Episode 180 - The Last Ten Pages

Welcome to SitCongeats, I'm Dave Cohen. And I'm James Carey. What episode is it, Dave? This episode is 180!

There was a wonderful Trigger Happy TV sketch about that. Do you remember that? I don't know. Tell me.

Where Dom's jolly stood up and he did some slam poetry counting all the way up numbers from 1. He goes to 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181. It sounded like he'd been building up to this big 180 this whole time and he didn't. That was an odd phase in comedy, wasn't it?

The Trigger Happy TV is. Yes, yes, that was a fantastic show that came and went almost in record time. It burned brightly, didn't it? Yeah, no, that was brilliant.

But yes, episode 180, we have reached triple 20, three triple 20s in dance years. Anyone listening who's not British, you're wondering what on earth we're talking about, but there you go. They have darts in America? That's a good question actually.

Probably call it something like, sock a hoor, what, I don't know. Arrows or something. Yeah, maybe. So what are we going to talk about?

We're going to talk about 180, fittingly as the concluding number in dance, the absolute maximum. We're going to talk about ending, how to end your sitcom. The haptic competition of course is up and running. The window has now opened.

It is as in we are running along the same lines as the advent calendar. So day one window has opened, no chocolate, I'm afraid. But just more work. Yes.

But if for those of you who've already sent your scripts, which I doubt very many of you will have by now, I'm sorry too late. But hey, if you are very, very close to sending your script, this is a good episode for you to listen to, because we're going to talk all about the script getting to the very end of the script. So I'd like to elaborate there. Yeah, the reason I wanted to talk about this was because it's a much overlooked part.

And we spend an awful lot of time on this podcast talking about your first 10 pages. And actually the other day I said, on Twitter, I said, if I did a webinar on anything, what would you like me to do it on? And someone said the first 10 pages. And I just said, that's all we talk about on the podcast.

How on earth could you want a webinar on this? That's everything. And I think I just want to underline the fact that by the end of page 10, the reader has really short formed a very strong opinion of your script. And so therefore, if we're trying to keep your power drive, because you've got an amazing ending, I would say those first 10 pages really are everybody's crucial as we continually bang on that they are.

So just be aware of that. But having a decent ending really does help. And so therefore I think number one really is in the story lining stage is have you started writing your script before you've actually had an ending? If you don't have a plan, then you're going to struggle to land the script in something that's sort of satisfying.

And you might end up, I mean, it's a bit like those jobs where you do things from two different ends and then they don't quite meet in the middle. If you start soaring wood from one end and then the other end and then you end up with a nobody bit or if you start taking a tunnel from one end and the other end and they don't meet precisely. If you've got an ending, if you don't have an ending, or you've got two or three different plots running and they don't quite mesh together in any pleasing way, then there's going to be an awful lot of regret wailing and gnashing of teeth and unpicking of scenes. Or worse, you think stuff it and send it anyway.

And that is a colossal waste of everybody's time. So therefore I would say if you're finding it really hard to come up with a good ending, good. It does take a long time. Spend a long time on it before you start writing the script.

And I was just re-reading a really old book called Writing Comedy by Ronald Wolf. He used to do stuff like the rat trade and on the buses. And there are a few little bits of interviews with him, with other people like Esmer and Labe, and they would say, and this is what John Cleese said as well, and they spent half of their time in writing an episode on the story. So that they've actually got an ending.

And so a key part of your story-lining is, do I actually have an ending? Which kind of resolves things neatly and draws things together and sort of resets where your characters were. So if your sitcom character has £1 million, they probably need to lose it by the end of the episode. If it looks like they're going to be relocated to Zanzibar, they probably need to not be relocated to Zanzibar at the end of the episode.

But there are lots of other things as well to talk about. The preparation that's required, quite often the ending is a problem because it's been a bit of an afterthought. So I've got a script on the go at the moment where I've still re-lined it. I'm pretty sure I know what the sitcom is about and even what the episode is about.

I don't quite have the ending yet. And I'm not going to start writing scene one until I know what the final scene is. Because I just think you're making life too hard for yourself. I think you're giving yourself too much to do.

I would also, if I could just take a further step back from that. I've been, I've just started running a rewriting course. So I'm working with people who've already written their scripts and I'm getting them to look at their outlines and look at their plots. What keeps coming up time and again is that the opening and it's all fine and it's all developing nicely.

