Hello and welcome to SickCongeek's I'm James Carey. I'm Dave Cohen. And we are talking about your comedy scripts. Many have been sent into the BCG Bro competition.
There were 65, 68, 68, and we're sent in and we whittled that down, having read the first 10 pages of them, down to a long list of about 15, and we read those scripts in their entirety. And what we are proposing to do is offer some reflections on those, and hopefully that will give us a bit of a sense of how scripts can be improved because the Beethoven's writing window is coming, isn't it? The writers room, the BBC writers room window opens on Monday the 23rd of March and closes again on I think Monday the 20th of April. So you've got by the time once this episode goes out, you've got a good few weeks really.
So whether you've got a script now that you think is in quite good shape, or you're thinking I'm close to having the idea that I'm ready to write, or even just thinking well I might not be ready to join to this year, but I'm definitely interested in future years. There's also the wrote-liff writing competition. They have a comedy script competition as well, which is normally around about this time they haven't given out dates yet. But in addition, there's also the sick commission is being revived.
That's where you get a chance to get your show performed with top actors, seen by industry people in London. And the deadline for that is May the 4th. So there's a lot of things coming up, and there are going to be a lot of scripts. The BBC writers room, they tend to get it done, they're going to get about 3000 scripts.
And they only read the first 10 pages of all 3000. So they apply the same criteria that we applied. Which is, if this script doesn't grab me in those first 10 pages, then I'm afraid it's going on to the sorry pile. And I think that's what is annoying if you're trying to break into the industry is it feels like it's terribly unfair that they don't read the whole script.
But the problem is anyone who's worked in the industry for any length of time says you can tell within the first 10 pages if this person knows what they're doing or not. And very rarely are people proved very wrong by reading the whole script. And we will get onto the specifics of that. But just a funny bit of housekeeping really is to say that winners of shortlist to people, whatever, they are notified by email, by BCG Pro and that kind of administering this competition.
So we won't be revealing winners or names or anything on the show, because also most of you listening didn't enter and don't really care about names or winners or anything. So we're just trying to make sure that we can all learn as much as possible so that our scripts can be as good as they can be. That's what our aim is. Yeah, now I'm actually going to be doing a day on Friday the 13th of March, it's going to be your lucky day.
Because I'm going to be doing a little day where I'm going to kind of hopefully sum up everything that we've talked about. So if you are thinking of entering the BBC conference, or any competitions really, I'm going to talk in detail about the sort of things that we've found and the sort of things we're going to talk about now as well and how you can make sure that your script stands out when you send it along with those 3,999 other scripts. Yeah. And whilst we have mentioned things happening in the future, not just the BBC Writers Room window, there is a BCG Comedy Conference coming on April 25th.
And so BCG pro kindly hosts this podcast on their servers and distributed to your ears. And so we're grateful to them. So at least we can do is mention this conference and we will be at this conference. It will be in London on Saturday the 25th of April.
And so I think you can book tickets now. So go to their website British Comedy Guide and comedy.co.uk. And there's some pretty big names. I'm not sure if they will have been announced yet.
I'm not sure if I can reveal, but there are definitely some star comedy names that will be there. It'd be really worth seeing. Yeah. And it's good just to go to these things.
And I don't think it's terribly expensive. And there's probably some early bird rates if you move fast. But it just feels like if you can meet other writers, you don't feel quite so alone, you might get some inspiration. You might meet a writing partner.
There are lots and lots of good reasons to go. And if this is your passion and that's what you're interested in, then why wouldn't you go? And the fact that you obviously want to pay to get there and all that kind of business. But anyway, it will be well worth doing.
We're in another year currently without a craft of comedy conference. Sadly. Sadly. But this will be the next best thing.
The next best thing, if not better. It doesn't have the beautiful Victorian grandeur of Clandered know or the delightful Steve Doherty guiding us around the place. But there are lots of things to commend it. And also London is quite easy to get to.
So apologies though to those of you who are listening on the Isle of Sky or somewhere. I'm saying, oh yeah, London is easy to get to. Thank you for saying that. Yes.
Having said that, it's easy to get to London from there than it is to get to North Wales. True. So there we go. That's that plug over.
