I'm Dave Perry, and I'm James Kelly. Welcome to episode 37. And this week we're going to be looking at this podcast. We should be looking at plotting your sitcom and the best way to go about this.
In addition to that, we'll have two 10-page scripts. We are getting there, we're making our way through them. These are from ages ago, I feel so ashamed. They've probably been rewritten three times and commissioned for Comedy Central by now.
Yeah, so you're probably, the people who wrote these, you've probably had a career in comedy, you've made it, you've got to the top, and then you're struggling with your third successful series and already that's all happened before we get to read it. And you're already on your yacht listening to this. It's about the gear on, so many apologies for that. So shall we start to read it with a two 10 pages?
Yes, let's dig in. Well, the first one that we've come to is a script called, implored, which I'm not sure, is that some misprint possibly that employed? Or implored, I wasn't sure. It's not a word that I'd heard of before.
It is not, no, not spelt that way. So maybe there's a mystery. And the first 10 pages do not give any enlightenment as to why that would be. I'm it's written by, I thought I had a name.
Josh, Josh Davis, I think. Is that right? I shall find it, I shall be right. I shall put it up on the screen.
First thing we should say as well, and we have stress this is when you send your file, will you please send it either in Word or PDF? And this came in something else. I'm not sure what it was. I think it's a file of job, isn't it?
Was it final draft? I've got a file of file of file. Either way, we're sort of slightly saying, please don't send us anymore, because it's taking us a year to get round to them. But as a rule, do look out for what the rules are and make sure that you follow them.
It's okay, better for you. But thanks for sending it. And apologies again for the delay, Josh. But it's a, it's a, a pacey 10 pages.
And there's a few nice jokes in there. It starts off with, the only thing we have and five characters, one of them has a birthday and the other four are insisting on taking him out. It's a little bit confusing to begin with, because it's not obvious which character's which we get. All right, we've got Michael and we know it's his birthday.
And then we, then there's Chris, Sean, Nick and Ashley, who all feel a little bit interchangeable, except one of them's in a wheelchair. And it's confusing to me because I know a male athlete. Exactly, I was going with that, yes. It wasn't until about five pages in when she goes to the bar that I was at.
Oh, Ashley's a girl. Okay, because it felt very much like the lads together. It felt like five lads. So that's, I think we mentioned it in the previous time we talked about the 10 page, 10 pages is when you've got the five people, they all seem to be there kind of, I think they're sort of 20ish in sharing a flat.
So they're all kind of, of a similar kind, I suppose really. So really try and distinguish between your characters. Right. And I think that's a problem.
So I think because you've got group scenes, it's very hard to really delineate characters clearly when you have group scenes because it's just a very tricky way of establishing clear voices when they're all basically trying to do something at the same time. So if we go back to it, we often do the first ever episode of Friends in those first few minutes. You do have it very cleverly introduced with set up as each character's sort of comes in and it's obviously very, very skillfully done by professionals who just brilliant at it and have been doing it for decades, like Monte Calleman. So I think if you have a mob in your first scene as it were and you have a mob in your second scene, it's quite hard to differentiate between them.
So that's something to look out for. I think just as Dave was describing the story there, I think that's something that we need to think about as well because if I can describe the story of what happens in 10 pages, in 10 pages, a number of things nearly happen and don't. So the only thing that actually happens is they persuade this bloke to come out for a drink for his birthday. He doesn't want to go on a drink for his birthday.
We don't know. We don't know why he doesn't. He doesn't. He doesn't.
He goes for a drink. They have a drink. Michael, I think, nearly meets someone in the pub, but then doesn't. And then they go outside and they're spoken to by a policeman who might arrest them, but doesn't.
They ask to be tazed, might last be tazed, and isn't and then is nearly hit by a bus, but isn't. So after 10 pages, I don't know where nothing's actually happened. I think literally the last thing that happens at the bottom of page 10 is one of the cast, one of these five people nearly gets run over. I think it's the one whose birthday he was.
His friend saves him, which may or may not be the kind of what the plot he was on, but whatever. It's a bit too late, really, for the plot to be starting at the bottom of page 10. Even if that isn't half-star the plot, no, that's just another event, which has no actual significance in terms of character. Yeah, I have written down here a bunch of people sitting in a pub talking.
