Hello and welcome to SickCon, Geeks, I'm James Carey. And I'm Dave Cohen. This is episode 204. And in a very special occasion, I happen to be in London.
We're actually in the same room. I know, it's slightly weird. I'm kind of looking across and seeing you, James, and actually seeing you with a microphone. And it's like, I don't understand.
You're not in a kind of flat screen. And that's not your books behind you. Exactly. It's your books behind me.
I did a little check, actually. And so this is episode 204. And I look back. And in fact, the last live recording we did was episode 136, which was the Chortle Book Conference.
And that was two and a half nearly three years ago. And then it was all from that point on. It was all, I just remember being upstairs, the Wi-Fi going down, all that stuff. They're all fun days of early COVID.
And now here we are in the same room. Yes. And actually, the beauty of the Zoom option, though, is the fact that you've got a clean audio track on each and it makes it a double to edit. So although it's lovely to be with you, this will probably be slightly harder to edit.
Listeners are thinking what they edit this a little bit. But here we go. So this is episode 204. And today we are talking about being a complete comedy writer.
Dave, in 2018, wrote a book with that title about helping you break into comedy writing. But there is a new and improved version that's coming out. And so why don't you tell us what the aim of the new book is? And then what's wrong with the old one?
OK. Yeah, I'm glad you asked me that. And it's because of what an honor it is to be a guest on your show, James. Thank you very much.
Yeah, so the book in 2018 was, I guess, a kind of accumulation of all knowledge and thinking about everything that I've been doing, everything we've been doing with the podcast and the kind of teaching and stuff that we've both done. And I thought there's loads of stuff here. And everything is kind of how it was when I started teaching 10, 15 years before that. And so let's just get all the information down in one place.
So it's a kind of collection of how to write comedy, how to get on, how to write topical comedy, all the ways of getting into comedy, plus a few kind of anecdotal stories thrown in there. Because I like a bit of a waffle about the old days. You've got some good stories as well. And you've done some pretty amazing things.
And you've been in the early days of the comedy store and all that kind of stuff. Well, it's funny you shouldn't mention that, James. Yes, that's true. And in fact, a lot of that stuff has sort of found its way into the novel writing, which regular listeners will know, has become a kind of thing that I've started trying to do over the last two or three years.
And a lot of it is kind of set around that period. So I actually thought, ah, fictional day you can have that stuff. But meanwhile, reading books over the last three or four years, how to books in all sorts of areas, it seems to me the books that are best in the non-fiction world are the ones that kind of pair things down. And they give you, there's not full of stuff.
They've just got an angle and it's a great angle. And you can write a reasonably long book that explains one thing. And it feels really what I needed to do was go back to that book and change it, but make it more absolutely focused. And the thing, I suppose the main thing that's changed is in the first book, I mean four or five years ago, well, seven years ago when we started doing these podcasts, the emphasis was, yes, you can make a living at comedy writing, you need to do this, this, this and this.
A lot of those things have kind of gone by the wayside now. But I think it's still, the side issue was, this is how to become a better writer. Whereas now, so now the book is much more, this is how to become a better writer, because that's really the main way if you want to make a living at comedy writing or if you just want to enjoy comedy writing. That's what this book is about, how to make you a better comedy writer.
In a way, that's emblematic of our time, you know, seven years on for my first podcast. And if you want more reminiscences on the last seven years, go back to episode number 200, where we sort of look back at what's changed and what's stayed the same in the last seven years. But the idea that something is pared down and people want stuff and they don't really want all the stuff around it. I'm just reminded of going back to university in my brain and just thinking, when you had to write an essay on something, the last thing you wanted was a book on it.
What you wanted was a chapter in a book. You know, if you have to write an essay about the 30 years war or the French wars of succession, I don't want to read a book on the French wars of succession, that's 300 pages long. I would like to read a chapter that's about 18 pages long, that gives me slightly more information than I need that I can then reproduce in a book. So I think that focus and the attention economy we live in now is really, I think we know what it is now and that you have to, you just can't waste people's time.