But what we need to think about is what we learned from the short list that we've got that is up and available to see on British Comedy Guide website somewhere. I suspect. But what are the headlines from these scripts that we read the whole of? We talked in the previous episodes.
We talked about things like really having to test your ideas, really push your ideas as far as you can. And we talked about how you need to get your characters right and your stories correct. So the 15 that we chose on our long list, I guess we can talk about where there's an idea where we think, OK, that's a really good idea. What's it about?
And quite a lot of these scripts were the idea stood out. And so that's just we can pick out specific ones. So we'll talk a little bit about, and these are the things that we've talked about before, but we'll refer to the script. So what's it about?
What's it really about? And that's your idea. How is your idea? Who's it about?
So what were the good characters, things that we saw? And why am I the person to write this? And why now? In other words, you've got stories.
What is it about your stories that separates them from the kind of that moves things on that's different from what's already out there? And that's definitely explains quite a lot of the ones that didn't make it to the short list. There were an awful lot of scripts which just felt like they were people talking in a situation. And there was no really compelling reasons to why we would want a sitcom set in a bookshop now that wasn't threatened with Closure for Mams and all that.
That wasn't one, but I'm just using the example. And so there were lots of scripts that didn't make it through just because they didn't. Because actually there were one or two scripts that got through that actually I think that will go quite a long way that are completely all over the place. And I'm actually a little bit baffling and strange and chaotic.
But they just have a sort of, they just feel like they've got, I just don't think I've seen this before. They've got funny bones, but also these are just voices I've not really heard before. And it's just written in a way that's got loads of, it's very compelling writing even though it is very confusing and done so properly. It's raw.
It's raw. It's talented writing that has not yet been honed. I think there's a lot that. And I think that's what the BBC writers are looking for in particular is they're not really looking for, I think, when we can ask them this when we next speak to them.
They want to see evidence of technical ability of scenes that feel like roughly the right length and scenes are numbered and all that kind of stuff. But actually what they're looking for is a voice and attitude and just something that sets you apart really. Yeah. And I think, and again, that doesn't necessarily mean my idea is totally wacky and whatever is completely different because we did have a couple of the main themes that I think came through and we chose some of the scripts with these were women of a certain age looking to get pregnant, which is again, it's a familiar idea.
Yeah, or being teased for not getting pregnant or whatever with mother-in-law or that kind of thing. That sort of thing. Or and then also a lot of sitcoms set a little bit in the future on spaceships or on Mars or whatever. And again, that's something that's very much out there now.
People are, the why now is the sort of, well, yeah, people everybody's talking about the planet being destroyed. But even actually, let's talk about that sci-fi thing. It's quite a good example because there were sort of two or three scripts, maybe actually four or five scripts that were sort of science fiction. And one of them's on the short list and is really good.
And in a way, it sort of feels like it's not, it doesn't quite have a compelling reason to be on now, but it's really funny. It's executed really well. The scenes just lead on to each other. It just felt like really good writing.
But then there are other scripts which actually had lots of jokes in them. But because they just sort of really weren't about anything at all. And it felt like this was written by someone who loved Red Dwarf and Hitchhikers. And they just wanted to write their own space adventure.
And actually, they got quite hung up on the sci-fi jokes and the situations. And actually, what you forget is that Red Dwarf and Hitchhikers, they are actually about something. They're not sci-fi adventures, really. And all decent science fiction is really about something.
So I think sometimes people, and there's a couple of historical ones as well, which felt like, I mean, there was one that felt like a guy Richie movie, you know, and there was those sort of other ones. And they've got jokes in them, but it's just like, it's not, what do we learn? If you've got a sitcom that's set during the time of Alfred the Great, why now do we need to hear about Alfred the Great? You sort of need to answer those sorts of questions.
And I think, and again, to be fair, I have mentioned this, the first things that I did when I started out writing, massively influenced by Hitchhikers. I wrote all six episodes of a radio show while I was still training as a journalist. Don't write all six episodes of anything. I'm a quality spinner, but there's a cherry picker outside that's being folded up, so apologies for the noise carrier.
