And Nick says, every time I put one in my mouth, I will think of you in a relatively obviously suggestive sort of way. And then when he is accused of basically only ever wanting one thing, and he is being seduced by a woman who he has rescued, who is a Scandinavian aid worker, you know, blah, blah, blah. He sort of picks up the cashew nuts and realises this prop is reminding him that he has been accused of basically only ever wanting one thing.

And he suddenly starts to slow things down a bit. And so, you know, that's kind of, if you can get there with a prop, that's often very helpful. And I remember that episode very well, because I remember the character in that episode was played by a character who I was a show that I was a very big fan of. I think it was a ballgame.

I think it was a ballgame. Yeah, she was really funny. Yeah, in our show. She was great.

Yeah, you weren't expecting comedy from her as well. So that was a shock. Yeah. Okay.

Well, I'm going to have to rename my book the incomplete right in there because I've not got my hot prop. That's why people need to listen to the podcast. Okay. So what's your next page?

My next one doesn't apply to all cases, but where you have couples or odd couples or whatever. And that's the pendulum. Right. And if you think of a plot as an escalation, things going wrong.

But often, if you've got an odd couple or if you've got like a couple like a peep show, a couple pair, say something going terribly wrong for one of them means something going terribly right for the other one. Yeah. And this can happen scene by scene almost. If it does happen in Peep Show a lot, I think, you know, you think there's this great moment for Mark and it puts Jez in a very difficult position.

So Mark does such and then suddenly it makes Jez is the one and it is a constant vying for who is doing better and who is doing worse. And I think it happens a lot in the show like my family, for instance, where something that's good for, and I can't remember the names of these characters that I wrote for a year. Ben, Susan. Ben and Susan.

Yes. So Ben's good thing is invariably Susan's bad thing. Nick, Mikey. Yes.

And I used to call it Sun Mikey and actually Michael didn't particularly like me. Michael called Mikey. I know it's the guy who was really a puppy dog. But anyway, and he ended up together with Abby who was a cousin who came to play the tournament.

Well, you get a bit, even in, so the example I usually use is in the Miranda episode where it's not so much about, it's not really quite an odd couple, but there's a pendulum swing in that she spends the first half of the episode trying to become godparents to her friends and then she spends the second half of the episode trying to get out of it. And so you want to be looking at those momentum shifts. So yeah, you have, it particularly works with odd couple shows where you have, it's not quite a zero sum game. And actually you're talking about the punch line in a way you want something that resolves this eternal conundrum between these two over this one thing, where they both get half of what they wanted, but realize that what the other one wanted is not entirely unreasonable.

Yeah. And you know what I mean? And that's what I normally say, the punch line should be something that is surprising and retrospectively inevitable, which is easier said than done. But quite often it is a resolving of this pendulum, isn't it?

Yeah. Someone stops the pendulum from swimming, swimming, swimming, yes. To say, look, we, this can't go on. Yeah.

But that's good. That pendulum thing is very helpful. Yeah. Okay.

How many more pages have we got? Well, actually, this is a slight cheat is a peril, which is in fact probably kind of the same as point of no return, but you know, the character has to be in peril. Well, I think that's the more general term of jeopardy, isn't it? Yes, it is.

It's what's at stake. And point of no return, I would say, is the ultimate jeopardy. But every scene has to be motivated by, I have to do this or this. And again, I require a lot of scripts where, you know, seen after seen is this person is trying to do this, and it's not immediately clear what will happen if they don't or if they can't.

And if somebody gets in their way, then Ay and B, so what? So I think peril is really important. Yeah. Okay.

Oh, okay. Then I shall be proud of the app and proud of my peril and my point of no return. Absolutely. Well, the point of no return is the ultimate peril, which again, you can have peril all the way through, but it doesn't seem to be accumulating to anything.

But I think peril is key. And I think again, yeah, it's not only does your character need a quest, what I call the clear tasks, the clear terms of success, you also need to know what failure will look like and why that's the worst possible thing for them. You're pleased to know actually that, you know, clear toss has now entered the English language in a sense that I was doing some guest teaching for national film, television school, which Bill there runs this. And we were reading people's scripts and giving them notes about it.

And Bill just said, now, what's the clear toss in this episode? They all knew what he was talking about. Obviously, I thought, right, not only has James spoken to all these people, but Bill has incorporated it and they've all written down this is clear toss. So it's under success.

Yes. Yeah. But that's a really key point is that, you know, it's just highlighting something we instinctively know is writers is that when our characters, so it may be, I think an example I use as an episode of a much unloved show called The Persuasionist, where they're given a quest, which is you need to be more creative. You know, the boss cracks the weapons that need to be more creative.