And so I think maybe in the early days, you feel like you can put it all in for a half decent price and then you've got everything. I think people are now realizing that the most expensive, fungible, non-fungible thing is their time and therefore they don't want something that's really long. Even if it's kind of entertaining, which obviously the book is, it's fantastic, I did the first edition, they sort of go, this is all very well, but the BBC Writeons Room window closes in a month or two. I really need to sharpen up a skill, giving the information now.
So that's what you've been doing. That's effectively it. And I think it's, it can sound the way that you sort of just described it, that can sound a bit negative, but we've got short attention spans and we need information, we need it now and that's, you know, we become much more demanding. But I think as creators, it's, it's be holding to us to even, to, it behooves us, it behooves us, it behooves us, one of those.
We need to, to keep from carry podcasts. We end up using the word behooves quite a lot. Okay. Yeah.
So if you go over to that one. Right. Okay. But we are beholden.
We are beholden. We are beholden. The bit that's following is that, I think we are beholden to be more succinct. We've just spent about a minute to get that.
To get that beholden behooves. Yeah. But actually I find as well, as a writer, I'd like to think that I've become a better writer, partly through doing all this research and stuff. But I think it's also about getting, getting to the point quicker and being able to communicate in a clear, simple way.
Things that are potentially quite complicated. And, you know, we're, what are we, episode 204, we've managed to, we've managed to, to do 204 episodes. And we're still, I don't think we've still quite yet cracked how to write the perfect script, really. Yeah, that's right.
But resonates with me what you're saying about that's succinctness as well though. Because I write a weekly sub stack article that's about, you know, church and faith and culture and all that kind of stuff. And one of the reasons I do it is so that I exercise that muscle so that I'm writing and condensing stuff into about eight, nine hundred words. Quite often what happens is I start writing the article, I write the introduction, realise the introduction is a separate point in its own right.
And then I basically kick my intended article over to the following week because I've got one point now. I don't want to write more than a thousand words. Ideally I'm 800 words. And so on a weekly basis, I'm just trying to be a bit more precise in what I'm writing and that's just a really good skill.
Which is presumably, you know, some of the, you know, part five of your book rewriting this presumably comes into that. But why don't you talk about part one, for example? Yeah, it's some, it's a fairly linear journey really. And there's not, I'm not trying to be too complicated or anything, I'm just trying to get from here to there.
In as clear and simple way as possible. Bearing in mind that inevitably there's like, you know, things that you think about at one point may well influence, not influence that moment, but you might have to put them away later, whatever. But I do try and start with the blank sheet of paper and the one am I going to write? And it's a, so again, this is the kind of stuff that we've talked a lot about.
We start talking about things like, you know, what's what's what's, what's your script going to be about? What's really about the question we come to a lot? And in fact, we dealt with in the quite recent podcast about, you know, why me? What is a common, what is a voice?
When you're distinct to voice and kind of exploring those things and how do you get ideas before you even write a word? So then you get into the kind of, the meat I suppose of your, whatever it is you want to write. So part two is about character and part three is about stories. And again, bearing in mind the thing that we've talked about is a lot, character is story and story is character, but it sort of helps to separate them out so that you can then bring them together.
And that's part four is writing. And that's the actual craft and writing things like dialogue and coming up with jokes and, you know, the way to, just the approach to the actual script. And then as you say, part five is rewriting, which doesn't really feature much in a lot of these. You know, there are so many books about how to write the screenplay, how to write your novel, how to write this and this, but there's hardly anything at all out there about how to rewrite.
And, you know, it's something that we probably, we spend a bit of time talking about it and we could probably do some more. And then part six is just talking about the various options that are available now, if you want to be a writer, if you want to write comedy, how you can break into the world of comedy, but no promises of making a living anymore, I think. But just, you know, having a professional approach, I suppose, to comedy. Yeah, comedy writing.