And so, and don't write all six episodes. I was kind of getting my influences out of my system. It's like, okay, by writing my kind of sub Hitchhikers guy to the galaxy, not very funny sitcom, but I was finding what I wanted to write about. And through there, through the process of doing that, and coming back to the cassette, what we were talking about two couple of episodes ago about what is your idea?
And my idea is to do Hitchhikers guy type thing, but it's about me. Yeah, okay, that's not enough. What is it about you, Dave, that it's about? And so that's me answering the question.
So, you know, when you come up, whatever your idea is, whether it's about some kind of space ship and it's this, and here's a really interesting thing about the spaceship. And you know, it's well, okay, yes. But what are the, what is it now that makes us want to watch that? And what is it about the relationships and characters?
And whether it's that or whether it's a middle-class couple living in London, and they can't have kids yet. Yeah, okay. But what's different? We've, you know, there are countless dramas, comedies, books that deal with that.
There's loads and loads of them out there. What's your take on this that's going to make me go, ah, and we did. And you can cheat that by having unbelievably good writing that shows that you have first-hand experience and access. So, in a way, you can cheat it by saying, well, my one's going to be the best one because I'm the only, you know, I'm the only person who's had six rounds of IVF.
And therefore, I know what it's like. And we start the action on round four, you know what I mean? And so, this just feels like, you're in the first three or four pages, you'll know from reading it. Oh, wow, this person's really been there, rather than wouldn't it be interesting to set a sitcom in this situation?
And you can tell the difference quite quickly. Yeah, and we've got this, one of the scripts that's in our long list. We mentioned the names of the stuff. Give it a title.
Yeah. So, winning at life, which is the first 10 pages have an amazing energy to them. And this is about a woman trying to get pregnant. But the way that that story came out, it was just very funny.
And it, and quite wacky, but actually the character was consistently wacky and stayed like that. And on the one hand, I've got to get pregnant, but also, you know, just to kind of, because my mum annoys me about I got to do it, you know, just to annoy my mum. Yeah. And that's a sort of, there's a sort of logic to that that, you know, obviously that's not enough to sustain a whole series and things.
But it does kind of take the character down various routes. And it, you know, deals with the problem that all these shows and books tend to deal with, you know, can you have it all? And it's about her trying to work and have the babies run. It's just, and reading the rest of the script, I think, you know, yeah, we were right to put this, it kept that energy up.
And it kept that energy going right to the end. And it was that the characters were thought through, most of the characters, a couple of them were slightly not sure. But you know, the, the, the, the, the quest for this person was, was consistent. Yeah.
And the character was consistent. And it was not, and it was different to, yeah, how the fact that I mean, I've not obviously, I've not read every book about this, and I've not seen every show, but I've seen enough and, you know, no, enough to know, oh, this has been a very different take on it. So I think what you get with a sense of script like that when you're reading it, it does still feel like more than the sum total of the parts. So I think if you've really got a story to tell, if you've got something to say, I think, you know, that will get you actually quite a long way.
And the technical stuff can sort of follow. But, but that's a really compelling script when you read something like that, where it just feels like it's got a real energy to it, as opposed to a lot of scripts do feel like they are bored characters in places they don't want to be. And it's not terribly inviting. And we do refer listeners back to an episode we've called recently with David Tyler about, you know, you are allowed to have a funny situation.
Yeah. And also, I think also one of the other things we're doing, so Patreon members, who are governor, Patreon members have, we make a special little podcast episode for them to listen to. And we talked about some of the scripts on that. So if you join us on Patreon, then you can have access to that audio library of stuff that is not broadcast.
But on one of those episodes, I did think about, we were talking about how you want to show what your situation is by giving a sense of the place and the kind of business as usual that goes on in this place, so that we get a sense of what it is before you start to subvert it. So quite often you, you know, if you've got an office where clearly nobody does any work and the company's doomed, it does make you think, well, why is this company not already out of business? Can you just, and if you only need a few little clues, a few little bits, a few little, you know, moments, and I just think you want to paint a picture of where in this world, and it has a reality of its own, and you can now forget about it. Because it's quite annoying when you have a situation, when you're not given quite enough information.
