Hello and welcome to Sitcom Geeks. Dave's just getting comfortable. Here we go, let's listen to that chair move. We are very slick here on Sitcom Geeks.
Let's start that game. Hello and welcome to Sitcom Geeks. I'm James Caring. I'm Dave Caring.
And we are going to talk about notes today. And we're going to start off by talking about one of our 10-page challenges from 1723, by Last Reckonings. Right, and Tristan Wilson, don't know if you're still out there or if you've just given up caring or you've grown a very, very long beard since you sent the... Or moved to LA and started making movies.
In which case, could you please offer us some work? We're going to discuss your 10 pages from the 10-page challenge, which will go rather nicely into a conversation about notes. Because we're going to give notes and then talk about people who give notes. So if you would like to read the scripting question, then go to our Facebook page or look at the notes underneath the episode on the British Comedy Guide thing.
And there'll be a link to a page where you can find all of our first 10 pages that we've talked about in previous episodes. So tell us about the script. Right, it is called either Jamoke, it's spelled J-A-M-O-K-E, or Jamoke, I'm not quite sure which. And it's by Tristan Wilson.
Thank you for this. Thanks very much, Tristan. And I'm not sure I'd say Jamoke or Jamoke. It's quite a promising story.
It's about two guys who are setting up their own business, selling coffee. In the first scene, we meet Devon, who is described as young and arrogant. And we also meet Joe, who is described as young and arrogant. And then Devon, who is described as socially inept.
But then very quickly, Joe's character seems to sort of change a bit. It starts out with quite a lot of us being told stuff that we should be shown. For instance, Devon is very excited. He's got hold of some new T-shirts for their new business that they're setting up.
And he says to Joe, I got these T-shirts that you said that I should get, which we don't really need to hear that because he's holding these T-shirts up. Show, don't tell. So we've got these two guys, one's socially inept and one's very arrogant. It doesn't really feel like we're getting a real conversation as they're talking about their coffee business that they're trying to get started or that they have just started.
We don't really know what their relationship is either. Are they brothers? And why are they together? What has brought them together?
And why do they stay together? And what happens quite early on, what happens to Joe, is that although he is arrogant to begin with, he then makes quite a long speech in this first scene. By the end of the speech, he's gone from being a little bit arrogant and a little bit sneery, he's suddenly turned into an idealistic dreamer. So he starts this speech sort of sneering at Devon about getting these T-shirts and spending money and stuff.
But then he starts to talk about how he sees this business as his way of, you know, it's going to lead to great things, you know, like Apple starting in a garage. Also, it's worth saying, it is a very long speech. And in a two-hander, I always have big worries about any speech that you give someone to say that is more than two sentences without the other person saying something or interacting or interrupting. It always strikes me as a bit tentatively staged.
So I would be just a bit nervous about that. If ever you're looking back on a script and you see big clumps of one person talking, I would do your best to try and turn that either into a conversation or just cut it down or introduce action to it or something like that. And so we have this scene that sets up quite nicely, and I think there's some nice jokes in it, about how they're going to start their next day. It's like they've been going a while, but this is them just setting up what they do and who they are.
Scene two, which I know is scene two because I worked out it's a scene after scene one, and this is another real bugbear of mine. I get sent a lot of scripts by people who do not number their scenes. And this may sound like a very small thing, but if I'm reading a script and I'm kind of deep in on page 32 and something's happened, and that reminds me a little bit of something that happened in an earlier scene, and I can remember it's, oh, it's the scene where they did such and such. And I look down and I'll see scene three, and that's a good one.
Whereas if the scenes aren't numbered, I have to go all the way back to the beginning and remind myself where the scene is. So please, please number your scenes. And it looks like this script has been done on final class, so it's literally just toggling a box and saying number a scene. But I generally quite like this scene.
It sort of meanders along quite nicely, and we get to the story of the scene as well. We use the word meander, which for me is a bit of a worry. Because the scene starts at the bottom of page three and runs page four, page five, page six, page seven, onto page eight. Now, you can have a scene that long, and that could be fine, but what has actually happened by the end of it?
What is Joe or Devon trying to do? What have they set up in scene one that in scene two is now a complication or a difficulty? What happens is an opportunity, in fact. And so you do get to that by the end of scene two, and we do get to what the story's going to be.
You've got your story by page seven on the script, and I would like to see it on page five. And I think, as I say, one of the main problems I have is there is too much exposition. I think if you cut out a lot of the exposition, you could probably be at about page five without really having got rid of anything. So what's good, though, is the fact that you've got, you know, we think that the quest is rather late in coming.
It's on page seven. It'd be better if it was on page four or five. But what's quite good is we've got, it's for an animal rights group. He's now going to cater, so please make sure all the meat has been killed humanely.