And what starts to happen is the plot that they're thinking so much about the plot and the story that kind of runs away a little bit from the characters. And we have to keep coming back to the characters because as John Voorhouse said in that episode that we did and has often quoted Jack Rosenthal, the characters give you all the answers to your questions. I'm knowing who your character is, which is a lot of hard work to set that up. But it's kind of ultimately it's one word.

Usually your character is needy or bossy or self-obsessed or whatever they are. That's the key. This story, if I'm about to go to, you know, if I'm about to be posted to Zanzibar, then if I'm a needy character or if I'm a self-obsessed character or I'm a bossy character, that's three different potential roots. But it's about the character.

So always keep that in mind. And I think that's where people get a bit lost and they get to that point where the plot's not quite working. But I sort of know who my characters are and I sort of know where the story's going. Let's get, maybe if I just start writing it'll work itself out.

Yeah. That's a really good point. And I think, so I was going to come on to say this in a way, you've made the point ahead of me, which is great. But just to specify even a bit more, let's say your character ends up buying a whole load of pumpkins and they've now got a thousand pumpkins in their garden laid out on the front lawn.

What do they do with these pumpkins? Suddenly you could end up with coming up with 15 different ways to dispose of the pumpkins to use them. Oh, they turn them into soup and they start selling the soup. That's all fine.

But what are the pumpkins about? Why have they got a thousand pumpkins? How do they get into that position? It will be an emotional character-based reason.

And once you've resolved that, once they realize that actually it's not about the pumpkins, we don't really care about the pumpkins anymore. I was script editing a script for something the other day and there was this really nice big step piece scene involving an animal. Let's say it was a guinea pig. It wasn't, but let's say it was.

Suddenly everything's about the guinea pig and there's eight pages of guinea pig wrap up at the end. And it's like the only reason that this character has a guinea pig is because of a personal quest that they have to please somebody in a particular way. So I think now we're carried away with the guinea pig and the guinea pig business and we don't care about the guinea pig. We don't care about the pumpkins.

We care about the character. And therefore what happens when you do really sit down and think about your plot and why your character has embarked on this insane quest is you need to know what's it really about. And once you know what it's really about, you can resolve it and then suddenly you've just got a bunch of free pumpkin jokes at the end. Because the audience don't need to have every single pumpkin accounted for so that we've got a clear lawn at the beginning of the next episode.

So I think although a sitcom does return to the norm and we do go back, everything does reset. We don't need to see it all go back and reset at the end of the episode. We sort of know that he's going to have the pumpkins gone by next week and that's fine. So you can play with the convention, but the key thing is if this is about a vendetta with the next door neighbour, that's fine.

They suddenly resolve their differences. The pumpkins no longer matter. If it's about a rivalry with a sibling. If it's about proving that they know how to do free enterprise.

Then it's that it's not really about the thing. And the last third can often just get longer and longer and really onto page 3540. Who's going to do the best Halloween display? Yeah.

One upmanship on a neighbour. Yeah, yeah. And suddenly we don't, you know, once we've realised that they have to win the pumpkin display because of their sister who died when they were eight. And suddenly your character realises whatever happens I mustn't win the Halloween competition.

And so just find a neat way of them doing that. And then who cares about the pumpkins? I've just thought actually that's a really interesting exercise that you could do. Think of a very, very strong character.

Any character. High as in bucket. You know, why is high as in bucket got 100 pumpkins? Well, you know, because there's going to be a very important Halloween event or something or a harvest event at the church or something.

She wants to make people to know that she's the most generous, wealthiest person. You know, why is Captain Mannering got 100 pumpkins? So whatever it is, whatever that story is, it's about, you come back to the character. Just keep coming back to that character.

Just the thing that I, before I could guess it because it's sort of kind of close, I was thinking about that. The question that I often get asked, I'm sure you do as well, James, is, you know, what is the point at which, when does the moment come where you think I have outlined as much as I can possibly do? If I hold off anymore, I'm going to burst or I'm getting parentlessly close to the deadline. What is the point at which I can no longer decide.

And there's not a right answer to that, I think. Yeah. I mean, I could just say it's the point comes after you've written 1,284 words on your own. You're out like, but obviously, I think the answer that I normally give is if you think you're at that point, then have another, you know, give yourself one more.

Yeah. Go through it one more time and, you know, add some things and change some things and then do that. I don't know if you've got any kind of further about that. Yeah.

I think that's a good idea. Just give it one more look. Have just have a look and be honest with yourself. Is there one scene where you don't really, you're not looking forward to writing it?