And a weird example of that is there, I wanted to know more about scripts where there was essentially a bizarre will stipulation, where someone was going to inherit a lot of money. And the stipulation was not unreasonable, which was, you basically can't leave this area, you can't leave this village or town for a year. This is a script called Sousdow. And I just thought, oh, that's interesting.
I wonder how much this estate that they will inherit is worth, because if it's worth 50 million quid it's a no brainer. If it's only worth 300,000 pounds, then that's much more interesting dilemma, but I had no sense of the parameters. You need the absolute stakes. You've got 48 hours on the case.
Yeah, so, and that's fine. And so in one sense, it was like, you've got to do this for a year, and I'm not a fan of bizarre will stipulation, so I'll be completely honest. But let's say for the sake of argument that that's okay. It's just like, okay, it feels like you've given me enough information, but you actually haven't.
And it's now a little bit frustrating that I can't tell whether the central character is being unreasonable and acting irrationally, or whether it's such a large amount of money, or he has such a pressing reason to leave, he has to go back because, but actually his reason is I have to go back because I have to walk in my plants. He's saying, well, you're an idiot then. You know what I mean? He's not quite, so you need to be really, really specific on the parameters, I think.
Yeah, and if I could just, well, we're on that script, although I'm sort of jumping a little bit from what's it about. That script, which I really liked, had lots of funny stuff, but the why now element was, it reminded me of, initially it reminded me of a lot of classic 60s hammer horror sort of movies. It's creepy place, it's a town sort of thing. And then American were wolf in London, very much like that.
But it also was a little bit like life on Mars, in that this guy was never quite, we were never quite sure how far away from reality he had come. There's a sort of magical element. Yeah, when he almost, League of Gentlemen, he's always been lazy kind of sensitive. It's a bit of a creepy place, a lot of horror tones as well.
But what I didn't get from it was, you know, this, the, the, the thing about now is, and so that's, that's, you've got all the way to always talk about, you know, all the different things, all the plates you have to spin. And you know, it gets, it gets so many things right. There's some very funny jokes, there's some lovely characters in there, some really nice twists, actually to it. However, it's one of a few scripts that we have, which feels like it's a cereal.
So it feels like that this is episode one of six or eight or ten or twelve. And I know that that is a thing now because of box sets. But what I think that people haven't quite got their heads around is firstly, you, if the episode is all set up, which that episode slightly is, you need to have a story in its own right. So you need a mini story and an overarching story.
And I think what happens, and we've had a couple of scripts in that, and there was another script which I called Third Wheel, which is sort of a bit about a threesome kind of relationship, a character, something going on. And it felt like, so it ended in Complete Mid-Air, that episode where essentially it's like, oh, is this a cookie in the next? He's going to push somebody out or something like that. And it just felt like, I don't feel satisfied that I've had an episode of television.
And I think the really good box set stuff gives you a satisfying half hour or hour or whatever, but also sets up the next thing. And so I think, you know, we need to be a bit more disciplined on making sure that you give people a story with a beginning and a middle and an end. Even if the end, then it's slightly open-ended or leads on to the next thing. As James mentioned a few minutes ago in this, we will be talking again to the BBC writers room comedy guys, Simon and Amanda.
We talked to them two years ago about what are you looking for in the script. Since we talked to them, the big comedy drama question has become a much much bigger thing now. And as you say with box sets and Netflix and Amazon Prime, there's much more of a kind of live debate about what do you want in your comedy script. And whereas before, we always used to say, well, you know, make sure your script is absolutely self-contained.
Now there's more of a sense of yes, but the narrative arc needs to move as well. So we'll be discussing that in more detail with them. But we have talked a little bit about this, but it is definitely worth repeating. I think you should still be aiming, whatever, however dramatic your story is, you still should be aiming to have your character with a goal, it's a goal that they're not going to get and they're going to get to the end of the episode, having failed to get that goal.
And then next week, they're going to try again to get that same goal. And I think that just puts me in mind of still one of the big problems I think I'm reading in the scripts is that of the shortlisted longlisted scripts as well as the ones that didn't make it on to the long list, we do have a story problem. And how does the character fail? It's not enough that they try to do something and fail once, because I'm reading quite a lot of scripts that don't get going to page 10.
