Hello and welcome to sitcom geeks. I'm James Kerry. I'm Dave Cohen and this is episode 148 welcome I think it's an amazing episode because we are between this sounds obvious episodes one four seven and one four nine Dave Yes, we are at one four eight one four eight sandwich. Yes.
So last week last time we had an episode with Jenny Eclair Which was great fun wasn't it? Yeah? Yeah? I'm one of the sort of great comedy legends.
Yes, exactly Yeah came up through the perrier awards and Edinburgh and all that kind of stuff on the next episode of one four nine We have another lady with an interview called Joanna Penn who is um is not a comedian She's a she's an independent author she makes and she makes no secret out of this a ton of money doing that and really enjoys doing it And it's talking about also audio books with digitized voice actors and stuff like that Yeah, why would we want to speak to somebody like that? Well, she really knows exactly what's happening in the world of doing it yourself Yeah, and it's kind of I suppose it's sort of almost like a complimentary episode to when we spoke to Danny Stack and Tim play about their adventures in DIY Yeah, and I think what she's talking about in the book world is kind of where the comedy world is heading very very soon Yeah, and the opportunities within audio in that kind of business But also this is how you might start out now given that Jenny a Claire was starting out literally in rooms above pubs trying to get an audience And all that kind of stuff so Jerry in restaurants in fact Indeed, yes, there are some great stories So if you've not heard that go back and listen and if you want to get Joanna's episode straight away If you join us on patreon then you can then you can listen to it now Thank you everyone who is a patreon, you know really appreciate having you with us and it really helps us So who we got joining us on patreon? Yes, thanks very much for all of you who have joined us in recent weeks We got Ben Palmer. Thank you very much for coming and Greg Sheldon.
We got Colin McQuaid Nina No, sir. No, no thanks Nina Duncan Labkin and Jim Williams So thank you all for joining us and we do appreciate having you and it really helps us Yeah, definitely does But also if I may say you get an awful lot for your money these days as well because we have a ton of extra audio We must have I don't know 15 20 hours worth of extra audio which we've not released there are preview episodes You know, so we're lining up some really exciting interviews as well especially for a hundred and fifty if and you'll get that straight away Sort of unedited as it were so there's lots of other reasons to join also if you join that particularly The governor level they're named after porridge things if you want to go over you got access to my video course Which is starting to appear weekly which is sort of you know starting all over again really from basic idea to getting a script called writing your sitcom Which will be its own video course in the new year as sort of a standalone thing Please do please do Great stuff. Yeah, so um but also There's another thing we'll get to the soup to nuts thing in a minute because we I just edited a soup to nuts episode where we're creating a sitcom from scratch Dave and I between us and there was a little plot cross over thing which I want to talk about but before we get to that Dave wanted to tell us about a competition that you're gonna run about a scene Yeah, basically Dave Cohen is causing a scene very nice. Yeah, so this time roughly this time last year We ran a competition 10 page challenge We've got you said the first 10 pages of your sitcom and James and I read through them There were a lot of them and it took a lot of time this time James has other other commitments I think it's fair to say I but I I do too but I was thinking that actually because I've been doing a lot of work on scene work and writing specific scenes in sitcoms And I was thinking that we should have a competition which I'll introduce more formally and we'll do with BCG Pro where you send in a Two-minute scene from your sitcom and what we'll do is we'll probably I'll look over them Over the sort of Christmas New Year time and then probably in January we'll do a sitcom geeks episode and we'll get the best ones We'll talk about those particular ones and why what what it is about them that work so well But it's it's just sort of struck me You know we talk a lot about you know how to write jokes has right character and the big things generally But we haven't done as much work really sort of drilling into like the specific scenes and what everything that has to be in a scene And we've written blogs about it before but I thought this would be a really good way to help writers really You know looking not just at the overall picture and the general notes, but it's quite a technical thing really Hopefully getting some more information across by having this a very small you know like four or five hundred words maximum A piece of work that you would send into us.