Just like, well, it's an advertising agency. So I get it. But what will that creativity look like? And what will happen if they don't achieve that goal?

And that's never really resolved, which is why it's quite an underwhelming episode, even though I think the ingredients were there for a perfectly decent show and there's one or two episodes, which actually I think are really good. So I think just making sure that what does your hero want? And how will the audience know when they've succeeded or when she has failed? Yeah.

That is, that is really critical. Yeah. Okay. We shall crack on them with our final piece.

Final piece. Yeah. Well, actually, we've got two more. Two more pieces.

This one, not necessarily in every sitcom, I think, but it's a thing I like a lot in my sitcoms, Pathos. Yeah, not every sitcom has Pathos. Larry David always said, you know, there's no hugs, no messages about some signfare. No learning.

No learning. Yeah. But actually, I do think Pathos is a kind of learning of the audience that the audience gets. And even in Seinfeld, the character of George, you know, we do, he is a loser.

He loses. Even when he's winning, he's loses. And there is a sort of a pathos is kind of has in from the word pathetic and sad sympathy, pity. These are the things that we feel.

And it's what we're saying again about, you know, we're saying we've got our characters have to own, have to own their mistakes. And often that means that the character doesn't get the thing that they want. And there is a sadness to that. And there can be a sadness.

And in fact, the great thing about having a sadness in a sitcom is that then you get a joke after the sad moment. And it's a massive, huge laugh, joke of relief from the audience that knows, Oh, right. Okay. Thanks.

Yes. It is a comedy. Yeah. It's what for me makes writing comedy just such a fantastic thing.

I think it's just, yeah. People think writing comedy is easy, but actually the greatest comedy is on a parlour. I think with the greatest drama. Yeah.

And Pathos is not just because it's an old word. It's a part of that for me. You get it in all the great sitcoms. You do get it.

You do get it in porridge in any fours and courses. And step toe. Step toe. And you want that in any show?

And I'm always slightly worried by, there seems to be quite a prevalence of characters in sitcoms these days or comedy narratives who are sociopathic, who are incredibly selfish. And I mean, but I'm being invited to either root for them when I don't want to or actually to not root for them. And we're just thinking, I'm not rooting for the hero, even if I don't approve of their life choices, I at least want them to succeed by their own criteria. But quite often you're alienated to such a degree that there is no pathos.

And you think, well, I don't quite know what's going on here. And especially now, as we've been saying that commissioners keep saying that we want to, we need more narrative in our comedy. And of course, in a sense, narrative can be the enemy of comedy, because narrative like drama, in drama characters grow and they learn and sitcom, they don't. And so that's a contradiction.

But if you want to, if you want commissioners to sit up and take notice of what you're writing, you need to have strong story there. And if you can build in, if you can round your character off more, so they're not just silly or lacking self awareness or monster or whatever, they also, there is a, there is that extra side of them that, you know, they don't, they can't see how terrible they are that we can and we, we have sympathy even as we laugh at them. We can even have sympathy for them in the sense of, a character can have a level of self awareness whereby they realize that they've done it again. But we know from life that people don't change.

And if they do change, they change incredibly slowly over decades. And that's not the time span of a sitcom. So I think it is plausible and believable and dramatic to have someone sort of realize that they've done it again. And next week, they're going to do it again.

And the tragedy is, and the reason it's kind of funny is because it describes life is we know that's how life works. And when you get an email from someone you get a phone call from someone, you're pretty sure you know what they're going to say. It's like, people don't act out of character. So I think we can be fairly robust in defending the sitcom format because I think it is more true to life than the drama because people don't go on a journey and they don't change.

But if they do, as I say, it tends to happen. And occasionally you get radical conversions of people at the time of recording Kanye West has become a Christian and has radically changed his everything. But even, you know, a lot of people just thinking, well, how long will this last? And that's a perfect question to ask because we are so inured to this idea that, you know, so I, that's kind of the way it goes.

Yeah, cool. Are you out of pizza? No, my final P is persist, persist. Yeah, because that is you do wonder, you know, we do talk about when we watch something and you think I've got that so contrived.

And usually if you watch something and it's contrived, what it means is that the writer hasn't worked hard enough and hasn't been able to resolve the plot thing. And so something some contrivance happens. And you go, okay, I work up and it was all a dream. Obviously, not that but you know, it is, it is the thing.