Well, that is the, that's the pitch, that's part one to six. Let's just go back to parts two and three character and story and story and character. I think it is helpful to separate the map, but I'm, I was in, I had a meeting today with a production company and it was just howlingly obvious how important story was. And it was a little bit frustrating to me because I understood that, but in my head, I was sort of pitching a sitcom idea and it was clear to me that they could only really see the idea in terms of story.
And then when I pitched them a story idea that was sort of a road trip, but it was a TV series. They then said, isn't that, that sounds like a movie to me? I was like, okay. So it feels like we're still feeling our way a lot on that, but it feels like the story is, is really important, but actually the story is harder to get right than one might think and it isn't just a and then, and then this other thing happens and this other thing happens.
The character and the story are inextricably linked. And I think when we started out, we were talking a lot about character and we, I think we observed this on episode 200, but now the storytelling aspect of it is really important. And that's what we're finding in scripts tends to be the thing that people are really struggling to get right. Yeah.
And I know we talked about this in episode 200, you know, what's the biggest change that we've noticed? And I think we both agree that coming up with really good stories is problematic. I think possibly where you and I have not really a big difference, but probably just a slightly different approach to it. My feeling, I mean, I tend to, I get a sense with you and I know I've been in a room with you and said, let's come up with some story ideas and I'm just kind of picking up my pen in the time that I picked up my pen, you've reeled off 10 story ideas.
That's your brain, your brain is story, story, story, story. And mine is kind of character, character, character. So for me, it's kind of the story, yes, it's true. The stories aren't working.
And for me, one of the main reasons stories aren't working is because the characters have not been thought through. And usually when a story's not working, it's because we're trying to crowbar something into it than that character would never do. And so it comes back to it. But at the stage that you're creating the two, you kind of, you can't separate them out.
It's great to be able to come up with stories when you're creating your character, because those stories then sort of will dictate your character. Well, you know, and I think, and again, you mentioned this in the episode about finding a voice. He can take a subject like food or something. And this character's approach to food is, I'm gonna go and work at a food bank.
And this other character says, oh, I love restaurants, me. So you can see how you've already got two, I love new flavors. Yeah. And that's someone who's interested in experience.
But you can see how that's character as well. But you've started at the story point and your characters come up. I will probably start at, you know, this character thinks this. So that's gonna take them there.
And that's gonna give them a relationship with this person. So we can end up at the same place. I think that's right. It's two sides of the same coin.
And the way I think what I'm increasingly doing is using stories to find out who your characters are, I think. So, you know, I've, I was listening to a podcast on the way here. That you, in fact, I was listening to a Joanna Pence podcast, the creative pen. And she is an independent author, extremely prolific, incredibly well motivated and all that kind of stuff.
And I was listening to her. And she says that she still writes by exploring and doing. So she's more an exploratory writer rather than planet, planet, planet, planet, right. And I don't know if that's, you know, I've only heard one or two of her episodes recently.
So you might have changed. But, and some people discover the story, we'll discover the character through writing. And if that's what you have to do, then do that, that's fine. But what I tend to think of is like, how would my character react in this situation or that situation?
How would they go about this? What are they trying to achieve in that situation? And that's, and that speaks all into who they are. And it may be that the character surprises me in the situation.
And I think all that's an interesting character. I'd much rather he was, or she was this character rather than the character I originally had. Or sometimes you discover that this character is actually predictable in a bad way. And so I guess I'm auditioning the characters with story before choosing the best version of them.
Whereas you're probably spending more time with the character beforehand before sending them out into the world to have adventures and scrapes. Yeah, I think also I'm, and I'm not sitting there creating backstory. No, it's not. I'm not actually writing this stuff down.
But I am kind of saying, I suppose I'm sort of watching and watching my show in my head. Right. And I'm wondering that something is happening to the character or the character is, or trying to get the character to be proactive, to make them make something happen. And I think Joanna Penson's interesting, because she says there are two types of writers.