And we've talked a lot about that already. But not only do they not get going to page 10, they run out of steam at about page 23. And I think people, it turns out, I think that storytelling is a lot harder than I thought it was, because people seem to be finding it quite difficult. And quite often, actually, you get a story starts on finally page 10, and then the hero tries to do something and then fails.
And then there are no real consequences to the failure. And so by about page 18, you go, oh, well, there's sort of an equilibrium that's happened here. And I can actually switch off now, because the first half has not made me think, oh, the second half is going to be great. It just makes me think the second half is going to be probably more failure, but in a different way.
So I think making sure that each scene leads to the next and that your character and their quest, they are making it worse for themselves. So that your beginning a scene with the character are trying to do this, not only do they fail, but they made their life harder or created a new problem. And then they start the next scene in that story further down from where they started, and then they make it even worse again, or they create a different problem. They fix one problem, they're creating even bigger one.
And actually that is absolutely crucial. And it feels that lots of people really struggle to find ways of making that work. Yeah, just to step out of the bigger picture for a moment, I think it's worth looking at that, the point of scenes, because one of the things, that's the two things, I think the main problems I found with scenes, the first one there you've pointed out, is that the story needs to move on. It needs to be here at the start of the scene, and it needs to have progressed to the next point, and stakes are raised or whatever.
But the other main problem, time and again, and again, this comes back to people, not think about the characters, is when we want something, we don't say in real life, we don't say, I want it, give me it now. We don't always say what we mean. And that's the most, or an awful lot of comedy comes when people say they're trying to say something, but they can't say it, whether they're too English, or whether they try to find a way to say it that doesn't. They're in love with the person they're talking to, or they're going to be negative.
There's not enough, I think, when you're writing your scripts, there's too many on the nose things that are being said. I want this thing, I'm really annoyed because you don't want to say that out loud to your character, you want to get them on your side. And we know that doesn't work, to just say to someone, you're wrong and I'm right. I mean, let's look at the last three and a half years of this country and Brexit, to remind us that nobody got anywhere saying, well, you're wrong, you're stupid.
Oh, yes, I was wrong. Thanks for telling me that. I've changed my mind completely. That's the form for my idea.
So it doesn't, you know, you have to find ways to say it. So it's about what isn't said often, and we've said that before, it's going to be as soon as soon as. But the trick is making it clear what the question is without stating it incredibly boldly and artlessly, you know, subtex is absolutely critical. But you can do that when you're preparing, you say, right, in this scene, what do I want?
My character, I want this character to get to the points where he wants X to happen. And oh, X is going to happen. But the character who he's talking to has misunderstood. And so that's going to come back to, yeah, I'm on the backside, three things down the line.
So, you know, once you plot that point, you say, then you start to see how this character and again, come back to this thing, becomes the architect of their own demise. So I got the thing I wanted by being subtle about it and not saying what I meant. But it's been misunderstood. Therefore, the next scene, I've already I've raised the stakes because now I'm confident that I'm moving forward and I'm going to push something a little bit harder now.
And actually, it's going to push back harder against me and get me into trouble. Yeah. And so, you know, so in a way, you've got a character going to a scene not expecting to win and they win. And but they don't realize there are consequences to that.
But actually, more common is a scene goes in, a character goes into a scene thinking I'm trying to achieve X. They meet someone coming in the opposite direction or tangential direction. And then they have to modify their quest or continue it. But with the provider that they now they have to do this for that person in order for them to do the other thing.
And so you have to have all of these little plot junctions all the way through. And I think people find that difficult to be consistent. I wonder if that's a planning problem. I know you want to get writing as quickly as you can.
But I think a scene by scene outline would really help you clarify what every scene is doing, rather than what are the jokes and where is it. I think it is a planning problem. But if you come, go back and back. And if you say, let's take a show like Peep Show where you've got an old couple and those characters are so well formed and they're not just two great writers.
Jesse, but they're sort of years of Mitchell and Webworking together. So those two things come together. So they kind of almost know instinctively what each other's strengths and weaknesses are. But you know any episode that you watch of Peep Show at any point where either Mark or Jaz is in the ascendant.