All vegetables, just make it all vegetables. So we now know that this is not a straightforward catering job, and we now know that there is going to be a possibility of failure that's specific rather than it just being done badly. Yeah. Well, in fact, it's almost more, we know it will be a failure.
We want to know what we're going to be interested in is how are they going to, it's also obviously going to be a spectacular failure, how are they going to come out of it and live to fight another day, which is what, as we say, sitcom is about. Not learning from the mistakes and then carrying on. Basically, I think, you know, you've got the start of a promising story. I would go back, look at your characters, look at Joe and Dan.
That's the key thing about this sitcom is clearly the relationship between Joe and Devon, the fact they're trying to run this business, the fact that they're obviously going to be crap at it. Why are they together? Why are they friends? What on earth keeps them working together when they are so obviously incompatible, which is perfectly fine because so much comedy is about incompatible couples.
And then, you know, once you've established those two characters, then you can start to worry about who the other people are around it. And you'll find the more work you put into Joe and Devon and their business and whatever, you'll hopefully find that organically other characters will come out that will feed into that and be a part of their story. And all of that is hard to take, though. And so moving on, it is, receiving notes does not get easier, in my opinion.
And you do really struggle to hear stuff that is basically saying something that you spend absolutely ages on is flawed for the following reasons. I was going to say, we've discussed notes in a previous episode, but we just wanted to talk a little bit more about it as we've got sort of an update, really. Well, yeah, we had, I mean, I got given some terrible notes the other day on something, which I found very difficult. But in a way, just getting cross about it doesn't really get you anywhere.
So you sort of need to work out ways of turning notes that are both good, bad, indifferent, or you can't even tell whether they're good or bad. Because that's quite often the problem is that if you're not terribly experienced and you slightly take all notes as if they're very, very useful, and some of them may actually be unhelpful, and there are other notes which you may think are ridiculous, but actually the good ones. You need a bit of experience to know whether the notes are actually helpful or not. But Dave has recently written a blog post about this with a bit of fresh thinking.
So do you want to just summarize what you're, I mean, what I'd like to do is come at this from the point of view of the note giver, because I do read a lot of scripts and I do give a lot of notes, and I am painfully aware as having been the receiver of notes over the years, I try to be as sensitive as possible to the writer about what I give when I give notes to people. And so I'm kind of trying to say it from that point of view. And the first point to make always is that writing is rewriting, and rewriting is hard. Rewriting is always hard.
However much we may say, oh, you know, just get that first draft written, that's the most important thing. You know you're going to have to make changes. But unless this is something that you have to give to a producer the minute you finish writing it. Generally, if you finish writing a script, you can stop and take a day off and think, right, I'm going to go and look at that script again tomorrow and check it.
But actually, in the moment that you finish that script, you think, well, that's the best that I could possibly have made it. There is a kind of feeling of, oh, I've achieved what I meant to have to achieve. I have finished the script. I know that we rewrites, but that's as good as I could have made it.
And yet you know that somebody's going to look at it and say, well, I don't like this and I don't like that. And so it's kind of, it's always painful. You always hope that someone, you know, I no longer expect anyone to read my first draft and say, that is perfect. I'm not going to change the word, but there's always the hope that someone will say, you know, this is really, really good.
And there's just only like, all I think you need to do is ABC. And, you know, 99 times out of 100, that's not going to happen. Yeah, and actually, a writer recently mentioned, when I was conversing with them on social media, they were saying that they did once have someone say to a first draft, this is perfect, and let's make it, and doesn't want to change it. And actually, that was more worrying than bad notes, because this writer knew in his half-hears it wasn't quite right, but he just didn't quite know how it wasn't right.
So, in one sense, the dream that we all want as writers is to be told that our script is perfect and they don't want to change a word. But actually, that's not a terribly helpful situation either. It's perfect. But we know full well we're not going to shoot it until it's at least draft eight.
But you have to go into every draft thinking, right, this is it. You do slightly have to trick yourself and not kind of ease off knowing that this isn't actually going to be the finished thing. And that's hard to do. Yeah.
And I think the next point as well, which is an equally hard lesson, is that sometimes rewrites, or quite often, actually, rewrites will make the script worse. And that's a sad fact, really. And so someone can say, and this is a sort of get-out clause for me as somebody who script edits, someone might say to me, but look, you gave me these notes, you said do this, do that, and I took most of what you said, and I've done it, and I've rewritten it, and now you're saying it's not as good as it was, i.e. therefore it's your fault, script note giver, that the script is worse.