There is a pancer, as in you write by the seat of your pants. Yes. And the planner. And you're a pancer or a planner.
And I sort of think, well, I'm a bit of both, really. And I think you need to be a bit of both. I think with anything that you prepare, it's always good to plan it quite a lot. But then when it's a creative thing, there's a point at which you go, okay, that's as much planning as I should be doing at this point.
Now I'm just going to jump in. And I think that's the kind of people, when I read scripts from people, when I read treatments from people, and they've given me lots of interesting detail about the character and this happened to him when he was this and that. And I'd say, actually, you've got kind of a couple of contradictory things there with that character. You know, if you're writing a sitcom and you've got a character who's in a like a 25 minute script, you haven't got much space to do anything more than them have a big thing that is their flaw.
And you've got kind of two or three things going here. And I'll say, you know, concentrate on that one and see where come up with the story for that flaw. And people often go, well, you know, it's really important to me that when they were 12, this thing happened to them. And that's a kind of important aspect of their personality.
I sort of think, well, you know, you've got to cut the way that stuff. You've got to get in there by the social parents. I'm always wanted to say, no, you're not allowed. Okay, I want to be, you know, it's Jerry Seinfeld.
So I'm going to be the Lou Gossett Jr. character, the officer and gentleman who says, stop that, stop that now. You are not allowed to use that now. Go off and you write that and don't mention this backstory to me ever again, okay?
Yeah, but you know, we're all nice and kind. Yeah, I understand what you're saying here, but this is my opinion and you're welcome to disagree with it. Yeah, and I think that resonates with me in terms of, especially when I hear people talk about their ideas, you know, they start talking about episode four way too quickly and planning the whole series. And it's like they become beguiled by the story, but it's like if the one page summary of the characters in the overall story or plot or situation isn't interesting or clear, there is no episode four.
I want to say, you know, so when they were 12, this happened to them and I want to reveal that in episode four. It's like, okay, fine, don't cross that out. But you really need to get back to what is your idea, who your character is, what are they trying to do? So it's easy to sort of or get into world building.
That's the other one, isn't it? We really fall in love with the world. And it's like, that's a world and we like being in that world, but it's not a story and it's not a character. There are lots of ways that you can answer me back and say, yes, but I've just watched two series of American Shaker, Russian doll, which as far as I could tell, is sort of like a bit like life on Mars, but set in New York.
And it gets really confusing and complicated, but the characters are interesting. And we stuck with it and watched it the whole two series, even as we were getting to the end of series two thinking, the whole kind of science fiction aspect is so unwieldy and this is completely collapsing. It's the same way. It does kind of, and we just think, well, we know these two people are gonna get together at the end here, but how?
And well, they're gonna go through these weird journeys to get there and something. I want to get back to the essence of their character, but it's an interesting show to watch and it's likable. And funny enough, I was talking to Dan Swarrit, who's been kind of helping me with getting all the chapters in the right order of things and pointing out the massive number of mistakes in the current draft that I have of the book. But he, there was a chapter that I had about secondary characters and how Harry Potter is really good at that.
And we just sort of think about Harry Potter and the classic mistake that you and I often talk about when we read a script, which is all the secondary characters is really interesting, but the lead character isn't interesting at all. I was sort of thinking, yeah, Harry Potter doesn't have any comedic floor or anything. All the ones around, all the characters around him. They've all got all, like I'm saying, Ron is sort of fish out of water, working class kid.
The Hermione is, you know, head girl, character. That's top of the class, Keene. Snape is sort of badby who's a good E. And so you've got all these, and Harry Potter is just, oh yeah, he does magic.
And so we've basically been saying to people, no, you don't want to write like J.K. Rowling. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're never gonna have any success writing it.