I mean, I know lots of writers don't look forward to writing anything. And coming up with it is one thing, but actually writing it is painful and others actually quite enjoy the writing process. But it's just worth thinking, just be honest with yourself, because if you're halfway through scene 7, do you actually know what scene 7 is doing? Are you excited about writing?

Because if you're not, it's easy to fix it now, because it might mean changing scenes 5 and 6 and scene 8. Whereas, as I say, if you've already stitched your way up to scene 7, then there's going to be a lot of unpicking to do. Sorry, I live in a house of two daughters and a wife and between them, they do an awful lot of cross stitch and crochet and all that kind of stuff. And I've seen them unravel, unravel, entire panels of blankets because they made stitch early on that they're not happy with.

Yeah. My two sons are both very expert knitters. Oh, okay. I am smashing the stereotypes there.

Yeah, absolutely. But knitting is not a crochet, by the way, just for the benefits of those who do know the difference. It's rugby union and rugby league. It's a pro-life world.

It looks like they're the same, aren't they? Yeah. And just to pick up on a point that you made there as well, we talked about endings in other forms as well. We did the competition last year, for instance, where you had to write a scene.

And the point about the scene writing competition wasn't just the scene itself, but what was really important, what separated the better entries from the lesser ones, was you had to put what has just happened, what, and then the scene happens, and then what's going to happen. And so when you're looking at that outline and you look at the end of your scene, end of scene seven, and the start of scene eight, we want, unless it's like a B plot that's taking it away. But we want, if you're a plot, stops at the end of scene seven and then there's another A plot happening as you know, we want the thing that stops at the end of scene seven to lead into, to be a scene eight is a direct consequence of what has just happened at the end of scene seven. And that's, so talking about endings is not just about the end of writing sitcom.

It's making sure that the ending that you have in the scene within the outline is going to take you, propel you into the next scene. And that's another thing about what you just said there about, you know, no writer likes writing, but you can play tricks on yourself. And if you know you come to the end of the day and you've set up what you're going to write tomorrow, you know, by the time you come back tomorrow to write it, you'll think, I'm moving on now because I already know what's been put in place to make the next scene begin. And then that's, you have to keep repeating the process seen by scene by scene.

Yeah. Yeah. Very much one scene tips into the next. And so we should, we should know.

And therefore in a way, you really should have an ending before you start writing because if you plotted it at all, then everything leads to the next thing. I think the other couple of bits really is worth saying about the last 10 pages. I think that's what we're talking about isn't it? Maybe that's the name of the episode.

Yeah. So it could be confusingly called, it's not about the pumpkins. But maybe it should be called your last 10 pages, how to end your sitcom. I think my experience again, admittedly, I've written fairly mainstream stuff like Miranda and, although, you know, Blue Stone was not particularly mainstream.

But, you know, but my observation is in the last 10 minutes, the last 10 pages, you can compress things probably more than you think you can get away with a bit more cartoonishness. And there's kind of a, there are a couple of things that can happen, especially after you've resolved everything. You can have one or two bits that are almost physically impossible or couldn't technically happen. And the audience don't care.

If it's funny, you're all right. If it's wildly implores, it would never happen. You can take it out. But once you've earned that magic, as it were, you can do a bit of magic at the end.

So I think what I'm meaning to say is also, things can collide in a way that's really compressing time. And the audience understand what the ending of a sitcom is like. So, you know, you can, it's better if you've really earned it. And obviously the great masters of this would be Stephen Moffitt with Stuff Like Coupling.

But also David Renwick for One Foot in the Grave. They're really good at just sort of ceding everything and timing everything. So the whole thing plays out like clockwork. And he thought it was happening at One Rhythm.

And suddenly there's another rhythm in the background. And Victor Meljory was buried up to his neck in sand or soil or something or whatever it is. So I think in those last 10 pages, you can move quite fast. And the audience will go with you on that.

Graeme Linahan, of course, was also an ex-sponal event. I think that I often get when I read sitcoms, a lot of people send the sitcoms that sort of reaches that point. That magic moment, that magic ending of the problem being solved. And then there's another five pages of dialogue.

And you know, it's just, you really are working to get to a point of the audience. It's so rare that you see it because it's really, really hard to do. But when you see a One Foot in the Grave episode and you get that moment, literally 30 seconds before the end of the episode, and it's just a big, you know, oh my God, how did he do that? And that is just so funny.

