Hello and welcome to sitcom geeks, I'm James Kerry. I'm Dave Cohen. And this week we're not talking about writing sitcoms but writing sketches and we'll see why that's an important skill to acquire in due course. But before that I'd like to follow up on our podcast about the Edinburgh Fringe and I understand that there was some highs and lows for you Dave.
Oh definitely yes, the Edinburgh roller coaster, luckily I was only there for five days. So I was actually younger. I really enjoyed it, the sunshine and I did my show and I was someone sponsored me to be there so that was all fine, I didn't have a normal worries which is just as good because one show I had a one punter which is a wow I've never had that ever but I was great he was a very good punter I really enjoyed doing what I did. Um yeah it was some I was like you know you would say in all of the cos you've done how many Edinburgh's have you done?
Well I did 13 full Edinburgh's and I've done sort of five or six but never before played to an audience of one. No never until until last week well about three weeks ago. Do you got off of you've got off really lightly in some ways? Yes I suppose so I think so yeah.
But um but so five days well spent how and how was the Fringe around you as it were? It was great actually because I came in on the last week and so I managed to see quite a few people a few old faces they've been through the they hit the wall which everyone does or anyone who's ever run an marathon or done the Edinburgh Fringe knows what I mean you get about two thirds away. Normally it's about uh it sort of comes around about the time of the last weekend when everyone comes up from England and the TV festival's there and everything's selling out and even if you've had a brilliant time you suddenly hit this moment oh my god and then the following week is becoming a sort of deeply miserable time. Well actually the final week was the TV week this this this time around but um yeah you're so you hit the wall and you get miserable and then you've got three days left when you get an audience of three or less so um but yourself why did I agree to do that one on a Monday exactly when I could have gone home early yeah but it was uh yeah I think people generally as expected those who enjoyed it had very good shows had a great time those who showed me really good uh didn't or anything less than brilliant as we've said before it's sort of almost not worth going for the full time yes once people have wiped out they're not really hot yeah it's a long it's a long time to be limcorn or cold because it is or even a long time to be perfectly good but just not the flavour of the moment yeah but um that's that is the abusive relationship that is the infestable importantly it made uh I got the show which I'm very pleased with and I did feel that I was getting better with it every show because I'd only done it about four times before and so I will be doing it again in the autumn and you'll be the first to know all about it absolutely great people have posted it and while you were doing that I was beavering away on a a second a tiny little free episode sitcom for BBC Radio Wales right be lucky excellent which I know from when we've talked in the past it was a passion of yours it is a show I've had for quite a long time and a couple of different incarnations and an opportunity came up to pitch at radio whales and they went for it and in the end our cast is Milton Jones and Ellis James and Joe Joyner which is a pretty good cast for a radio whales three episodes sitcom and it was great fun and actually it was any quite a week or two to go I was getting a little bit on edge about scripts and everything being ready and it occurred to me that I haven't done a solo show as it were since heart 33 which is probably five six years ago at the very least because I've written everything with Richard Hurst since then or other people showed other people so suddenly it was all down to you it was all down to me and I think it's turned out all right and I'm really looking forward to it I think it starts going out on the first of October the first the eight and the 14th just on radio and on iPlayer so i player is the main attraction for me because I live in Wales so I wouldn't be able to hear it okay well you're probably you're quite near Wales I am quite near but yeah not near enough okay well I'm sure we will be mentioning that near the time maybe the next podcast maybe too late by then who knows I like so that's a be lucky yeah be lucky Wales or you check it out on iPlayer James's new sitcom starring Milton Jones is it half hour hour excellent and I was aware whilst writing it and rewriting bits that actually this crosses over what we're talking about next is because the show is a little bit loose and strange and it's got some sketchy elements to it and so a sketch com there are hints of sketch com about it so so that's what we're talking about today is sketch writing and why is this something you want to talk about though well first of all news Jack is back and I mean it's a news Jack is about it comes back twice a year so it's always good to remind you that if you want to make a living out comedy and you want to get in there then news Jack on radio for a topical show six weeks took two lots of six weeks per year is the show on which to do that and especially if you can't be bothered to make a youtube video or do your own thing which and you say that in the in the best possible way can't be bothered as in it really is a lot of work can make it look decent whereas if you want to just focus on writing then then this is a really good way to get involved and it's a great you know it is a great show to work on so many people who are now great sitcom writers or other writers starting out writing for the equivalent show of news Jack people like Richard Curtis Simon Pegg and Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkins of course so it is writing sketches is a good way in there and I think if you look at the credits probably have not nine o'clock news of the two runny's you'll see loads of people who want to write sitcoms and Andrew Marshall and David Renaway of course yeah and so it really is probably less so now than before because youtube didn't exist in 1978 but this still remains a really good route into writing getting to experience writing jokes and starting to make contacts and starting to feel like you're a writer that's right and I have spoken to people when I've run sitcom courses currently in England I'll be running one in November I'll be about which more later about writing how to write sitcom and a lot of people say I'm not interested in writing sketches I only want to write sitcom but actually one of the ways to get us to write a sitcom is to become a successful sketch writer and again people like Graham Lynn Hanath and Matthew they started out writing sketches for Lexi Sale and they were doing that and got Father's Head I think off the back of that.