So there are always people, you know, in as much as there are rules, you know, there are always ways of breaking it. And it's not so much a question of breaking of them, is that if you excel at a few other things, then the rules that you break and all your weaknesses don't matter so much. So her world building is absolutely platinum, great top of the class. You know, there's no like Kings Cross platform, you know, nine and a three, is it nine and a three quarter?
Nine and a three quarter, yeah, yeah. I'm not a pothead. But that link between that world and our world and all of the, you know, like is there a Horcrux? Is that a thing?
A Horcrux? I can't remember. It's a rock-tong. It's all magic items and stuff like that.
Everything has exactly the right name. And it feels like everything in that world has always existed. So she's got the perfect blend of sort of Latin Greek terms for things. It feels like sort of a boarding school, but not a weird atonian one, but a magic.
You know, the tones brilliant, the world's brilliant. The story is good. But as you say, Harry is, well, he's an every man in that sense. And there are plenty of every man's, you know, where, you know, it goes back because of the Marcie Feldman thing, it's like everything's either, you know, a madman in a sane world or a sane person in a mad world.
In a way, Harry's our hero, he's our eyes and ears in this world. And everything slightly goes on around him. And everybody else is more interesting and funnier than him. So I was thinking about, because also there's a, I think, as well, another massive, massive franchise, I suppose, that I sort of think about in a slightly similar way.
It's hitchhiker's guide to galaxy. They both have these things. They both have these sort of opening five, ten minutes set in this sort of very ordinary English suburban world. And then they go off.
And it's almost like that opening thing and the whole, you know, the Kings Cross platform, 9-3-quarters, the whole, we go through that into the magic world and the same way we go from, oh, your planet's being, you know, we've got to get rid of your planet, you know, because of the intergalactic. And planning, yeah, it's been up in the mambital juice for 18-like years now or whatever it is. And those two absolute perfect beginnings, almost everything that sort of comes after that, is ever so slightly not quite as fantastic as that's absolutely fantastic, but that's, I don't grow up. No, not really, because in a way, what we're doing is we're trying to work out, I mean, there are reasons why we like certain things and we do try to write things like things that we like, especially in terms of tone.
But going back, hitchhiker's, you know, Arthur Dent's not a terribly interesting character. He's sort of, he's a bit small-minded and grumpy. Yeah, he's not, he's a bit of a, he is a kind of classic sitcom character, which is fine. Yeah, but he's also a sane man in a mad world.
He's like, he's sort of, he's saying what we're thinking quite a lot and everybody else around him is sort of, you know, explaining stuff, but not terribly interested in his wellbeing, you know what I mean? They're giving him just enough information so that he doesn't go mad. But they don't have any great empathy for the fact that he doesn't seem to understand anything at all. You know, this is all.
So, so yeah, I mean, what did you learn going over this material, was there also stuff that you sort of reread and then started rewriting that you just thought, oh, I totally forgotten that. That's actually quite a good advice. You know, the other day I do a show about Jesus telling Water Interwine and I did a video capture of it in Eastbourne in May. And I've done the shows again recently.
I just, I watched back the video and just thought, oh, there's a whole joke bit there that's really funny and I've forgotten about that. I've stopped doing that. I should put that back in. I was interested to go back to the whole stuff about writing jokes and I was kind of thinking, oh, oh, that's good.
Yeah. I should, I should, I wish I remembered that one. It's the thing that I was just writing. But so there's a few little moments like that, but I think what's become more interesting, I suppose, in terms of the sort of longer journey, really, is having thought, oh, well, I always had this thought about character and I always had this thought about story and whatever.
And I've separated them out into chapters. But I think this sort of overall idea that it's, that the feeling of actually wanting to, wanting people to go to comedy writing university and just gets really, really better at it. It's something that I feel has kind of developed gradually over our series without, without us even kind of sort of talk about it specifically. But actually, the desire to kind of get better at stuff.
And I think the thing that I was most interested in from my own point of view is I've had this phrase, write what you know. And I've had like a chapter on that in every book I've ever written. And the first time I wrote about it, I said, oh, I hate that phrase, write what you know. It's stupid.