That is just brilliant. I remember when we had Lisa Evans on the show and she was talking about when she was directing Father Ted. And this scene, this idea they had of the scene where they're just sort of trying to correct a little dent in the car. And then, you know, at the end of it, it's cut to two hours later and that car is completely covered in miniature dents.

And she said, never quite worked. Never quite got that. But you can see how they tried to get to that point. And I watched the clip after she said it.

And she was right. It was funny and it got a big laugh. But it didn't get that kind of, oh my God, you know, the equivalent one, Father Ted, the cues being a racist at the very last spot looks like him doing a Nazi salute with a hunch. And the build up to that is just, I think, a beauty really.

Here, a racist no father. Yeah, yeah, no, it's a funny, funny episode. The other thing I was going to say was on the last 10 pages is there should be no new elements, no new characters, no new plots. You've had 20 pages to get all the pieces on the board and move them around.

And then in the end game, as it were, you don't really want to surprise your audience with new information and new things. If somebody arrives on page 20, I would say that's suboptimal, but maybe it's okay. But they need to have been mentioned on page three and page 12 or whatever, page five and page. So they should, their arrival shouldn't have been, you know, ideally their arrival should have, we should have seen it coming, but the character for whatever reason, a character reason, refused to believe that this person was coming, even though we know that they are or something like that.

So I think it just feels like, and those last 10 pages, you are playing out. It's like, it's like you've got a three part bark fugue where you've got the first part of the introduce, the theme, the second part where there are variations and the third part, it's all this kind of great big harmonization of everything. And it kind of takes on the life of its own, but there's nothing new about it. So I would say that would be another warning sign that your last 10 pages, probably need another look, is that you've suddenly revealed it's someone's birthday to get you out of a plot problem.

And the reader or the viewer will think, oh, that's a shame, that doesn't feel right. And they might not be able to explain why it feels right. In a way, I'm not even sure I can explain why those are the rules, but I think those are the rules, aren't they, Dave? Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.

I really like that comparison with Bach piece. I often think of music pieces are the very, you know, somebody who's spent 10 years writing 300 or so songs. You know, I've got very much got into the rhythm of the song was the equivalent of the three act story. And, you know, one is the inciting incident, which is the, well, the act one is the first person, then the inciting incident is the chorus and then the complications play out.

So this kind of structural way of looking at sitcom is useful, I think. You know, it's only 30 minutes off. You've only got 30 minutes. You know, you can't write a 17 minute sitcom.

You know, you can't write a 40 minutes. One thing I do that helps work for me, and this is different from people to have different methods. I tend to, when I'm outlining, I tend to focus on the point three quarter of the way in on the script. I try and imagine a moment where everything is lost, everything could go wrong.

And people aren't necessarily that brave when they get to that. It's like, oh, I'm going to be late to see the film or something. But, you know, you've got to be late to see the film where, you know, the person that you love who has set up a mario. He's in the film.

Or, you know, they're going to turn up and you're not there and they're going to finish with you. You know, you kind of really have to build it. You have to get to it. It's not enough just to go, oh, that's a bad thing that's happening.

You're going to go, yeah, but make it worse. You know, your job is to make things as hard as possible for your characters. And then, so if you can at least get to that point, that kind of massively hard point where everything is lost, then I think going back to the very first thing you were saying about, you need to know what your ending is. That sort of gives you a little bit of leeway because you know that the answer is going to be something to do with their character.

You might not know exactly how it's going to end, but you know that you've got to get from the point where they're about to split up. That's the end of the tick-home. Or in five minutes time, they will be back together again. And no one will have learned anything.

So you've at least got a root if you don't necessarily have the absolute mechanical specifics there. That's really good. I was speaking there as well. It brought to mind like making it worse, making it finale worse.

Not only making it harder, but making the most of it. The script I mentioned earlier about this pet, let's say... Listen to guinea pig. There was quite a funny scene about guinea pig being stolen and some people were going off to steal this thing.

And this was sort of page 26 to 28 of 40. And it felt like the advice was essentially the bit where they tried to steal the thing is really funny. And it could be a lot funnier and longer. And make the most of it.

You've got them into the situation where they have to do this. They have to work together. Real keystone cops here trying to work together to do this thing. So for heaven's sake, make the most of it.

Because it's really funny. You've earned it. And then all this chat about it afterwards. We really don't care about that.