Yeah Yeah, no scene writing is one of those things that I mean it is kind of the brick laying It is the actual getting getting the roof on stuff that actually once you're about to do it You suddenly realize it's probably a lot harder to do than you thought it was We sound crazy. I remember I don't know why I thought of this but I've called this the other day when I learned to drive Which I didn't find particularly hard in some ways because I was brought up on a farm So I sort of had access to vehicles that weren't on the road as it were But I remember finding steering weirdly difficult on an actual road. Maybe it was the proton car that I was learning to drive in Yeah, I know proton really maybe it was the lack of sheep in front of you Well, maybe that was it I was completely thrown by the lack of livestock, but it was one of those things where I actually got out onto the road I just thought well, I mean this is actually harder than it looks but the bit that I thought would be easy is actually quite hard So I think you know Storytelling is one of the things that we've really learned in the last year I think people find really hard and we've had lots of interesting scenes and situations and characters and jokes And the story is probably the thing that's usually the most lacking But actually then within that I read scene after scene where I think to myself. This is not a scene This is people talking or this is an event So, you know, how would you give people some advice on where to start with actually writing a scene?
What is a scene Dave? Well, this comes back to the my NFA my new favorite acronym Which is the which I've been using a lot recently and the more I think about it the more it seems to apply to everything It's AER activate escalates and resolve and it applies to the main story in your sitcom. It applies to The big plot to apply to so many things but even within a scene you You're moving your main plot forward one notch and in order to do that You have to do all the things that you do anyway Or it's it's similar very similar to a sketch No, you still have to when the scene starts you have to set up what's already there and often that might mean reprising What came in the previous scene or just you know bringing in a new character or something But that's you're activating again And then you're bringing in the next complication from from the previous. So the big thing just happened at the end of the previous scene Oh, oh my god, you don't mean that surely I was thinking about the you were talking about about clams, you know, that some you'll never get me on that bicycle cut to next scene That's not a bicycle but this so but obviously you don't do that But it is, you know, the thing that happened at the end of the previous scene Okay, we're on to the new scene now Yeah, and we activate the next complication And that's in the first sort of 15 or 20 seconds of that scene And then we have a minute or a minute and a half where we have the consequences of activation Yes, just like in a big plot But this is within the big plot we've activated it and we're escalating the drama and we're building up We're going to build and build to a bigger point about three quarts the way through the scene Um, and this is going to be the moment of drama.
I mean, it'll be a Cock could be a cliffhanger moment. So it could just be a very very funny joke I've been watching a lot of american sitcoms in the last few months and you know, they have a lot of advert breaks in american sitcoms You see the join very clearly when you're watching american sitcoms You see oh my god that thing's just happened at the end of that scene and cut to and you're back in the same route Weird but from a slightly different angle. Yeah, but you know, there's been two minutes of advertising between so you kind of get used to it But you what what happened was that you escalated that moment towards the end of that scene Uh, and you've got to get then you'd have to get out of that scene once you've reached that kind of a point of oh my god This is gonna happen You have to resolve it, but you're not resolving the story at this point But you are getting out of the scene Yeah, you have to get out the scene as fast as possible. Yeah, ideally with the funniest joke in the whole scene Yeah, and that then tips you into the next scene.
Yeah, um, I was thinking about this the other day I was reading a script and I did think to myself The metaphor that came to my head was that the script the scenes are links in a chain and The amazing thing about chain is they're all linked they're all that you know You can't pull it apart and actually the chain is a thing that kind of pulls you through to slightly shift the metaphor But quite often I read a scene which feels like a closed loop And it isn't really attached to anything and quite often I refer back that competition be ran quite often I would find that after um 10 12 15 20 pages even I just go Oh, okay, well that feels like the end And then a new and then a kind of almost a new story starts or a new chapter as it were starts But it's actually one thing has to lead to the next and if you really want proof of just how if you can get it right The two examples that jump to mind in terms of crack cocaine storytelling one would be um 24 Um, so the the key the key for Sutherland, you know drama from you know 10 15 to maybe years 20 years ago I didn't come remember how old it is But that would speak that episodically would just absolutely drag you through and usually there was a bit halfway through Where you could probably switch off before you then got, you know, hiked up to watch the next one and you ended up watching four episodes in a row But in terms of scene to scene You know that the mega star of fiction going back to Joanna pen and her novels is down brown Yeah, you can't put the thing down And I couldn't put the thing down even though I basically read the nonfiction version in advance called the holy blood and the holy grail And I knew exactly where it was going and what he was talking about Um, but he was an absolute master of taking you to the pro's was terrible. It didn't matter Exactly. I thought I must read a damn Brown book. I was on holiday and there was a damn Brown book in the bookcase I thought yeah, well, I have to for research purposes of nothing else pick up this jam damn Brown book mockingly scoff at it and Suddenly 250 pages later.