You know that the other one is in the opposite. And so you've got all this time that you've got Jaz getting the thing that he wants and maybe being all cocky with it and Mark being low down. So Mark's obviously scheming to get what he wants. And Jaz is taking his eye off it and he gets in trouble.
Mark gets the send and then he doesn't get one. So you've got the basis there for twists and turns. And that's what we want. We want twists and turns.
We want to, when we're reading and when people are reading your first 10 pages, they don't just want to go, oh yeah, that's funny. Oh, that's funny. That's funny. Oh, oh, right.
Oh, I was not expecting that. Yeah. And you know when that happens and it's unfortunately it's quite rare and as much as in our own scripts as well. You know, you have to have that as many, you know, as often as possible.
It's like, Oh, God, I was not expecting that. Yeah. Oh, no, no, or you know, maybe that's gone too far. But generally it's like you are surprised.
You know, this is the stuff that you have to really work out before you write the script. Essentially, yeah. I can surprise myself. Yeah.
I mean, essentially, if you got a character going into a scene to do something and then they succeed with their consequences, you do think yourself, well, what was the point of that? Because you could ultimately could cut that scene. And I think what you really want to be looking at on the script, and it's hard to do it on your own work, is you want to be going through and just thinking, could I, what would happen if I cut this and what would I cut that? And I mentioned this on Polygos before a while back, I think.
But when we were doing Bluestone 4, 2, that's, you know, 21 episodes of, of, of Tele. There was one, every episode we recorded slightly long. So you're always looking to cut and it is hard to get it down to 28 minutes. But there was, but it was only happened once when one episode we realized you could just cut that scene.
Because it has no consequences for any other plot to the point where I didn't know why we bother filming that scene. Why didn't we spot at the time? And in a way, you could say what that shows you is, you know, goodness me, it's so easy to make this mistake that you go all the way to filming it without noticing. And in actual fact, what I would say is, if you're really rigorous about it, one or two will get through occasionally.
But as a rule, every single scene has to be, this character is trying to achieve this and this other character is trying to get in the way. And this is the air and stalking rule pretty much. So watch an episode of West Wing with an iPad and go through what is each scene doing or read a script a bit. Watch an episode of 40 Towers or Peep Show and just sort of plot it and go, what is actually happening here?
Nobody, you know, feels like homework. But I really think this is a problem for people, for whom it doesn't come naturally. Some people are natural plotters, but they're not, they're feeling far between. And they tend to end up being engineers and making far more money than they would writing comedy.
But I remember when we interviewed Graham Linahan, and at that time he had been commissioned to write a new version of IT Ground for America. And he said, he was saying, you know, it's not enough to just, you know, come up with the, the pitch and the script and the story and the idea, the scene by seeing Breakdown. He said, you know, you have to absolutely write it without any jokes at all, your teleplay. And in this, in this scene, you know, whatever, Moss is going to go to go and work in a bar at a theatre.
But he doesn't, you know, it's take all the humour out. You know, you're sucking the life out of it. It's a very dull, dry read. But actually you are saying, you know, but there's going to be a twist here, because this is all the stuff that you're saying out loud now to yourself, so that you don't saying it when it comes to actually seeing the script.
And we can sort of see, we can see what's coming and we can see what twist is going to come and we can see how you're going to resolve it. You need to kind of sit down and when you do sit down and plot it, it is difficult, but you start to see, oh, actually, yeah, that's how that's, and you're still creating the characters at this point as well. And so you know, you're giving, you're trying to make the characters act proactively and do things and you say, well, what if that makes that character this? And so, you know, you're kind of finding what is at the core, you know, it's very rare that you can say, well, take a character, you know, David Brent, who thinks everybody likes him.
And they don't, you know, think about the months of kind of work and thought that went into that. That's the thing, you just have to think a lot about who your characters are. And I think therefore, if we don't need to bang on about making sure your first 10 pages are really good, let's assume your first 10 pages are really good, you listen to the lessons. If you want to get off the very long list of the writers, the BBC writers are more rock-cliff or whatever, and progress and get to the final five or 10, the thing that will get you to the short short list is a story that lasts all the way to the end.
And I think that's a real problem. And therefore, it requires a lot more boring planning, I think, unless it comes naturally to you, in which case, like a you. But I think you need to have a story with a, you know, character of quest, what goes wrong, this goes wrong. How does that make it worse?