Andrew Walton is a has been writing sketches and stuff for Radio 4 the Coopers vs the Rest or the Coopers vs the Worlds was one of BBC 2's new pilots in the Landmarks sitcom season so he's been kicking around radio just getting good at writing jokes and sketches and he's written this family sitcom about a family who adopted kids he himself I believe has adopted I hope this isn't used to him I think I've heard this by someone else very very shortly but it still works you know it still works there is someone who's gone the radio route and they've got a pilot on BBC 2 whether it turns into a series or not I don't yet know but but it can work so do go ahead and do that so I guess the first thing we have to say is you know what is a sketch and it's a fairly straightforward answer to that really there's I suppose there's two types of sketches the quickie which is basically one very very funny gag stretched out over 10 to 20 seconds or there is the standard staple sketch which is probably which is in most radio and tv sketch shows usually is two minutes long maximum and it's like a sort of self-contained story really isn't it so a sketch is it's like a mini sort of short story really and it's like any story it's got three acts it's got the beginning the middle and the end so we technically call these things sorry we're going to jargon here beginning middle and end is very advanced yeah yeah the beginning basically sets the thing up I mean if you imagine a movie which is like an hour and a half long you have about sort of seven or eight minutes of things being set up and then about tracking shots music people making breakfast this is going to work this is like a movie anything's normal and then seven eight nine ten minutes in the thing happens the big thing I mean a two minutes sketch the big thing happens about sort of 15 well maybe even another 10 15 seconds in and this big thing is usually you've certainly had an idea for a sketch and the idea is begins with the phrase what if you know what if that pet that you bought from the pet shop when you actually bought it what if it was actually dead when you bought it that's you know you thought it was just a sleep that's a funny idea I think the idea came originally for the parent sketch which is what if a pet shop only was like a comic anok I think I think Michael Palin talks about taking his car back into be fixed and says oh the and this one you know the engine stopped working and they go oh can't kind of go yeah yeah they do they do break here and so I wonder if this thing then what if you take your pet back in the same way that you take a car or something I think it was the initial starting point another python sketch just comes to mind that you're sort of picking up on is someone saying hello I'd like to have an argument please and that immediately sets up the what if someone can pay money to have an argument to it somebody yeah and that sort of immediately goes okay here's the idea this is the these are the jokes yeah and therefore it and here follows the meat of the sketch and then that's so so then you get a series of gags here for the back of that this isn't an argument it's a contradiction there isn't yeah but the first one he goes into the wrong room first oh I'm terribly sorry this is abuse you know and then he sort of like leaves and goes to the right room and then has his arguments and it sort of you know runs out as they eventually and that's I mean I've read a lot of sketches over the years and I've written a lot of sketches over the years as well and I the same mistake is made by me and many other people which is a lot of people come up with this very good was if idea and then lots of good jokes off the back of it and that's so we've got our beginning and our middle and we're about you know that's a good minutes worth of good funny stuff then you have to get from the middle to the end and that's like the end of act two they if I was Robert McKee doing a story class here well I'd be charging a 250 quid puff leaving else but I'll be saying this is the moment where you get the second inciting incident so something happens in the sketch I mean at and a half in to twist to twist it again the first time something happened and twist the sketch from the guy walking into a pet shop with a parrot and here's the twist it's dead and then blah blah blah and something else and then there's going to be another twist now funny enough Monty Python did not do many twists and I think one of the one of the reasons so many sketches aren't good enough is where people will just say well Monty Python first show they never bothered with yeah first line punch lines because they knew it's a bloody hardest thing yeah and they got eye with it yeah they can do that you can't so you have to have this second twist and most sketches don't have the second twist so if you look at very successful show it's sketch shows over years whether you like them or not shows like big drain little brithm these other shows that have they have sketches they have twists and then from that twist you go straight into the punch line of the sketch and that's kind of as much as you need to know in terms of actually writing a sketch and I mean another thing that it's actually worth saying about sketches is and we said about the link between sketches and sitcoms but as although a sketch is a self-contained piece of comedy and generally I mean you do get recurring characters in sketch shows but the most well-known sketches are usually like a