Oh, right. Okay. No, I could not stop reading this book and yes, the the pros was awful the characters were Badly drawn them with lots of clunky dialogue, but I just wanted to know where are they? It wasn't the famous one it was one of the Some bloke looking for some secret hidden in some digital fortress.
Maybe sounds like no There's something else. Yeah the Da Vinci code obviously was there was the one Um, but yeah, I mean it's it's compelling and so you have to work out You know, how is your story going from one scene to the next scene to the next scene to the next scene And i'm not just going but going up escalating escalating Yeah, because you want to get to a point you want in the same way, you know With your plot you want to get that point three quarters the way through the story where you know it's victory or it's defeat all is lost All is one and it's sort of then uh, it's a cliff face If um, you know all is lost so you get higher and higher and then suddenly you're complaining down And then you have to get back to the place you were at at the start of the episode having learned nothing because it's just commonly Um, and live people don't know. Yeah, that's And the same rule applies in the two-minute, uh, yeah scene that's within that So that's what we're looking for not a lot to ask but yeah, but that but that's but in the sense that the drama of the scene should be in every scene There should be somebody comes in with a quest ideally that we know what it is And then they meet somebody coming the other way who is an obstacle or in some way moderates their quest or makes their life harder Because they possibly have their own quest or they have their own their on the other end of this plot Um, so so you know this and this stuff takes ages i think again we say it again and again, but i'm going to say it again I think people think that this just requires so much planning that it's ridiculous But it requires so much planning it's ridiculous, you know, i might have mentioned i'm writing an episode of a murder mystery Which you know, which they're gonna film next year was gonna be this year but it's not happening and I had to do a story outline and then I had to do a scene by scene and the scene by scene I had to do three or four times over each scene by scene was about 6,000 words Right, um, and I did that two times over and then I had and then that wasn't that was a story outline and then I had to do a scene by scene where I absolutely made sure that every single scene was accounted for and I had to do three or four of those and they were about 6,000 words and when I wrote the script the script was only about 9,000 words Right, but I'd already written, you know five times six that I've already written 30,000 words I wasn't going to use it to get to the outline for the first draft Yeah, and then I had to do it again and then I had to do it again And you're gonna have to do it again? Presumably?
Yeah, that's right Yeah, I was just saying today before we started recording that I'd sent off draft three and I felt very pleased with myself That I'd done it even though, you know, obviously wasn't perfect and I was expecting notes But I got notes back in the middle of the afternoon and I felt like I just would have been kind of kicked in the guts You know halfway through a victory dance, you know to me So that was a bit of a surprise and I read the notes and they were like, yeah, yeah, no that all sounds really They were so excited by your script they had to get back too straight away. I mean, I've never heard of that Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, well, that's because they're actually gonna film it. So they do tend to get back to you on those Yeah, yeah, that's great.
I'm pleased to know that's happening Yeah, well, I'm sure I'm sure I'll listen to the rejoicing the fact that I'm in work You can encode maybe you could sort of encode in an episode you could sort of let let us know who the killer was Without telling us well, that's what you meant to do. I don't know it Anyway, the other thing one of the people who's involved in the show In fact one of the reasons I am involved in the show I think is because she read a blog post I wrote called When is the scene not to see? And she's actually sent links of that to people who were writing scripts for the series to say read this blog post about how to write a scene And here I am now on draft three of my thing making a right of all the whole thing But yeah, so the scene stuff is really really important And I think sometimes people just end the scene because it feels like it should be over And all of that dramatic tension that they built up over two or three pages Has now been dissipated they cut to the subplot or another story and then come back and you're going to kind of build it all up again And it feels like I don't quite know what that scene is doing And it's quite hard when you're when you're deeply entrenched in your sitcom writing And sometimes you know, you don't always see and I think even when I'm part partly your first draft is there to show you where you've missed Things like oh, that's not really escalating or if I really want to make this Plot escalate. I need to move that kind of third point in the plot I need to move that much further down because then that feels like something I can really build to I just because I've got everything down now it wasn't in my head that felt like oh, that's the third thing But you know you look at it and you see and then and then you have to start moving things around and then that You have to start changing the scene.