Okay, how do they try to fix it? Here we go. Oh, now it's even worse. Okay, we're 10 pages in by now.
Okay, now they can try this. This makes it worse again. They try this, but then this makes it a bit better. But now suddenly, it's gone even worse.
And so by page 27, they're ready to take their own life or, you know, leave the country or all is lost, all is lost. And then there's that glimmer of hope, which brings them back. So but page 30 there. But on that page 26, 27, whatever page it is, you know, that the hero, heroin should really be having a choice to make about me in one sense, they've got no choice.
But in another sense, it feels like they see two parts ahead of them. And we know which one they're going to choose. And we're not quite seeing enough of that kind of, and I think one of the mistakes possibly, because we talk about this a lot. And we say that.
And I think that I found quite often was that a script sort of meander gently along and not much happen. And then suddenly out of nowhere on about page 24, a big problem arises. And suddenly there is this sort of huge thing that's at stake. And I think the key thing that a lot of people are missing, and again, this takes a lot of planning, is the escalation of it.
And you know, when you see, you know, you know, in a novel or in a movie, you know, when people are writing, and it's that big long section that is called Act Two, which is between the first massive big thing happening that really gets the story going, then the next hour or 200 pages of the consequences of that. And as you're writing that stuff, you're kind of coming up with lots and lots of problems. But only when you really really sit down to write it, you start thinking, well, actually, this could be the worst problem of all. So I'm going to move that one there.
And you're kind of juggling around what's the worst thing. And it's like a sort of, it's like a graph of escalation. You can see, you know, the thing is getting worse for the character. It sort of goes up a bit and then down and then up and then a bit more.
So each thing that happens has to be a consequence of the previous yelling. And that is the really hard part of plotting, I think. Yeah, we need to do more work on plotting. We'll do that in future episodes.
I've got one more headline about dialogue. Do you have any other headlines? Yeah, I just want to talk a little bit more about the why now, because quite a lot of the scripts that we read didn't necessarily feel like, and I've pointed this out, there was one, there was one script which was a very gentle script. It was basically about a guy, an old couple, older couple, and they got a dog.
That's kind of it. But actually that felt to me in terms of why now there was so much that's sort of interesting that hasn't been, it sort of started to go towards these things a bit. But I think the fact that there is so much of a kind of about this country and our relationship with our pets, and also it's about, you know, kind of, the sort of lack of human interaction and how people, how people love their pets. And I found it, it was actually a sort of really very gentle, sweet episode.
And I mean, there's a lot that didn't quite work. But I just thought that idea at the core of it, of this couple who have been together for 30 years, whatever, they're sort of running out of stuff to say to each other. And they get a dog and the dog becomes the sort of for the guy, it becomes the sort of relationship, you know, it's a sort of new relationship for him. But there's so much about that, that I thought that was a really good and nice why now that, you know, everything's so fast and we got, you know, the phones are, you know, you get everything really quickly and you can work harder and longer and, you know, everything's on your laptop or your phone.
And that's this, this, this, this, that's majority of people who aren't in their 20s and 30s. You know, that's kind of, it's too much, right? It's nice to just have something that they're actually set to that. But at the same time, you can sense them, their lives are kind of being reduced.
And coming to terms with that and having a dog and that, there's a whole section of this, this episode, which is about this guy's trying to go for a week, the service station, but you're not allowed to take dogs and service station. He doesn't want to leave his dog out. And that was what that, what that showed was, because I don't have a dog, and I'm not particularly a fan of dogs, but for me, I just thought, oh, well, actually, and actually if you have a dog, like loads of people do, this must be a real problem. And this felt like a unique insight.
That's what I thought. And not only a unique insight, but you know, it's something that, you know, it's kind of symbolic of how much we are kind of, you know, the convenient life, everything is made to be more convenient. And yet we've kind of forgotten along the way things that are kind of relatively simple. But that, and it was almost like a sort of political statement that I was written and there was, you know, there are no service stations that allow dogs to walk.