There's a nice line, actually, there's one point where Michael's still being persuaded in the pub to drink, and somebody says, it's just beer. You can't get drunk on beer, because it was a nice light. Yeah, so yeah, there is a nice line to eat. There's good banter, but banter, duff and off to sitcom, it makes.
So I think that's kind of the main issue. And to be fair to the author of this piece, who sent it probably very early on, before we said week, after week, after week, in the first 10 pages, we keep getting sent scripts in which nothing actually happens, in which a character has a clear quest. So at the moment, so, you know, it's hard on you, but nothing is happening. Yeah, there's another thing, one other thing I'd like to just pick up on, there's a stage direction, which reads Edgar Wright's style montage.
You know, I'm not exactly sure what that means, although I think I am. It means a bit like space. Yes. Edgar Wright is unique, and any attempt to do something like Edgar Wright will look like a poor version of what he does.
So I would say what you mean, and put something, and I mean, also you're a director, and we'll read that and they'll go, hang on, I'm me, I'm not Edgar Wright. Who does this person think they are, telling me to make something like that bloody rubbish, Edgar Wright, who I'm much better than or whatever. So, I think you can probably reference film directors, as long as they have nothing to do with comedy. So if you wanted to reference an Italian new wave director, or a bit of comic effect or something, I think that's probably fine, but referring to other comedy people within a comedy script, I think is an issue.
We actually have that in the next script, called Runners by Adam Labus, where somebody's wearing a fly to the Concourse T-shirt. And that's a bit like, for some reason I was thinking, in Ghostbusters, where you can't cross the streams of those things that come out of the ghost busting equipment. You mustn't touch in comedy worlds. No other comedies exist, they can't touch.
So referring to other comedians or comedy types, even within the action of the script, I would say, is a worry. Well, let's move on to Runners. Thank you. Thank you.
There was lots of good conversation there. So you don't need to give up, but you do need to make it more than a sum total of people talking, give it some, give it a quest, send out your characters, and don't. Give it, get it going. Yeah, so to move on to Runners, I picked out that about the flight of the Concourse as well.
And in fact, the opening paragraph is the one criticism I have of what is, I think I would say, by quite a long way, one of the best scripts that I've read, the best 10 pages. I don't know if James is agreeing with me on that, but they are just really opening. And it just says, a pair of worn out chuck tailors stand up on a rolling longboard. Move up a pair of paints, F5O1's ripped to the knee, a flight of the Concourse T-shirts, and reveal Ruby Sunshine H22, a Hackney girl with Indian Herys Hina.
There's a lot of stuff there. I'm guessing that the producers who read your script will not be 58-year-old blokes with no idea what chuck tailors are. And, but, I don't know where it works out, works out, or even a rolling longboard to come work for them. No, no, no.
It's very striking, very, very slightly long, the very striking intros, and each of the characters gets that. So it's a Parks and Rec style thing whereby you have a scene, and then you have a character talk to camera and sort of introduce themselves. And I could go 50-50 on that, but I love Parks and Rec, in fact, a watchn't episode it last night. I've nearly watched the whole lot.
So I don't want to be down on it. So it is a very efficient way of getting six characters up and running, which in 10 pages is hard to do. And so you successfully do that in this, and so that's good. And we get what the story's going to be in the first two pages, which is nice.
It's called Runners. It's about running as in the people who work for TV companies. If you don't. I need to talk about running club, and that's why I was confused when they didn't then go off running.
But I was disappointed that very quickly. So that was fine. And I then thought, oh, we're talking about running club. Oh, that's an idea.
But that's, so we find out very quickly who these two young runners who are working on zero-hour contracts, and they've been doing it for a month, and it looks like they're... The contract is up, even though it was a contract for a month. And so there you go. That's two pages, and we've got a story set up.
And then we get to two new characters. There are various new characters coming in that are sort of producers and directors of TV companies. And again, I want to just spend a little time talking about the stage directions here. By the way, if you want to look at the stage directions, you can get hold of these two scripts.
If you go to our Facebook page, go to sitcom gigs on Facebook, and there'll be a link to where you can find all the scripts that we talk about. So go on to Facebook, probably. You don't actually need to be on Facebook to go to our Facebook page. You can find the link.