So you know it is one change in your first draft of your scene You know just just then like you say it's a check set stuff for change. Yeah, you're the your chain of whatever you just called it I can't remember chain of destiny change story But the other thing therefore it's worth doing especially if you're if you've written a script or you rate a script a while back And you're not getting notes on it. You can't get anyone to read it And you know, you could basically want to read it and that's fine But if you want to do it yourself One thing you can do actually is you is to make a scene by scene based on the script that you've written And see, you know It might not resemble the script that you thought you were writing And as you start going through and summarizing the scenes that you have written You will probably realize that at least three of your scenes are actually redundant Or actually in some cases that one of your scenes is potentially two scenes. You've got two things you got too much happening in one scene But I think that's something we both mentioned before we've seen quite a lot is where some where two lines of dialogue come out And you actually look at them and you go, oh, wow, that's really I want to see that Because kind of you kind of push straight through it and it's like, oh, right, hang on Again, it just takes Years of doing it and missing it previous times.
I've realized that the experience of going, oh, yeah, yeah, that's that's going to look funny that scene Yeah, and the other exercise to do is quite often scenes just turn out too long Because as you're writing them, you're just sort of slightly grasping around at what the actual scene is and occasionally again One note I've wanted to give on a scene and occasionally I do in terms of the don't is you know, you read a five page scene six page scene Anyone to say to them, okay, do that scene in a page and a half Or a three page scene which feels flabby. You just go How would you do that scene with with a look a line another look another line and you're done You know and actually you can get it. I mean, you know, we need jokes and we need story We need stuff to happen. We're not trying to write, you know short films that are four minutes long We are writing 22 25 28 minutes, but actually if you can do your scene shorter You can have a pretty good reason not to do it shorter.
I think Yeah, I'm gonna put a 500 word limit I think for this competition. Yeah, anything more than 500 words will be disqualified Yeah, and that's still quite a lot actually for us. Yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah If you think I share his 12 scenes, you know, that's 6,000 words Which is kind of as much as kind of maximum level really 6,000 words. Absolutely.
Yeah, you don't want to go in with more than 6,000 You want to be up five and a half in fact, so that's a tenth of a show, you know, that's 150 words. It's coming down I think 500 seems about right because you want to be clear. You want the action lines to be clear and you're sort of setting it up from a From a standing start. So be kind today.
Be kind. I will. I will. I'll be revealing that probably kind of early October I think that's going to be done in conjunction with the British comedy guide who BCG British comedy guide, of course, they also run this podcast.
So we're very grateful to them. Yeah, they hosted the podcast very grateful. Thank you very much To mark and errr, particularly. Um, so here is a tiny tiny matter before we get on to another bigger matter and then we'll stop The smaller matter is I mentioned earlier an overlapping plot to problem So again, if you do want us on patreon you'll listen to our suit tonight series I think we're up to about episode 16 so there are 16 whole episodes maybe 17 I just put up today on patreon Um, and we're creating a show that is set.
Um, about it's a it's a family We discovered the other day talking about it that it's sort of step toe and daughter and daughter Was the breakthrough that we were making but also as we were plotting it Dave said that there was something that was nagging him about two plots that weren't technically related But felt that they kind of were and I don't quite know who decided what to do about that But wanted to explain what that was Dave. Yeah, well, just just a quick recap many months ago when we kind of talked this show idea into existence So we got as far as as writing a breakdown seen by seeing breakdown for a pilot episode Which included having a statue of a local dignitary that people were protesting against And then and there was also a plot that evolved Winston Churchill, and then there's luck would have it of course the whole kind of protesting against statues movements to con and life its own earlier in the lockdown and For some reason a Churchill became embroiled in that even though no one was suggesting anyone bring down any statues of Winston Churchill But it became linked and so we had post post lockdown We had our script with our statute that was being protested about and we had our Winston Churchill plot that was nothing to do with statues And I I worried that For the sake of clarity whether we could still have both the statue plots in a new form and acknowledging what's already been what's been said Plus the Winston Churchill plot which is I get I'd say nothing to do with statues But when you say statues and Winston Churchill now you think of the same thing. Yeah, yeah And I think this is something that's my writing about a rich ed is really strong on as well Is the fact what he would say is if you don't link those two plots together It's just going to be annoying. I think it's a sort of thing he would say and and they're not linked I mean one is about Winston Churchill being spotted in an old photograph carrying a particular kind of bag That was made in the factory in this town and the other statue is about the the the hero or the heroine's great grandfather or grandfather As the kind of the one who provided an awful lot of work for people in the town was being honored But they were gonna pull the thing down and so yeah It's one of those things where you just want a bit of clear water between your plots Unless you really are going to overlap them because the audience is trying to figure out what's going to happen Aren't they and they are if they are often ahead of you because they've seen other sitcoms So we haven't quite resolved that one yet, but I thought that's a really good example of like another minute I a bit of plotting which requires thinking about before you get on to draft three and suddenly spotted you might be wondering You know how we can talk so passionately about this about a statue and about Winston Churchill What the hell are they talking about?