sketch that lives on eyes with these two or three people in them but as a sitcom scene it is a bit like a sketch really isn't it? It is because you've got one idea of what's the idea that is this character is trying to do this and the other characters trying to stop them or they have a different agenda so in a sense they just work as two little two or three minute scenes it's particularly the case I think potentially with opening scenes and this this particular occurred to me the other day when I was thinking fondly about red dwarf as I often do and thinking what a brilliant opening scene you have in an episode in which Lister is trying to teach kriton how to lie and it opens with with with Lister holding up fruit to kriton and kriton and saying it's banana no it's not you know it's not a banana it's a I can't you know he can't break his programming and it just it plays out like a lovely little two three minute sketch and it turns out to be very helpful for the plot later on when kriton I think has to lie to someone to spare their feelings in a Casablanca style ending I think but it reminded me of that moment of thinking yeah often really good sitcom writers got their comedy chops writing sketches and it just gets the episode off to a flying start and lots of really especially audience sitcoms I think have that lovely little two three minutes of his and idea here's a funny idea with some characters you already know go here with the jokes here with the jokes and then it then the episode kind of starts to start a motor for a sitcom in fact grand and nailer were really great sketch writers they read one of my favorite sketch shows of the 1980s called son of cliche as well as then going on to be the main writer's visiting image for a number of years that was before I think that was yeah that was all before they did read war for again there's another example of sketch sketch writers who end up doing so I'm going to encourage I think sketch writing encourages economy as well in terms of a sketch is really it's almost like writing a poem where you're just throwing away actually everything you don't absolutely need that's right yeah lots to learn from my sketches yeah now you did do spend quite a lot of time script editing on a um it wasn't a topical show recorded for any purposes yeah it was a sort of contemporary show rather than a topic of equivalent of news jack was made it's one of these shows that it was designed as an open door policy show yes and what sort of things can you remember that mistakes that people make and what sort of things do um I think there were I'm just wondering what I did you say I did write a couple of things down though which is one of which is sort of my advice would be if I tried to write sketches just get back into watching sketches and remembering how sketches work and um michlan web sketches I think a really good classic sketches in the style of Frinorri and the two Ronny's they are have here is the here is the idea here is the jokes here is a nice twist at the end uh for listening you can you can do better than listen to John Finn or see the new program he is the best sketch writer in the country for my money I mean he's just brilliant at having an idea nailing it and then stopping next idea so it is frustration when you get sent material if you know my job as a script editor when I'm script editing a show is we've got to record 45 minutes worth of material in front of an audience I'm not being paid to write it I would like to be sent it so that I can edit it and put it in and I do it I wanted to go straight in when you take a sketch off the pile and you read it and you think to yourself what is this this isn't even a sketch um we need sketches why have you sent me this um so I think things that just don't fit this trying to be clever or cute with a format trying to deconstruct everything you as an outsider you don't get to do that yet when it's your show it when it's little Britain when it's when it's Monty Python and you've decided you're not going to have any endings to your sketches that's why I'm going to have recurring characters or I'm going to have recurring characters that's fine you can do that to your show if you're just writing for hire you're trying to get on sketches you just want to send that to sketch which is with a beginning a middle and end clear idea that's the other thing when you're reading a sketch it starts out oh this is a great idea and then the jokes are actually all about something else and it's like oh this is just a sketch is about two things not one thing so having one clear simple idea and um and also my heart tends to leap when a sketch is two or three pages rather than six or seven pages so a long sketch my instinct as a script editor is this person doesn't know what the funny bit is so they've bunged it all in yeah and are hoping that I will find the funny bits and couple them together and I'm not going to do that we can we know now exactly we can tell exactly how many words there are in your sketch and it's and I find as a fairly good role if a sketch is more than 500 words long it's it's not working and 400 is a sort of ideal length 400 when that includes the names of the characters and everything you can anything longer than that and you are starting to stretch out yeah it may be that you're grasping around because your idea isn't strong enough or the sketch is too long because you've got two ideas and that's likely fighting each other um so if you've got one clear idea and