And so anyway, we went off and produced a really funny six page version of where all of the characters, they've all got their own plan and they're playing their own part in this pet heist. And then it kind of unravels in a particular way which is sort of both in surprising but retrospectively obvious, which is in a way what I often say most of it come endings are. But again, just remembering it's not about the guinea pig. But I think that just reminded me and I think maybe I've said this a few times on this podcast.

But when we talk about Paul Maichu Archer, one of the things that he said to me was what Richard Curtis said to him. So this is Curtis talking is the great secret of writing a sitcom. You know the funny bit you've got. Make that longer.

And you know the bit that's not very funny. Make that shorter. And in a way you just think, well, I'll be for heaven's sake. It can't possibly be that.

No, no, it is that. Try that. So if you've got a funny set piece seen at the end, make the most of it. Really amped it up, turn it up, make it even worse.

And if you've got scenes on the way there that feel a bit boring and set up, well, cut them down or cut them completely and see if you missed them, you probably won't miss one of them. You could possibly explain that scene retrospectively with one line of dialogue and you've just saved yourself two and a half not very funny pages. So I really would. And it is very hard.

So we've talked about how do you know your script is ready to be written based on your outline fundamentally, you don't. And in the writing of it is going to start to wiggle around and get longer and shorter in different places. So be open to that. But also just bear in mind that the funny bits might seem even funnier when you've actually written them out and other bits you thought it would be absolutely goal turn out not to be.

That's fine. But you do have to convince yourself of each stage of the process before you move on to the next one. But yeah. Yeah, if I can add to the sort of the magic of Richard Curtis, which is kind of how do you do that?

How do you be Richard Curtis? Yeah, that's a similar thing that I remember from the very early days of the comedy saw players when Paul Merton before he was very well known. He was there and he contributed very little to the actual, you know, we all sit there working our arses off trying to pretend to be in and whatever the audience has suggested and in the pet shop and turning up with the stolen guinea pig or whatever the improv scene was and Paul would just kind of stand at the back and not join in. And there would be a point where he would just step forward, say the funniest thing possible on the basis of what had just happened.

And that was it. That was the end of the scene. Nothing else mattered. All the kind of stuff we worked hard to try to create the kind of characters we tried to build or whatever Paul just stepped in, says the funniest thing curtain comes down.

That's the end of that sketch. Yeah. You know, that's how it does happen sometime, but you have to kind of, we're not Paul, we're not Richard Curtis. So you have to kind of, you have to do the hard work beforehand.

You have to know those characters so well, you're saying, oh, well, actually the character is going to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And once you've established that plot point, that joke, that moment that crystallizes it all encapsulates it, the grim boring details really don't matter. And this really obvious place to find this is in all the murder mysteries that you watch that I watch and some of which I've written, it turns out. You, I mean, we know in our hearts that a murders don't happen that frequently and b, they don't happen in that way.

It's usually the spouse and c, when they're arrested and they're taken away, quite often, they're not prosecuted. So quite often there's a problem with the trial and they get off and all that kind of stuff. There's a whole load of stuff that happens when after the suspect who's been properly identified has their head, you know, put on, you know, the police and puts their hand on the head and puts them into the car. And that just about wraps it up for this week.

There's a whole load of admin and taking of statements and prosecute, it's like, no one cares, they've solved the case. I dare you to write that episode of Shakespeare and Hathaway where somebody dies and we know in the first five minutes who it is and they get arrested and there's been the whole of the rest of the next hour dealing with admin and clever lawyers who most of the twists talk their way out of it. Trying to get the prosecution service even to prosecute the charges and yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's true. But people, it's an artifice, but in a way, if it's based on a truth, if it's based on an observation, if it's based on a world characters that we like that we can relate to in some way we'd have to like to necessarily but we relate to them.

Then the details don't really matter as much in those last 10 pages as you think they do. So I would just advise you to be quick compressed, reckless, you're tying together the threads that you've been weaving furiously for 20 pages. And, you know, have a plan to get into it. I've got one more potential hack on this, but Dave, have you got any others on this?

The only other thing that I would mention, which maybe quite I've talked a lot about this year, it's become one of my kind of mantras of the year really, which is about finishing. When you, the fact that I do see this now in courses that I run on things that I get a lot of people who get a long way and they kind of reach a point three quarters away in where they sort of, I can't resolve this and actually better that I just give up and don't send it, which is your advice if you're not happy with what you've got. But actually the key to having that finishing gene isn't necessarily to being the best comedy writer, but it is about the massive amount of preparation, the more preparation that you can put into that outline, the more that you know before you start writing the script, I'd say the better your chances of actually being the one who does get to that finishing line. Yeah, finishing is really important and it's not even necessarily about talent, it is a decision to finish.