There's so much more to write. And I gradually asked, I came around to it and I understand what that means. But I thought, I'm still not sure what it means. But I thought the really big takeaway that I've thought that I've taken in the last sort of few years is, whether or not you write what you know or write what you don't know.
The more stuff you know, the more you can write what you know. And so if you are, you've got to be curious about everything in the world and you've got to find the things that just interests you and not just the thing about your subject. And again, the point that you made about having these characters and this character will think that and that character will think that. Well, wouldn't it be great if you've got a character who's a foodie and you find out a bit more about foodies and you find out about food and you find out about, oh my god, once you enter this foodie world, it's really funny.
There's funny words and there's funny ways of putting ingredients together and people fall out on websites about which how many ounces or to use of such as that. And it's like a whole new other world that you can have really funny interesting things about. Yeah, yeah. I was kicking around to the internet yesterday, I think.
A little idea occurred to me as a precinct for a show and it's sort of military related. And I thought, I can read information about this world via official publications and military news websites and that kind of stuff. But what I really need to do is talk to someone who will basically say, OK, here's why the UK military is completely whole below the waterline. And so here's why those two new aircraft carriers are amazing and awful at the same time.
And over the next five years, here's what's going to happen. It's working out within that world. Everybody knows blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's going to affect, because otherwise, you're just going to end up writing blind in a situation where a character has a passion.
And in a way, it feels like, oh, it feels like work and research and it doesn't really matter because my show's not about food and my show's about family. And if one of your characters is a foodie, that might feel like a lot of extra work and a bit of dead end. But actually, it will just bring so much more flavor if you'll give the expression to your show, because this character has people they want to be like and other people. They don't want to be anything like at all.
It's like, the nation turned against Adelia Smith a while back. And then they turned back towards her and then everyone fell in love with Mary Berry. And so it's, but there's much more going on underneath the surface. And that makes you a better writer as well, doesn't it?
That makes you, in one sense, you are then discovering more about your character and your world through reading and being curious and looking at the world around you. So, right, what you know is maybe right, right, right, what you don't know about yet. But the chapter is called No More. Right.
So that's the, you know, that's what I took from that. And, you know, and it's fun. You know, that's the thing. Another thing that I mentioned is, you know, people talk about obstacles.
We think about obstacles in our lives. We think about, we've got a problem with a script. We've got a character who's doing something and it's not quite right. And it's just actually going, rather than saying, oh, this is a problem.
It's like, oh, this is fun. How am I going to sort that? And it's having that mindset as well. I'd like to think that I brought a little bit more sense of fun to the learning.
It's fun. I remember teachers who were like that who were hated. But I'm trying to be that guy. But I do think there are, you know, we can get a little bit of a caught up in the, you know, trying to create comedy as a serious thing.
Yeah. Or you can either get to bog down in the technicals or you can get distracted by what's on TV that already seems to be working. You know, how can I do a different version of this show? Or that show rather than just thinking, just, you know, get outside some other roses, have some thoughts, turn off your devices, actually think about things.
What does excite you? What are you interested in? What have you noticed? What is out there in the ether?
What is, you know, so yeah, but that's all part of the advice, isn't it? It's not just technical. It has to be all of the above. I mean, I would love it to be, I'd love people to be, you know, it's like a step by step guide to creating your show.
And you know, you have to have the book open on where you get your ideas from. All right. OK, that's good. I'll try that.
Oh, what's next character? All right. I'll do this, this. But I suspect it's more of a kind of a book that you will dip into.
And I'd like to think, you know, you say to yourself, oh, I've got a problem with my script. And it's this. I'll go, oh, well, actually, if you go to chapter 12, I'm not saying you'll find all the answers. But you'll find in chapter 12, you'll find that I talk about that, that, that, and that.
And so I suppose that's, it's more Haynes manual, maybe. How to write comedy. Well, Haynes is very near me, actually, in Somerset. Because I live very near Haynes Motor Museum.