Well, we have we literally spent 16 half hours about about eight hours or so Talking a sitcom into existence It still doesn't exist I'm really you know, I'm sort of a bit back on it That's something It's a new way of doing stuff Hopefully if you want to go to a store on Patreon you can get access to that I won't mention Patreon again because it's getting boring But that leads us actually into the next thing so when you're coming up with a a new sitcom as we were on that thing Something can happen which I've now read happened quite a lot and Dave has been thinking about this a bit recently as well Quite often you read a script And it's a situation and it's a I don't know it's a local radio station. It's a bus depot It's um, it's a factory. It's a work. It's often a workplace Actually or a bar where the person works or whatever and it's clear that the main character.
It's usually their first day again, you know, really Um But then they despite being the main character and and the person that we're following throughout this thing They usually get introduced to everybody as well. Um, I hope I don't listen to many of us is going Oh dear, is he talking about mine? Uh, but in a way, yes, I am it is this is very common But the end result is simply this your main character is easily the least funny person in this show And sometimes they're not at all funny. So Dave, why is that that is a common problem, isn't it?
Yeah, and I think I know why and I'm a skilled at this as an expert I I've noticed a few times and I think you know a lot of the time when we're coming up with ideas or sitcom We are quite rightly trying to find some A new angle on a familiar topic, which is really what the best sitcoms all are So you just sort of think well, you know, I worked in a supermarket And uh, you know, I've seen trolilo. I've seen whatever but my experience of working in a supermarket is very different I think I can bring my unique perspective on some of the people that I work with people believe how crazy they were Um, and so here is a sitcom that's going to be setting a supermarket that's totally different from trolilo because but it's my experience And uh, here was the guy the wacky guy who worked behind the meat counter I think then there was the uh, the uh, the um, whoever's witness who worked in the um, frozen frozen Free frozen, they were saying, uh, you know, there was the um vegetarian who worked in a sausage counter or so you know, these were all these amazing people And you're kind of unloading all the comedy on to all the other people kind of forgetting that actually well Yeah, and it's about it's about my experience But actually what you then have to do is you have to either get out, you know, you've created these people Okay, uh, you're not there now. You're with the observer. It's like, you know, you're just the right I'm observing these people and therefore that you can do as whatever you like with those cameras Or you just need to really go, okay, uh, I'm gonna create stories here The main thing is that you are creating fiction And the problem when used are autobiographical you'll say, oh, these are funny stories Number of times people say to me, no, honestly, this really happened to me I don't doubt that it happened to you for a moment But most of what happens to us does not translate into a plot in a sitcom You know, you may it may have been that you know, you work with this completely bonkers bloke who walks around with a Logan fish on his head or something, but yeah, that is not a sitcom plot That's just a mad thing that a character did Yeah, and you know, you have to invent stories you have to make stuff up around these people And you have to give yourself permission to to lie about what you did there You know, you can bring the whatever the emotional truth is about your character when you're working there Like, oh god, I'm working a superlucky.
I hate being here. I'd rather do anything else than be And then it becomes that becomes a story or something, but you know, you've got to just kind of step away from your reality Yeah, I think that's good. So I've got a few Uh, few things to add on top of that, which is so firstly consider deleting yourself You know, what why why do you need to be in your sitcom? Um, because if you're the least one if if that character weren't you Then then you'd have got rhythm by now Uh, so actually you want to have a pretty compelling reason for why this character is in the show, but yeah quite often They are purely reactive or they have a very dull quest and it's their first day and then they get something wrong And then they have to sort of make up for it and then they didn't it's like well, they didn't know so how would they and they see We're not off to a great start.