you've got you need some key jokes to go with it um and then you and then you really do need that punchline or ending because again you're I'm script editing a show with the with sketches in it that have to have a beginning middle and end if you haven't thought of a punchline then I'll have to think of one and I'm I don't want to think of one I'd rather you than it um so I think sometimes you you you just you're being said stuff that really is half literally half decent there's a decent idea in there but it's only really half executed yeah so having a punchline and also being really brutal on yourself before you send it off to say can this sketch be shorter can I other any lines I can get rid of does this sketch start fast enough yeah you're okay not to have any jokes in the first four lines as always you're establishing very quickly and efficiently exactly where we are and how the sketch is especially on the radio yes there's a lot of work to take the audience from from silence to we are at a we are at a field hospital at the battle of balaclava yeah um now actually on new shack I think they help you there because you can you can sort of set up the sketch with the voice over beforehand that's with and now it's over to blah blah yeah and again you need to know what the conventions are for that show and make the most of them but it is amazing to me the contempt that new writers show for the show that they're writing for that they don't sending you sketches you can't use they've got swear words in them that you can't broadcast that's set up in a way that would never be um a lot of time is wasted on that one thing I would mention as well is that um a lot of people I think we're about two weeks into news chat member a lot of people send a lot of send jokes or sketches in and then after they don't get something on in the first week and they think oh right that's it I'm never gonna get anything on um whereas in fact what's happened is that everybody sent for the first show they've already got their their commissioned writers who are writing most of the show anyway so it's very hard to get anything on but the longer if you stick at it just keep writing keep sending stuff the more people fall away anyway so you kind of increase your chances just by sticking in there and I wouldn't I wouldn't aim your aim isn't to get something on the show at this stage even your aim at this stage is to be able to say right every week I'm gonna be I'm committed to the show every week I'm gonna send in as many searches as you know they allow you to send them these two or three a week and one lineers and I'm gonna just every week do that and you should eventually get some stuff on even if you don't you've you've had a very good exercise in learning how to write really because you've been writing something that's maybe not necessarily what would be your first choice of what you want to write but it's the kind of thing that you would write that you would hope to get poof in. I mean nobody nobody really wants to play scales on a piano but if you want to be a really good pianist you've got to do your scales and so writing sketches for a topical show if you're not that interested in topical shows is like doing scales but I don't think there's any concept pianist out there who thinks that doing scales was a waste of time looking back on it I don't really play many scales now in public I don't really do you know to me I try to g-me-jor the other day and got nothing so it is a bit of a discipline but sticking at it I like the idea that what you're suggesting David's that your your achievable targets are doing it every week send some sketches you know you've determined to send in two sketches a week that you are happy with and five one-liners and then you know obviously the short term I used to get a credit but the other thing I would do if you possibly can go to the recording which is hard if you're not in London obviously it's hard if you're not in London but eight million people are and the trains to London are pretty good so if you really want to do this it's always worth taking a day off work to do it and just the feeling of being there because it may be that your sketches actually record it and not broadcast it may be that your sketch was made through to the read-through and then proved to not quite work or not be fixable in the time it may have been recorded and got big laughs and then something happened with another story that meant that something else had to go something had to give away and your sketch it was too long to fit the slot or whatever there's a million and one reasons because they do have that it's not good enough but also the idea of actually being in the room when you're hearing material being recorded what it means is that feeling that your material is going to make all of these people laugh so it's very easy to sit at home and think oh my stuff's much better there are those idiots who laugh at anything or whatever it is it's okay let's let's get in the room and I tell you what when they start humbling experiences when they do start reading your sketches if you've written a sketch you recognize the first two lines boy your heart is in your absolute mouth and so in one sense it teaches you a little bit of respect I think so there's an also if you go if you've been writing for a few weeks you might want to email to say I'd like to come to a recording and they might put you on the list and you might meet up with other writers who are also writing and find