Yeah, OK, so again, sorry to read out more of the work, but I was just so struck me, possibly because I worked for four years on a show called The Big Breakfast on Channel 4, and I felt like this was beautifully describing the office that I worked in for four years. Penny Dorchester, Brackett's Dirty, Tor, No Makeup, Casual Attire, and Nervous Energy. Since I saw desk that is impeccably organized with a beautifully colour-coded, posted-note system, Oliver, both producers working with his desk, and next to those, looks like a child's bedroom, novelty sonic, the hedgehog toys, he-man posters, and the mike surrounding. So without even speaking, you set up two characters.
That's beautifully set up two characters. And again, we're talking about the director who's going to read this script, who's going to have such fun with that. And so I think not only have you set up two characters really well there, but just describing their desks, which is a great way to introduce a character. It's just you're showing us, you're not telling us.
But it does actually also tell us a lot about how TV works. Certainly in my experience, I've noticed that the TV is populated by a lot of men and women. The women are basically efficient and they've got a job to do and they know they've got a job to do. And they have the sort of everything in these works out.
And the men are kind of a bit rubbish and there's always toys on there. That's all they ever have. All the mounds of paper and stuff. And hey, look at me, I'm a guy.
I've got these sonic hedgehogs. I just thought that beautifully sums up the kind of gender balance in TV companies. Without a word of script. And the script, I think, is really funny.
I didn't think that's funny. I thought it was good. It was easy. One of the better ones we read.
And so it just felt like you knew what you were doing. And to convey that in 10 pages, I think is definitely very, very commendable. So I would happily have read more. That's also really the question we're going to read.
Yes, of course. Here's an issue. This is worth persevering with Adam, if you haven't already got a series commission by now because we've had this for months. It could be a really good writing sample.
And the reason I would say writing sample rather than an actual sitcom is not just because sitcoms actually so really have a get-out to the commission. But because TV industry stuff is really, really hard to do. So I think we've already had episodes in the head of grandma's house and the BBC to keep for some reason making comedies about people who work in comedy. And there's Nathan Barley and that kind of stuff.
So that also shows that they keep making it. So maybe this is a real shout. Here's the thing I thought was that the central question is ultimately why these characters want to work in television. That why this show is set in television, why this show has to be on now, all those sorts of things.
In a sense, I felt like you put a window on a world that I kind of recognized because I work in television. But equally, it felt quite a middle of the road kind of place and the two people that run it, the two guys who run it, one of them is clearly a complete idiot. I felt was a little bit, a little bit of a stereotype of idiot who works in TV. And so I wondered if the way to improve this script is to really focus on the runners perspective and how they are really at the bottom.
And so I think the split, you call it runners and it's about runners but actually you've got quite a lot of stuff without them in it. I wonder if you just need to make sure that they are the bottom of the bottom of the bottom and make something of it. So I would just be, but this is what's great is this is criticism at a pretty high level. But I think, you know, I think they are.
My criticism from that point of view is as you say, there are six characters introduced and the runners do appear to me to be the two main characters. I think that's pretty clear. But where there are four kind of executives that could just be two and their stories could be kind of narrowed down a bit. But we do have, it does feel to me that it is to a great extent from the perspective of the runners.
And there's a scene just going back to talking about people sitting in a room talking and there is a scene with the two runners where they are just kind of sitting in the tea room section talking about what biscuits they're going to eat and Instagrams of photos of the biscuit. But actually even in that whole section that becomes a kind of a driving of the next bit of the plot which is, you know, like you took if you want to make sure that you're going to stay on in this job, then you know, tell them that you've got another job and they'll want to keep you and using the biscuit, well you weren't going to have that biscuit and then I said I was going to have it so then you had it so it's the fear of missing out and said I'll take you on for fear of missing out. So that was an example of, yeah, here's two people talking about biscuits. That's become entangled to the plot so I enjoyed that scene and I would like to read more as well.
Yeah, it's a good script and I think keep at it and it'll get your meetings, it'll get you work more, it'll certainly get you introductions and some. So there's no harm in writing about a world that you have a perspective on that is also known to the people who are sending it to you which is people with the intuition. So thank you for sending that. Yep, thank you very much.
And that sort of brings us into talking about what this is the main area we want to talk about today, about plotting. Now we have talked a little bit before about plot so James has written lots of very good blogs on the sitcom geek blog, not to be confused with sitcom geeks, which is us here now, but James is a sitcom geek blog, which was about two or three years ago. I think you did it like a run of about six articles about how to write plots. And we've talked on here about which plot to use, which is the best one to choose for your pilot script.