They still exist, as well. They've probably got bus by now. Oh, no, no, no. It's also do Haynes manuals for the, you know, for the Death Star.
And for World War II tanks. Right. You know what I mean. You've moved beyond the full Ex-R3I, and you know, moved into fictional vehicles and for manuals.
Which are quite good fun, actually. I think I've got one about Wellington bomber. I mean, let's just very quickly do a test here. And tell me a problem you've got with the script at this point.
And I'm just sort of throwing this one out of there, James. You've got a problem with the script. And I'll let me see if I can think of where I mentioned in the book where I kind of offer some suggestions of what might be a solution. OK.
It's 45 pages. It's too long. It's too long. OK.
You want so you need. But I don't know what to cut. Because it's either to me all seemed awful, or all seems like unalloyed genius. OK.
Right. Well, there are two chapters I would take you to, I think. One is about one is called something like, why are we so rubbish at plotting? And so I would look at that.
And that hopefully that focuses you on, this is the big thing that happens. This is the consequence. And this happens to this point. This happens to this point.
And you might start thinking, well, actually, there's a little bit of kind of 10 minutes in the middle here. That's not quite the right bit. Yeah. So that's the first one you read.
And then that's in the story, section 3. And then you go to rewriting, section 5. And that's something like plotting the final journey. And this says, OK, so you're plotting, you've come to the end and it's not quite working.
And why is the end plot not working? And there's a list of reasons why some of the things that you might have done, you might have loved the story too much and forgotten that there's a character who's less character related or you've got a day or six matter. That's a matter. That's a thing that suddenly appears out of nowhere that solves the problem or you've brought to introduce a new character too late to resolve the plot.
Which I know you would never do because I know that's not. That's an example. So that was quite good actually. I thought this is where my kind of plan crumbles into nothing.
But actually, I think both of those chapters would really help you. I've got another one coming. But one of the things I would do if my script is too long is I would actually, so if I wrote a 45 page script, I may have had a free page, full page outline from which I wrote it. I bet you if I wrote the outline based on the script, I've actually written, it wouldn't closely resemble that.
So what I would do also is I would just write an outline of the script that I've written. And then you can always, because 45 pages is too much to see in one glance. Because actually if you can just summarise your script onto a page or two, just to remind you what happens in each scene, suddenly you'll just go, oh, we're circling here. We're circling there.
That's one of the things. You might then want to try from outline to script. Tell, don't show. That's another chapter.
Yeah. And that points out how to make sure that everything that you've got in the scene, that it leads into the next scene. So there isn't anything that's kind of a divergent or a digression. Here's another one then.
And that is there's a scene between two characters. They have to have a very frank conversation. The plot demands it. I can't cut this scene, but it's just not funny.
OK. It's howlingly not funny. Help me. Right.
Go to, I think it's 24, which is called something like, see me a joke, which is about visual comedy. How do you get across action through visual? And if you're struggling with your dialogue, you might just want to put something in there that's visual, how the visual thing happens. That's not out of the blue, but something that could be related to the character or something that something physical that they do that just takes them into a different place.
And something makes the conversation quite difficult and inconvenient and potentially funny. Or change the location of it. So they've had every difficult conversation in the kitchen. But for whatever reason, the kitchen's out of bounds.
So now they have to have the conversation in the laundry. And it's boiling hot in there because the tumble dries been on all day or whatever. They've got someone who's hard of hearing. But the other person, you're in a library maybe.
So they can't then they've got a shout. Or they've got to say stuff that they don't want to be heard. I mean, I know that's a sort of cliché comedy thing. And also, I can't stand your mother-in-law.
Yeah. At the sound goes there. And then mother-in-law's standing there. So yeah, I think that the visual thing is one way of looking at it.
And there's also a section with jokes about coming out of scenes or actually character jokes. Make sure that your jokes are absolutely nailed to your character. That's another chapter. Excellent.