out how they're getting on and just getting a sense of camaraderie or so again it's not just about the work itself but about meeting other people and finding like-minded people that's the downside of the fact that everything is done now remotely is because there were a few comedy partnerships forged in the open door policy rooms of week ending when pretty much anyone could walk into the BBC without being frisk or ask for ID or spit into a test tube or anything that's how I met my first writing partner yeah so that can't really happen unless you start any actual recordings or yeah yeah one thing you mentioned there actually was about some deconstructing sketches and that's definitely something that that's happened deconstruction is a thing there's no doubt about it these days and actually I was listening to a show on the radio the other day by a bunch of young new hopefuls they're probably more than hopefuls and they're probably more successful if you're listening to it they're already beyond hopefuls yes they're called the pin and it's something like young two white male young 20 something for lights la la la etc it's a sketch show and they are checked up once I've heard the show and then read about them and then apparently they are the sort of the kings of sketch show deconstruction but actually they have some very very conventional sketches in their shows and and also if you just think hey sketches god they're so bourgeois and two minutes and all that I'm gonna blow all that away well you were kind of beaten to it in the 1950s there was a sketch show featuring Peter Jones and Peter Eustinoff which basically they sat in a room and improvised and then tape recorder and then Dennis Norden and Frank Muir listened to the tapes and then they kind of fashioned sketches out of them and they got the two pieces back in the room again and they so they they kind of created a sketch show out of improvisation back in 1952 so you think you're you're thinking you're new and hip-hate Norden and Muir were much newer than you. Absolutely yeah yeah yeah and if they didn't do it then Spike Milligan did so it's it's the oldest time itself and I would therefore suggest that you just stop worrying about deconstructing and just have a decent idea of resketching do it because that is you want you want to make friends you want to make friends with the script editor as someone who can reliably produce material because I think it can feel especially if you don't live in London you don't turn up to stuff it feels like every single thing is designed to keep you out of having a comedy writing career and having been on the other side of the fence nothing could be further from the truth a BBC producer is desperate to find some really new writing talent and they were desperate to find sketches that require no script editing that can go straight in and that's a wonderful thing the fact that they're not doing that with your material probably says more about you and your material than them so keep practicing get better at it and if you start getting stuff on regularly you will get emails from the producers saying great stuff the next series is coming around soon please submit more material once you've done that for a couple of series or three series they might get you in and give you a small commission under merit even so by the way have you got any sitcom ideas yes they're new producers they're looking for they're looking for writers to work with for the next 20 or 30 years of their careers and you know if you've got ideas and things then they want to hear them as well and they will also say have you got any other sketches because I'm producing a show for you know a sketch group that did great guns at Edinburgh they've got an hour's worth of material but we need three hours worth of material what have you got so it's all there for the taking but you have to write some decent sketches yeah and bear in mind as well when you're writing those sketches that finding that second twist and finding that punchline I would say my experience that's that's almost as time consuming and as hard work as doing the whole of the rest of the sketch put together yeah so you really you know you will be rewarded by spending that extra amount of time really thinking how do I get this sketch to be more than just a few funny observations about something in the news how do I make it something that then has this twist and can really make the audience and you know get that extra big laugh from the audience I'll take you to the punchline yeah it's either a sort of a pullback and reveal kind of thing about you know it's they were talking to somebody and it turns out that this person is secretary of state for the energy so all the time it turns out that this person has no knowledge of anything that they've spoken about or you know it could be it just sort of needs to there needs to be some kind of twist to reveal it was like I mean there was this one sketch on the pin and it was a policeman so Oscar Wilde you were you witnessed the murder of Jack the Ripper doing a murder can you can you describe the murderer and for those who set up and Oscar Wilde replies oh yes he he was a man who knows too much and not enough yeah yeah yeah straightaway so you get the idea and it turns in terms of wit lots of questions and you know can you describe his face yes I can it was neither sad nor happy but the countenance of a man who loved him like love like yeah it's all right you know look a woman has been murdered here mr.