Um, so firstly consider deleting yourself cancel yourself Um, the alternative is to point the show somewhere else And actually point it at the me counter is the show the me counter And if it isn't well, where else could the show be because ultimately if you don't know but also if you don't know where the show is pointing You also don't know what the show is about and therefore you do you do need to know what the show is about And I think again, there was a script I read a lot that long ago where it was set in a specific place Let's say it was set in a bus depot and it it felt like I could have written the show It didn't feel like it was particularly specific to bus depots I wasn't getting any special access. So I didn't really feel I didn't quite know why the show existed and therefore if I wanted to get rid of the main character who wasn't particularly funny I wouldn't therefore know who I was pointing the show at so um, I think it's just worth thinking Either get rid of the main character or repoint the show and I think you might want to have your voice of reason Um, the one with more self-awareness than others, but actually there's a case for making that a subsidiary character Um, and weirdly just a it's in a weird example blue stone four two would you believe that the female pardre Is the most sane person in the show? Um, you know the one who believes in god, um, and the one, you know, she's a complete fish out of water The show is not really about her. Um, the show is about the team But occasionally we see everything through normal eyes through her Um, and yet, you know, it would be very easy for that to make her so although the episode the first episode she has just arrived Um, we only discover that, you know, a quarter of the way in or something.
They're on operation. They've done something something big has happened Uh, might make chains characters been shot in the head. Um, it's all kicked off and suddenly this new pardre turned up and she's actually smoking hot and nicks Very excited, um and pretends to have some sort of pdsd so that he's showing he has in a depth Uh, when he doesn't he doesn't have any of the depth at all. Um, so So I think those those characters who have a bit of self-awareness are fine a bit like, um, Tim in the office actually the uk version of the office Yeah, he can look to camera as if to say Unbelievable are you getting this?
This is just unbelievable, but he's not but David Brents the show, isn't he? Yeah, yeah, and I think a lot of this comes back to what also we've talked about a lot before Which is the the planning that you put in yeah at the start when you are thinking. Yeah, I'm the person why me why now? Well, I can write this because I uh, you know, I worked in that supermarket and I I worked at that beat cancer and um, I And at this point you want to say I can reel off 30 stories to you now.
That's something that happened That's the point where I would say okay, maybe you have rather than oh, and this person was there and they were really funny and that person was there and over that It's more kind of what what's the um, what what is the you know, what what what is it about this? Situation the sick that lends itself to calm. Yeah, yeah, and so then the other thing to bear in mind is if you go back to an episode I wonder which one it is with Paul Mehiwarcha, which is the episode we do with Paul Mehiwarcha? We did too.
I think we did too and he talks about let me just let that up Paul Mehi He was a very nice man and he was a real mentor to me Episode 105, right? We have since either that one or the wonders before yeah where we talk about hierarchies and And actually what you can do if you do have a character who is who is there to be funny rather than actually have funny characteristics So black ada for example is a wise cracker And he's but the way to make them is to make the most sort of a survivor character Um who was sort of just about you just about getting through and the reason they're only just surviving is because they're in the middle of a hierarchy So they've got someone above them who is unreasonable, but also there's someone beneath them who is equally infuriating in black ada's case Bull drink um and Percy in black ada the second I'm surrounded by idiots. Yeah, exactly you so but not only you surrounded by them You actually got to work for them and manage them and suddenly it's sort of taking on a bit And the problem is again if your sitcom is first day at the office first day at work being shown around you don't have any of that authority Um and maybe therefore just as a shortcut off the top of my head How about your first episode is not your first day at work, but your first year's anniversary at work And you're just thinking blind me if I've been here a year it feels so much longer You know or have I been here a year it feels like no time at all I'm wasting my life or something. It's just like wind it forward a year and just try another way something like that maybe Yeah, yeah But we do read a lot of first day at the office scripts don't we in that competition?
We had quite a few of those didn't we? Yeah, yeah, there's um and and we also get a lot of people who A lot of things I see as well are the people who know each other and have known each other very well But the writer is thinking uh You I know these people better than you do I have to introduce them to and they kind of talk in ways that people don't talk And they say you know, oh you remember that's uh that time that you did xy and z and they don't know Yes, because then that happened and you know the other person don't know but I did that because of it No, no, they didn't you know, this isn't how people speak Yeah, you have to you have to show how people know each other and I think that's probably why so many first episodes are First day at the office. It's so that we can be introduced to these characters without it feeling like It treating too clunky for the audience. Right?
No, hello. This is darlin. They are xyz Um and then they Yeah, we were comedy things grew but they're not xyz Because fundamentally your first 10 pages are going to be spent showing someone around the office and being shown around the office is not a story Is it? I'm just trying to answer that.