But I thought it'd be a good idea because we talked a little bit about character a couple of weeks ago. Obviously character is one thing, and plot is another thing, but the two, when you're developing your sitcom, you're kind of putting the two things together. So I just wanted to ask you, James, if you want to just kind of pressy really, how you come up with plots. So I think we've talked about this before, and there's a bunch of pieces of it's a little bit of it, and I also blogged about it and then I've sort of slightly flashed it out of it in my writing that sitcom book, which will be hopefully vaguely helpful to some.
For me, again, everyone has a different thing, but for me, there's a lot to be said for generating, generating, generating, dozens and dozens and dozens of stories. So that you've got lots and lots of stories to choose from. I think sometimes you think of some characters, you think of a few stories, and then you immediately fixate on how to make those stories work as plots, which you may well be able to do, but equally, given that you can do a plot about absolutely anything you want, no one's making you do a plot about a certain thing, then there's no harm in just spending as long as possible on whether these are really the best versions of plots or the best ideas for the characters to do. So I have a general suggestion that you just think of hundreds of one-line stories, not on ideas, and then narrow them down, flesh them out a bit, and that you are sort of my checklist or six checklist of focus on stories that bring your main character into conflict, focus on stories that don't rely on outside characters, avoid stories that cause our characters to act out of character for some plotty reason, that's why I can't stand the mid-summer-night string.
I think it's rubbish. Oh, it's a magic potion twice, I can say. Yeah, not only else Shakespeare, what do you know about the original comedy? Absolutely.
I have just watched Bill by the Horrible History's guys about Shakespeare, which is a great film, I really recommend getting all of that, it's just nice and funny and jokes all the way through in a sort of nicely Python-y way, but you know, a modern version of all those little lovely scenes you get in Python movies. Anyway, avoid stories based around birthdays just because they're hard, focus on stories that begin and end in your regular locations, I would say, for an audience sitcom is very important. And avoiding stories that rely on artistic endeavor, and the reason I mention that is because somebody has to play a song at the end and they have to do it really, really well, the audience don't know what well sounds like in your context, and it reminds the clarity of the quest. Unless your sitcom is Glee or Fame or something.
Yes, as I already said, that's why I had a particular problem with the first episode of Studio 60 on Sunset Strip, the Aaron Sorkin Saturday Night Live type show, where they saved the day with a Gilbuss and Sullivan-style musical number at the end, which was just nonsense, I mean, goodness sake. And the other issue on that show was all of the stuff that Studio 60 sort of broadcast as their show. I thought was really banal. And the two writers who were always cast as talentless idiots had this running joke about a spin-off show called A Peripherable Vision Man or something.
That sounds funny. That sounds much better than the movie. You're not supposed to laugh at that. As opposed to on 30 Rock with TGS, which I didn't know is a pretty lousy show, and they don't really lean on the artistic merit of that show, so you have the other one to say that's basically still lucky to be on.
So those are my kinds of rules of thumb, just as a way of focusing your story, picking stories that you think really do that. If I could just go back to the point where you're saying, coming up with your hundreds of one-liners, what I've been thinking about, just in the recent thing that I've been working on, is yes, the one-liners are not spending too much time on them. But even at this stage, I'd like to have a little thought and thinking about, actually, this is, let's say, one of the notes you say is don't choose a birthday, maybe choose something that someone's looking forward to. It's like, it has significance to that character.
It doesn't really translate. So it's a cricket season or something. For me, yes, for you. For me, yes, for you.
The first anniversary of England collapsed. Classically in a classic way today this morning, as we record this, but this will probably still apply in a fortnight. It's not going to be doing the fourth or fifth semester. So even if you take, you know, it's the start of the cricket season, then even at this stage, I think you're starting to think about the character and how it might pan out in terms of what their character has, in terms of it being, is this going to provide them with some sort of crisis or some sort of opportunity that they can exploit.
So already, I found that I was narrowing down lots just at that particular point. I think it's well worth doing, because I think you really want to make the most of your characters and your situation and to do stories that only your show can do, which is why I think flat share shows are quite hard to make work, because it's very hard to do a plot that friends hadn't already done, extremely well, or Seinfeld, or Frazier. So you end up with Peep Show, which has the most kind of outlandish, amazing plots, but they do pretty well start and finish in the flat, as you say. And that's why it is worth thinking of as interesting a situation as you can, and that's why it was great to do, for me, to do a show about Bonta's Bose on Afghanistan, because we got to do stories that you just couldn't do any other way.