Wilde please that's all right yes yeah and and then several of these jokes and then they said something and the policeman says oh what a shame you know every time there's one of these murders and such a shame you're the only witness that's ever there and he's not as good as yes mmm yes funny you should say that oh look over there and so you get a really good that's a twist yeah yeah Oscar Wilde is Jack the Ripper right lovely little twist and that that probably you know to get to that point it's probably took a lot longer than the just oh let's have Oscar Wilde answering police questions in a funny way which probably took about five seconds to come up with the idea and then ten minutes to come up with all the other so it is worth it it really is worth that effort so that's really all we have to say about yes in terms of new Jack specifically the the other tips may be about not not writing sketches about the most obvious stories of the week yeah because you know everyone will be doing that it's trying to find stories that have a little bit of relevance and feel of the moment but maybe aren't but maybe aren't also completely obscure way or effectively using a very obscure new story on which to hang your your sketch idea that you've had for ages don't be afraid to go for a difficult story I'm by difficult I mean I mean there are certain types of stories that generally are not covered but it actually people are writing any sketch about Europe is always an owner's task always used to be an owner's task I suppose it's got a little bit more interesting but back in the 90s writing sketches about the master's treaty yes that was like you drew the short straw yeah so when you're the one who has to go away and write jokes about the EU so find the things that aren't the obvious subjects and just you know give them some extra thought because not so many people will have done that too and listen and not only listen to sketch shows but listen to new Jack if you're trying to get something new Jack and listen carefully and listen hard and learn the lessons and really try to write a show that could just go straight in rather than wishing the show was something else and that they might make an exception for your sketch they're really not going to do that so don't don't keep yourself it's just wasting your time as well so those are our suggestions for getting stuck in to new Jack I think that's about it for one podcast if you want to get in contact with us get in touch via email on sitcomgeeksattagmail.com we do promise to answer all your queries do we questions comments observations and ideas for episodes we don't need any more first 10 pages for now thank you we are still getting some trickling in yeah because people have listened to previous episodes where we have heartily suggested you send them in so apologies that we're a bit slow on that but we will I guess in the next month or so we'll be reading a few and we'll be doing some yeah maybe that'll be in a couple of podcasts I want another 10 pages special games actually or four of them so like us on Facebook look for us there look for sitcomgeeks follow me on Twitter at sitcomgeek and Dave is at co and Dave and if you want to support this podcast offer us work all by our books my name is called writing that sitcom and Dave is called how to be averagely successful at comedy Dave also as you hinted earlier has some writing workshops coming up tell us about that yeah I'm doing a couple of days in mid-November 16th and 17th November I think I know I've also booked a couple of days in March if you really want to kind of get organized and there are special early bird rates of the two the two or if you just want to do one as well one is about making a living act comedy where we'll talk in more detail about all the things you can do as well as sketch writing to get into the whole business and then there's one day which we actually really sort of delve into sitcom writing how to write sitcom all the details on my website Dave Cohen dot org dot 2k brilliant do you go along and spend the day with Dave that's over here today well spent two spend two days a day before day to day if you want to remember yeah so thank you Dave thank you all sit you up a duty to story who I'm sure has made this podcast sound silky smooth so until next time bye bye