You've sent me a challenge there. James. I think how is your first day at the office a story? Yeah, I mean, but again, that's again, that's an event.
That's not that's not a story. That's not a quest Um, you know a quest would be I'm going to show this person around the office if it kills me Um, and it's almost impossible to show them around the office because it's being fumigated You know to me and there's a fire alarm and and and I've just thought of a great scene actually and I don't know where or how but It's actually the person who's showing around it's their last day of the office. Yeah, I find it out You know and they just tell it exactly like it is She thinks she's a horrible person I know that this person and I'm Yeah This is brian. He thinks he's funny.
He isn't and he is useless Um, you know that is felicity. She's lady mark. I would avoid that. I don't know where I'm gonna put it But it's gonna turn us on.
It's funny. Great. So how do you manage to keep? I don't even I don't work here.
I'm just a courier You know what I mean? That's a great reveal for an opening for a cold open. Um, and then you start your show then it's like week one You know, it's you're off to the races at that point, but I think it's an eye, you know full disclosure I wrote a show for BBC Radio Wales called be lucky and it only took me It wasn't until I'd written three episodes and they were broadcast and I was trying to write three more episodes I realized I was struggling to come up with really interesting storylines because the lead character in the show was me Um because and I when I did a personality test for him to help me just get my head around this character And he was exactly the same personality type on the Myers Briggs as I was and actually it's very hard to turn yourself into a monster Um, do you swear by the Myers Briggs, uh, no, not particularly In creating character profiles. I like to read things of creating characters using Myers Briggs Not a single thing got on anyway.
No sure but but what it does is if you if you answer A series of a hundred questions for this character then the algorithm will spit out a long one page Um description of that character And when you read it, you just think, well, I mean, this is spooky. This is like reading a horoscope But then you just go, oh, yeah, I did answer 100 really specific questions Just just kind of uh feeling a very broad detail. It's basically there's some sort of four main personality characteristics in hell There's one one is like the judgmental aspect of your personality and another is about how you how you perceive things That I thought it was years since I've done them. So, um, well, there's there's a new one now There's Enneagrams as well, which is one of nine.
Um, there's there's the Briggs Myers Briggs, which um, puts you on four different scales So I think technically last time I did it. I wasn't I was an INFP whatever that is No introvert. Um, so although I present as an extrovert because I do podcasts and that kind of stuff For me that means I'm a self starter and I don't require input from other people in order to get going. I prefer working on my own By the way, Dave, um, and uh, uh, this whole lockdown thing has suited me just fine Um, and I can't remember what the F and the P stand for but they're kind of but there are other personality types and stuff as well And I think they're all worth looking into um, and do a personality test for your main character And then and if it's the same as you, you've probably got a problem Um, because you're gonna always make them more reasonable and justified and less funny, I'd say Unless you're full of self-loathing and uh Well, the thing is I kind of am and I it's still didn't work.
You know, I believe in the total the poverty of man, you know, I'm a Calvinist So, you know, I already I'm Jewish. Yeah, there you go. I mean, we want a dream team. Um, but um, but um For anyway, Calvinist and the Jew walk into a bar, um, complete, um answers on a postcard But um, but yeah, so we've worked for a fair amount of sick on geekiness today, haven't we Dave?
Actually, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, great. Well, so um, look at when will people know about this scene competition? I guess if you follow us on Facebook, that would be a good thing to do anyway Um, also you can go to our Patreon page because there's stuff up there that you don't have to be a Patreon member for And also um, follow us on Twitter, accentcomgeeks and go to your website as well, Dave Yeah, I'll put it up there all there and also um, BCG pro they'll be an announcement from the British comedy guy When it starts and the headlines and all the all the all the detail that I cannot give you answers to at this moment It won't be as long as 500 words. Yeah, excellent That was episode 148 next time in two weeks we've got Joanna Penn, which I'm really excited about And then we'll we've got a special mystery we'll announce near the time episode for 150 where we get to raise our vats towards the pavilion again Very exciting And the dilemma of doing something in public or in the museum of comedy has been lifted from our shoulders because we couldn't do it even if we wanted to Um, so um, so yeah, so that's something for it too.
Great. Thanks for listening. Thanks, Dave Thank you very much. Speak to you next time.
Bye. Bye