I will ask you one or two more of those on the extended version of this podcast, which will be available to our patrons. So hold on just for that. But before we wrap up this episode, let me just reflect on the fact that you've been writing novels and publishing books. And in one sense, you'd be doing this off the grid, as it were.
You've been independently publishing these things. And in a way, that's emblematic of the fact that this just wasn't possible 20 years ago. And it was even slightly awkward 10 years ago. And now it's not easy now, is it?
Do you want to say a little bit about publishing your own books, but also maybe thanks to you, I wrote, sorry, I've been listening to another podcast called The Novel Marketing Podcast, which is an excellent podcast, which is very realistic and hands on about writing, particularly fiction. But open to the idea of writing Kindle shorts and trying stuff out. And the barrier to getting your writing out there, you're not putting a lot of money on it. But the tech is now there and better, although not very still, there's still work to be done.
Do you want to say a bit about that world and how you've learned stuff through that and recommending that or not? Yeah. And there's a sense that I kind of do a loot to that as well, in terms of how things have changed, in that this was when I was writing this in 2018, I still had a few regular writing jobs with BBC, and I was doing some of my own jobs and my own radio series and things as well. But now I've got more and more involved in doing my own stuff.
And actually the decision to write novels, which is a kind of seemingly crazy idea. Completely crazy. As you've often pointed out. That's to the point where I'm also doing it.
But in one sense, I can't not do it. But what's been fascinating to me is I've been writing it. And then parallel, I send out my fortnightly newsletters to people who want to be comedy writers. And I feel a total affinity because my understanding of how to get my novel out there, how to read my novel, how to get people to buy it, is as kind of fuzzy as for most people who are starting out, how do I write a sitcom script?
How do I get it out there? How do I get people to see it? And I'm kind of going on that same journey. And obviously I'm a bit more of an advantage compared to people who are just starting out.
Because obviously I know a lot of people. But all it means though is that maybe I can get a couple more meetings with people than they can. But I still can't have this method of your audio book. Yeah.
But I mean, I can't really, I still am baffled. And I would love to, you know, I wish there was a book, The Complete Novel Publisher, The McElink Novel Writer Dash Publisher. I'm sure Joanna Panderin won. She's, well, that's the thing.
She's written about 20. OK, so there's so many things. But what you need for her to do is condense it all down into one book, which is exactly what you've done. And the Complete Comedy Writer.
So how can people get hold of it? I'll be linking the show notes. But generally. Well, it'll be available from all good computers.
And it will be in, I can sort of link to it on Amazon. If you don't like Amazon, there will be other bookstores where you may be able to get hold of it online. And in bookstores, but you'll probably have to order it and libraries as well. But generally, the place to find it will be online and that's the company whose name I dare not speak.
But you know the one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They do love books. I'll give them that.
They do. They are probably more the friend to the independent publisher than the enemy. But obviously, there are issues with them. But there are lots of online places.
Hive is one that's got some waterstones, bonds and all those places. If you order the books from them. Yeah, yeah. And also frankly, who's going into bookstores and buying books?
Everyone's ordering them online. So it doesn't really matter who you order it from. So there's non-Amazon options, I'm sure. Every bit is convenient as the Amazon options.
Well, I'd love everybody to go into their local shops and just go to the people at the counter. So have you got the Complete Comedy Writer by Dave Cohen? No, I don't think so. If enough people do that in every shop in Britain, then they'll start to maybe start to take that.
So many people are asking about it. Starting to sound a bit partridge now, when his show was cancelled, he says, you know, I'm not, obviously, if some people want to write to their MPs, then it's not for me to say they shouldn't. Well, actually, that's not bad. I do it.
Yes, sir. This is the relative to the times. Yes, exactly. Great.
Well, Patreon, hang on for a bit longer because we want a bit more coming. Otherwise, thanks very much for listening and we'll speak to you next time. Cheers, Dave. Thank you.
And speak to you soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.