And so for our Christmas special, we were able to have Christmas, you know, Christmas was normally pretty banal, but we were able to do Christmas on a full operating base in Afghanistan. You know, you got to have lines like, Matthew was clearly a bit of a psychopath shooting at the Taliban on Christmas Day and shooting them dead and saying, oh, it's not good. It's just like, pretty, it's not your average style. I think it's funny enough, it sounds exactly like what the, suppose at the next American Secretary of State for Defense is that he said something similar to that, actually, but not as a joke.
No, absolutely, I'm not sure. So making the most of your situation as well is doing it. But again, it's a personal thing that I do, which is I try to keep the options open as much as possible, and using the tiny little ideas, just as a springboard into something that's a bit more specific, even like my character decides to buy a hat. What sort of character, what sort of hat would they buy?
What are they buying it for? Did they look at it because they are themselves conscious in it? People say about it, do they end up with an old hat and you know, which is in itself as a metaphor. Right.
So I try to spend as much time on that as possible. Right. So that by the time you found some really good stories, they're all specific. You've already made your life considerably easier rather than starting with a storyline where effectively, I wouldn't start from there if I were you.
Right. So that's kind of my, I think it's one that I agree with your refinement of mine. Yeah. What I'm saying, but that's just the way my brain works as well.
Time to go, 100 ideas, narrow it down. Right. Right. So I've actually, and this is again, having a taste for acronyms.
What was it? Off the bus leaves or something like that. Yes, for character. I've managed it and with the help of some students I was working with last week, come up with the six P's of plotting.
Oh. So it might not be six and there might be more in fact. And there might be ones that don't end in starting P's. So at this stage, I'm happy to talk about the six P's of plotting.
Six P's of plotting. So you can always have a jingle of it's eight P's of plotting. It's like those books, you know, the seven secrets of successful artists. Well, I also, I've got my three C's, character conflicting confinement.
Oh, three, I thought it was seven C's. Well, you can do seven C's, character conflicting confinement. Casting, cast raise, catastrophe. Yeah.
Something like that. The magazine, another C. I don't know what it was. So what are the six P's?
Okay, we'll start with P number one. I don't know what it is for the background noise we were recording by glass thing. And so there are other people at the side. So six P's, number one P is...
Number one P is plan. I hope they're not doing a much more interesting podcast out there than we are. So yes, plan. Plan your second, the more detail that you do now, the more choices you'll offer yourself when it comes to writing.
It's not me at any point. Please carry on. Six P's. Personal, I think.
And that's the... I know you talk about all sorts of things, like reading newspapers, coming up with all sorts of things. But if you can get something from your own life, this mind story's from your own life, then that's great if you can do that. And your life is the starting point.
So it complates are not really real life. They're kind of the comedy versions of real life. But they need to be based on truth. Yeah.
And that's why I think I've regularly pointed out that the reason, side of that, is probably my favourite sitcom of all time. They get the DVDs. They have a little three-minute interview with the writer of that episode. And nine times out of 10, it's based on something that happened to them, especially Larry David, obviously, who did loads of ridiculous things in his real life because he's got such a short fuse.
But even the other characters, even the other writers, they're so often like, oh yeah, I remember, I used to live next door to this guy who did X and thought that would be great for Kramer to do. So the more personal, I think the better. Yeah. Again, I often refer to Michael Mcinan, not everybody's cup of tea, but nobody takes a small slice of life.
And it's quite like Michael Mcinan turns it into three minutes of sound up routine that you can see audiences literally physically falling about laughing at. And the one that I point people to is where he has somebody who's running into a tube and then gets on just before the doors close, which took me about three seconds to describe to you there. And he manages to turn that into a three-minute routine with all sorts of absurdities and big laughs all the way. And again, so far, there's that.
Yeah. He's great. I just love his, he's got a bit, his thing of skydivers. What's the deal with the helmets?
Can you almost make it, you might as well wear a party hat. What's the difference? If the shooter's an open and that thing, you know, going to jump in 10,000 feet, the helmet's now wearing you for protection. He's got like three or six jumps out of one joke.
Anyway, we digress. So, yes, proactive, proactive. Make sure that your characters are driving the story and not that the story is driving them really. I do see this, I mentioned proactive in character, but I've taken it from, I know, taking it out of the boss loser.