Yes, rather phrase you like these words came up on the screen, which I thought was an interesting, and I think the other, when that takes me on to my last headline point, really, which is that what was good about that script was the fact that they had a very distinctive speech pattern and way of speaking to each other that felt, it felt rhythmical and it felt real and it didn't feel derivatively sitcom-y. And we talked about this on a, on a, on a poetry on episode, is that my worry is occasionally just as earlier, we were talking about how your idea can be derivative of sitcoms that you've loved. And so you end up writing a generic sci-fi thing that has no real reason to exist. Likewise, everyone in your sitcom can talk like people do in sitcoms, and there are other episodes we've done on this where people talk like, you know, there are hack lines that people say that are essentially lines that were first heard in episodes of friends or, you know, did I just say that out loud or, you know, those sort of things.
But occasionally, there's just kind of a sitcom-y way of talking that just feels a little bit fake. And what that's doing is essentially surrendering your characters to the genre and saying, well, it's a sitcom, so I want to speak sitcoms. No, they need to talk like real people. And the moment it all feels a bit sitcom-y, it just feels a bit phony and it feels like you're arranging characters in a situation in a sitcom like Wei, and it feels rather formulaic.
So I think just really digging into distinctive speech patterns. And the weirdest example I can think of, which I mentioned before, and I think I might even have been blocked about, is Simon Callow's character in Champs in a Million with Blender Blethin. And this was a character who never used prepositions or pronouns, or never used pran- he just would never say, I haven't done it. He would just say, I haven't done it.
You know, can't say, you know, he didn't even say, one has never done it, or, you know, he would just say, he just had this very brief way of speaking that was incredibly distinctive. And I remember decades later. So just looking for individual turns of phrase speech patterns that just don't feel like we've slightly heard them before. Yeah, I mean, one thing to us that, you know, and we always say, we say these things are rules and go ahead and break them.
And the thing we often talk about a lot is where people are talking about nothing. And that particular sitcom was an episode where they really are talking about nothing. But actually, it's a really poignant kind of way of saying, well, they're kind of saying they're talking about nothing because they've got nothing else. Yeah, if they stop and really, you know, if they examine their relationship too closely, they'll go, oh, actually, we can't, we, and they talk a little bit in those rhythms because if they don't, then they'll just stop talking altogether.
Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, I think we're at an end really, we've probably bebled on for long enough. Hopefully, there are some concrete things there, which, you know, we've covered a lot of different things.
But I think as you listen, hopefully, you will know which of these applies to you, what sort of writer you are. And, you know, and that's fine. And our shortlist, longlist, whatever, are made up of Bonco's ideas executed bizarrely, but with an interesting voice that we liked, and really nothing special ideas that were really well executed, that read extremely well and were very funny, and everything in between really. And there were one or two that I sort of admired, but thought, this is exactly the kind of comedy that I wouldn't like to watch on television, but that does get made for television, but I can still see that there's good writing here.
So, you know, our personal tastes, hopefully, have not come into it too much. I think it comes down to three very basic things, your idea and your characters and your story. And each of these scripts that got onto the long list had at least one of those made us go, whoo, that's great. If you've got two of those things, then you've got a good, very good script, you should be very happy.
If you've got all three of those things, wow, you know, that's great. But even that is necessarily not necessarily still enough to, you know, kind of get something made, but that's the thing you need to have all three of those things absolutely at their peak and absolutely tested forendically, as I say, before you even write the script. I'll be talking about these again, as I say, on Friday 13th of March, I'm doing this one day, talk about about those three essential things and how you can work as hard as possible to make them as strong as possible. How can you book onto that?
Get your website? Yeah, DaveCohen.org.uk. Brilliant. Don't forget that it was also the BCG Comedy Conference in April on April 25th.
I think it is yesterday. It will be there. So, it would be good to say hello then. And you can join us on Patreon.
There's loads of extra audio, including our Making of a Sick Comp Suit to Nutz, which is on episode 14 or 15 or something. But lots of first 10 pages, Patreon stuff, related to this competition, but also previous ones. So, there must be at least 10 or 15 hours of extra audio there, if you're not already sick of a sound of our voices. And we do dig into quite a lot of detail and quite a lot of things.
So, hopefully there's more content there. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening. Cheerio.
Cheers.