And again, I don't know if it's still as hard to put a wheel back on a bike after the fix the puncture, but it's, you get to a point when you're putting the wheel back on the bike where there is too much inner tube and there's not enough space to fit and you can't work out. How did that ever, how did that inner tube ever fit in that rubber and then on the metal of the wheel? How did it, how did it, it can't be done when it can, but you know, you just really, you're at that point there where you're, you know, you're pushing with your thumbs and whatever and it's powerful image, you're painting. Yeah.

Okay. I'm glad. So I hate bikes, my kids have bikes and I hate having to do maintenance on them. I know it is a pain fixing process.

I think it's become a lot easier now, but five, 10 years ago, we just, you could fix the puncture, put the mark on stick a stick, something on with your glue, let it set and put it back on and you get all the way around, you have to work your way around the wheel, you get to this point and you just like, no, this is, it is physically impossible to fit this inner tube back inside this wheel, but everybody does it and you will find it, but you really have to, you really have to think and you really have to look at all the possible options. And actually, the other thing I find my final comment on this is, you know, I've written quite a few episodes of things and I've always had a plan and I've always had an outline, I've always had, you know, a two, three thousand word document with, you know, 12, 15, 18 scenes and I've known at the start of writing each scene, what has to happen? And yet once you start writing it, you just go, oh, I don't think the character would do that, they do this. And usually you end up going slightly off, you know, you very, I very rarely get to the end of a completely worked outline when I write the first draft, it usually it's 80% the same, but quite often the resolution slightly different or little top plots changed or it sort of recalibrated itself slightly.

The temptation then is always to not finish your outline properly because you think, well, I'll fix it when I actually write it and that. And again, that my overall rule of thumb is you have to do every single process as if this is the last chance you get to do it. So when you're doing your outline, you have to fully believe that this is how this episode is going to work and all I need to do now is to turn this into dialogue and it's done. Knowing full well that that won't be the case and then when you write the first draft, you actually have to kid yourself, this is it, they could film this and it'll be genius.

And then you get notes and you know you're going to get notes and you know you're going to go, you know that scene doesn't really work and that scene doesn't work and you have to rewrite it thinking, well, okay, now I've fixed it, now it's perfect. Knowing full well that there's going to be a read through and there's going to be entire scenes that fall over and then you rewrite it and then you go, oh, finally I've fixed it, now it's perfect. And then it goes out on TV and everyone goes, what was that? That was, that was it.

Oh, once or twice, I'm a member of on Bluestone, we cut the whole scene because it was dramatically redundant and we only spotted that after we'd filmed it and assembled it and watched it and just thought, well, we're overlaying, what happens if we lose that scene? Nothing. Why do we even write that scene? That scene is literally redundant and it may have been a hangover from a previous draft where a key incident happened in that scene which we then didn't need and we cut it and it just looked like we needed it to get us from that scene to that scene and blah blah blah.

That actually just not how you just cut the scene and it literally didn't swap that until after draft 13 had been shot and edited twice, you know. Well, it's like when you talk about the first draft being the vomitor draft, you get it all out there, don't you? And again, I'm finding that's coming to the end of the rewrite of the second draft of the novel that I've been doing is I'm finding stuff now that is just loads and loads of stuff that's just repetitive or I just think, my brain was thinking I need to say this at this point. I'm just sort of thinking no, you don't say that, I can go.

There's hundreds and hundreds of words that I'm finding as I go along. I just think come on, you're near the end. We're getting to the end. That's boring.

Go, go, go. And even then when someone looks at it again, they'll say, oh, come on, they're still too long. So there's always you're always looking to get to the get to your end, get to your point, but yeah, persist with it. You will, if you can, the more work you put in, we're coming back to plan really, point one, the more work you can put into it, then there's greater chance you've got you're giving yourself the option of just making it really special.

I have one last P and that is Patreon. If you join us on Patreon, you can get all of our audio, some of these episodes in advance, interviews we've done, which we haven't released yet, all those kinds of things. But also you can hear our sitcom series, which is us literally plotting and planning a sitcom from scratch. And so you can hear us have all these discussions and debates with each other.

And we will be involving Patreon subscribers in that process at various points as well. So do have a look on our Patreon page. If you just google sitcom gigs, Patreon, you'll find it. And there are various levels that you can join at.

But we would love, if you could support this podcast by joining even for a dollar a month, it would be great. But there are other benefits for being more involved in that. So we hope that you will take us up. Please do that offer.

Please do another P for Patreon, please. Great. I think we're done. We are, yes.

Thanks very much for listening. Happy plotting. Happy plotting. And we'll speak you next time.

Please.