So, the thing from there is going from my character's acronym into my, into my, uh, P for plots. I hope there's something a fact she's applied to this. Yes, I've got one book. There's going to be a test.
Okay. For anyone who has ever seen it. The proactive thing is so important though because it's so easy for a character to become passive. There's a really good blog post which I think I linked to from my blog once by Chuck Wendig.
Or, Wendig, I've no idea what I pronounce his name. But he's really clear on how your characters don't just, don't just, don't just give them hell, but make them make it worse. So, it's always got to be, they try to fix it, you know, something happens, they try to do something and they make it worse. And now they've got a bigger problem and they try to fix that and then they make it even worse.
Until they really wish, you know, there's no way forward or back. Making your characters proactive every single beat. But not just, so that one beat leads to the next, but so that one beat makes it worse. That's something I learned a lot from working on Citizen Khan.
Right. And Adam Ray, who was, going to be a very good writer. And he's just absolutely stickler for it. But how has Mr.
Khan made it worse? At the moment he's just tried to do something and failed, but actually he needs to make it worse. How do we do that? So, I've learned a lot from working with him.
Yeah. And that takes us in fact to the point, uh, the next P which is three goes to the way through, which is the point of no return. Ah, so you come through about, uh, if you're writing a BBC sitcom that's about 27 minutes, is that wrong? No, no, no.
So BBC Half Hour is 27 minutes. Do the math, as they say. Um, but you're about 20 minutes into your show, 21 minutes into your show, and all is lost. Or all is about to be won because, you know, it might be that your character is finally going to do the thing that's going to make them, uh, a snake from this and this year we really will be millionaires or whatever, whatever the driving thing of the story is.
So, uh, so you reach the point where, as, as James has just been saying there, you know, it's this, the thing that the character has done has made it worse and made it worse. So if you, if you're not, and I do read a lot of scripts now, I get three quarters of the way through and I'm still waiting for my character to be, it's almost like if they're not, if they, if they can't say at this point, you wouldn't write this, if you can't say this, but, ah, oh no, that's terrible. All is lost. If that happens now, then I am totally done for.
Yeah. I'm going to go to prison. I'm going to be arrested. I'm going to lose my life.
I'm going to lose 10,000 pounds. Or I'm going to be the other superstar. I'm going to be the superstar. You really need that point.
There are a couple of, um, black had-a-plots that link to mind on this where they're really good at just making it impossible for the character, um, in, in series two when he's Lord Executioner and he just executes everybody on Monday. And then somebody who was Tuesday from Friday gets reprieved on the Wednesday and they've executed him. How you going to get out of that? Um, and then if we have to then pretend with a bag over his head to be this, what, you know, the wife comes to visit him, but he has to pretend to be this person who he has executed because he's lazy and wants to get it all done to take the rest of the week off.
Right. Um, and then obviously there's a Dr. Johnson one where he's burned the dictionary and there's a bit, you know, where Baldrige just says you want to know where the big papery thing is just like the thing that we burnt on the fire. Yes.
We burnt it. It's like, well, it's the only copy. There is no other copy. He is an absolute.
It could not be worse for him. And if you can do that with your characters and push them to that point of no return, they're just like, this is what they do now. Um, and sometimes we don't go there as writers because we think, I don't think I'll be able to get them out of that situation, but you really have to push them and push them and push them and think of your way out of it. And maybe you need to change your set up and everything to give yourself an escape route.
But remember that I've got how many times I've said this, but it's always worth repeating the character will always find the answer with your character. The character will get you out of that situation. That's the one. The other one is the answer to no relation.
No, possibly. Maybe you know. So that's, and this is maybe a similar P that relates to that. It's a peril.
There has to be peril in a sitcom every character. I suppose maybe it's an opposite of that, but again, I talk about that not being enough jeopardy in sitcoms. It's not enough to lose. I guess they're a bit too similar, aren't they?
Peril, stroke point of no research? No, no, I don't think they are separate. But you need the peril. There needs to be consequences to the act because you can't have a point of no return if there is no peril.
A character with a quest who is merely trying to unsuccessfully do it. Who's trying to do it and then they fail, they try again, they fail, they try again, they succeed. Act one. I have a quest.
I want to do this. Let's try this. It doesn't work. Act two.
Let's try this. It doesn't work. Act three. That's sort of three sketches.