And if you know that you're struggling to finish, when you're starting and middling, work out a way in which you know how to finish. So I think you need to kind of factor that in. And if you decide not to finish it and send it, that's fine. No one's asked you to write a sitcom script, you're not being paid for it most of the time.

But if you keep doing that, if there's something you really want to do and you just couldn't bear finishing it, I think that's a shame. So I really would advise that you do try and finish it and just remember, I mean I know there's a whole sunk cost fallacy and I've wasted all this time on it. It's no good and because they weren't spending longer on it. Well, okay, there's a case for that.

But I think finishing is really important. And you know Woody Allen says 80% of success is showing up. That's true. I think 80% of success in sitcom writing maybe is finishing is showing up with a finished script.

And well, it could be better. Yeah, of course it could be better. Virtually everything could be better. There are one or two episodes of Modern Family and Yes Prime Minister that probably couldn't be better.

But as a general rule, it could be better. But eventually every script runs out of time and you shoot it. And that's how it's going to be. But finish, I think, is really important.

And then the last bit of it's a bit of a hack really. What I learned on Miranda is what I call a plot seesaw, which is essentially it may feel like you finished, but it's not satisfying or you're in its only page 17. It's only page 21. Maybe that's not the ending.

So it may be that your character has been getting the thing that they're striving for rather than failing and discovering that that thing is not what they thought it was. It may be that they've won the Halloween pumpkin competition and now they're wishing they hadn't. And because it's about a relationship and a personal quest and a character and not a competition, you can carry that over into the second half of the episode where you can pay that off in a surprising way. The obvious example of Miranda is where I was going to say they steal the pumpkin eating guinea pig.

That's right. In Miranda, she's appalled not to be a godmother to two friends of her, whom she can't stand. And by half of the episode, they've asked her and now having been asked to do it, which would normally have taken a whole episode. She realized that she needs to get out of it.

And so she spends the second half of the episode trying to undo the thing that she's been trying to do. So that's kind of another way to go if it turns out that your episode is much shorter than you thought it was. Maybe your ending isn't an ending. Maybe it's a midpoint.

And actually your character needs to undo the other undo what they've done. That's possible out of the several thousand people listen to this podcast. They really do. That might be the solution for eight of you.

You know, that maybe you need a Cecil rather than an ending. So that would be my hack on that. But I think we've probably done that to death. This ending episode should probably be ended.

For you for now. Yeah. So tell us about your wares Dave. Where can we find more of Dave Cohen?

Well, you can find me Dave Cohen dot org dot UK. And of course you can also sign up for my emails that are starting very soon about looking forward to 2022 and how to make the most of next year as a comedy writer. And so human being really I suppose but concentrate on the comedy writing aspects of that. So that's funny up zero to gmail.com.

And I'll sign you up for those emails. Great. Funny up to gmail.com. If you want to get a script finished, follow me on Twitter at sitcom geek.

And I've got first year course called Supercharge Your sitcom, which is a short five video course about your voice, your plot, your character, and having a plan to get the episode written. There's some pre bonus videos as well and some free audio versions of those two from a different session when I've done those. And there's another thing coming out about how to polish up your final sitcom. So but look on Twitter for that.

We'll go to sitcom geek.lockspot.com. And there's more on essentially polishing essentially. I've got 14 problems with your script that I know might be a problem without even having read it, having read hundreds of scripts and written, you know, 100 plus scripts. These are common to many.

So hopefully that will be useful resource for you to consider getting hold off. So that's episode 180. Yeah. Just one last thing that I will say before we go to the very end is I really recommend that you if you are entering the hat trick competition.

I do listen to previous episodes, I think particularly episode 173, where we talk about relationships between characters. Definitely something that we could definitely every script I've read this year needs people to think about how characters relates to each other and how that relates to the world that they're in. And I think that's a really useful episode for people to tune into. Yeah, that's a good one.

There's another one also about various pitfalls of your situations. But not that you shouldn't set your sitcom in this place, but you know, what are the common problems that people do. Anyway, 179 episodes for you to catch up on. This is episode 180.

Thanks, Dave. Thank you very much, James. And we'll see you next time. Good bye.

Bye bye.