That's not really... That's not a show that's more than some type of the part. I've summarised there are quite a lot of plots that could fall under three categories of, I would say, quest to escape forted. So that's sort of Father Ted trying to get off the island.
So that's his sort of long-term goal. Each week he's got a different way of doing it. It's like, my lovely horse or whatever. And then he got challenged to status quo averted, which is to stop someone leaving or stop the town from happening.
Or the amalgam of the two potentially, which is to be careful what you wish for plot, which is halfway through somebody gets the thing that they wanted to discover that is actually the last thing they've been doing. So those are the kinds of shapes that kind of work when it comes to plotting. But we can probably talk about more of those on a future podcast. That might be a patterns.
Patterns. That's another one, which is possibly too strong a word to use in this situation, but it begins with P. So to say, pathos, which is not every sitcom has pathos, it's called Meats pathos. But I think what it means is, for pity, we put the R characters, but make sure your characters never learn from their mistakes.
So whatever it is that you use in your planning that you're doing to get your character out of the situation, it's not, and again, as I said the previous time, it doesn't fall to you, it's not going to be right. I've learned my lesson, I'm never going to lie again, I'll be totally honest with Sibyl. And all he learns is I'm going to be more devious next time. I think that's a different thing, though, see?
So what was the final P? The pathos. I think pathos is important because we have to understand and sympathize with the character wanting that thing, which I think is important. But then the thing that you're talking about, which is in one sense, the resolution, is I think your characters can demonstrate that they've learned their lesson, which is not terribly funny, but normally it's quite easy to undercut it with a final kicker, which is they've realized, I'll never be dishonest again, I'm going to do this thing, and then they immediately just do something and go, oh, I can't, they haven't changed at all.
But yeah, I think those are all things that we need to be thinking about. I think my P's need work, but it's a work in progress. So I think progress. And maybe I can just stop coming up with acronyms and just come up with the things rather than trying to crowbar, and things that begin with a letter P.
Pendulums, they only pendulums. Yes, of course. No, actually they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That works. We'll see. It makes me down. Okay.
Well, I think just to summarize then, with your plotting, just work and work and prepare and plan and make sure that it relates to your characters. I mean, this is how we do it. It's worth saying that Carl Allen used to just sit down and write, and that's how she did it, and she wrote bread, and she wrote butterflies. So, yeah, Linda, comes up with a very funny visual gag and works towards how that and has six or seven or eight of them in every episode.
And that's how he works, and well, I wish I could write like that. Ultimately, we're all end up facing the same questions, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how you came up with the script, or when you read the script, if it doesn't have those, that point of no return, if it doesn't have those peaks and troughs or other peaks, if it doesn't have all of those things, then it's just going to feel like a series of events, or it's going to feel not terribly interesting, or it's going to feel frustrating for a particular way. So however you go about doing it, these are still the sorts of issues you need to do. Some people think by writing, I personally can't think about writing 80 pages of dialogue and throwing away three courses of it, and then writing another 40 pages and throwing away half of that, and that's not the way I do it.
But that's the way some people do it, if that's how you do it. However you prepare, make sure you do prepare, but yeah, that's what you're doing. Okay, well, thanks for listening, and don't forget if you want to check up more on our Facebook page. I think we often put blogs up there.
Yeah, and we put links to our own blogs if we put new stuff up as well. And we're very needy, we want you to like us, and I think we'll also get a good iTunes, give us a nice plug on iTunes. If you can review us an iTunes, that would be nice as well, that would be good. We have absolutely no idea how many people listen to this podcast, so do that in touch, and say that you do, if you like.
And also if you want us to talk about a specific thing, then maybe one thing that we just, for some reason, have never talked about in nearly 40 episodes of this show, we have no way of knowing that unless you tell us. So email us, sitcomgeeksatgmail.com, or tweet us, I'm sitcomgeek, and Dave is... And for three days, tweet, you can follow links to our blogs and all that kind of stuff as well. Well, you can, just Christmas is coming soon, isn't it?
So what better gift for your wannabe writer friend than writing that sitcom by James Carey? Which you can now get as a PDF via my, because it was previously just an e-book, but if you want, you can get a PDF and print it out or something like that. Well, you can't do anything like that with my book, how to be averagely successful at comedy, but you can get it out of an e-book or online. And I might be more in a shop.
Finish up holding your tool back, you can actually get a new shop. So, we'll be back in a couple of weeks, thanks for listening, and see you soon. Bye.