And there's possibly some truth in that, but there is also the fact that how many scripts are ever brilliant in the world of comedy? And again, the sad truth is that maybe between us we could probably think of four or five scripts that we've ever written and go, that is absolutely, I really am so proud of that script. And it is really, really hard. If it wasn't that hard to get it right, then everything that was on telly would be brilliant.
Fact is, most stuff that's on telly is, I mean, there's a lot of, not great stuff, but I'd say the vast majority of stuff that you see on telly is okay. It's not quite brilliant enough. And so when you start rewriting a script, there's a chance that it was something that was not quite right the first time around, and then nobody saw that when she starts to rewrite it, it starts to unravel a bit. And actually, in one sense, being indignant that the script is getting worse, again, it doesn't really get you anywhere.
Quite often you might need to unpick it, redo it, make it worse, and then you realise that your original version wasn't as bad as you thought it was, or you've discovered how to improve the original version, and that you basically, this is trial and error. This script isn't working, how about trying it this way? Okay, let's try it that way. Oh, no, that's terrible, that's a disaster.
Oh, okay, well, we've learned something. And again, I think the moment you insert your ego into all of this, which is impossible not to do, you become resentful of how, oh, you made my script worse. Well, they didn't, they're trying to help you, and in the process, this script needed to get worse before it got better. I mean, if it didn't get better in the first place, it wasn't perfect in the first place, well, whose fault is that?
That's your fault. So it's very easy to transfer your own inadequacies and difficulties onto notes givers when that isn't entirely justified, even though, as I say, you do sometimes get some notes that are truly idiotic and infuriating, or from people who you really think, I don't think they have any clue what they're doing. I think, for example, one big problem our industry in this country has is that quite often someone goes from making the tea and being a runner to being a development assistant to being a development producer. And suddenly they're giving notes to you, they don't know what they're talking about, and they're giving you notes, and you don't know what you're talking about.
This is literally the blind leading the blind. It's astonishing, isn't it, actually? And I've noticed at every level in TV is that somebody who's a little bit bright and shows a little bit of initiative and smiles and says all the right things very quickly finds themselves in a position, having six months or so experience, of sitting in a room with people with five, ten, twenty years experience, telling them what they should be doing with their script. I'm wary of sounding like a kind of grumpy old man saying, you know who I am, you can't tell me what to do.
But I would like to at least see production companies acknowledge that actually, you know, we've done it right in some ways before, you know, we've done stuff successfully before, okay? So trust us that we sort of know what we're doing with these characters. And one thing I'm very aware of when I'm giving notes is I don't try to say, do this and maybe this joke might work. What I try to do is I make a suggestion that I think that for the writer to go away and think about how they might change, how they might make that character work or they might make that joke work more.
I don't want to write the script. And that's, again, that's a little bit of a problem sometimes with people who give notes, they might say, they might be very enthusiastic and think, well, actually, why don't you try this, why don't you try that? Well, I did try that, but it didn't work. So I think for a note giver, you have to trust that the writer knows the material well enough that they've probably thought of that joke.
So that's, again, talking from the point of view of somebody who gives a lot of notes. Yeah. No, I mean, it's when somebody who's meant to be helping you, then basically effectively starts rewriting your script for you. That is very frustrating indeed.
And I've had that this year. I've had on at least two occasions somebody essentially start rewriting my script and sending it back to me to ask me what I think. And actually, when I've told them what I think, they didn't like it. So I think this is a slight failure of understanding and respect.
But equally, we don't want to be people saying, well, we are the writers and we know best. We don't. It is a collaborative process. Again, it's the ego that's not the problem.
So what I want to suggest is, in order to help you, bearing in mind that you're not going to like the notes, probably, you're not going to enjoy what you hear, but what can you do to minimise... the amount of note-giving that you think might not be very good. So there's a few little points that I should point out. The first thing that I was wanting to say, and this was a sort of light bulb moment thing that I had, which is that all writing is rewriting, okay?
And that's every single thing. So that's from the, even when you suddenly think, oh, here's a good idea, or it's a good idea for a joke, and the point from which you have the idea in your head to the point that you start typing it, you are already rewriting. You're rewriting the wouldn't it be funny if thing in your head. And so it might not seem a very helpful thing to say, but actually, you know, as long as money is not being spent on the production, as long as the only thing that's important now is the stuff that's in your brain that has to go onto a piece of paper.
You kind of almost be happy to embrace the chaos of that and accept that there is a huge amount of chaos going on in your brain from the point at which you have the idea to the point at which you write it down. And so when people suggest things, that's their brain putting their thing on it. It might seem way, way out of what you've been thinking about, but maybe just think about what they said and think, oh, yes, and it's a classic thing that you're taught when you do improv, is when somebody comes up with an idea, your instinct as a performer is to say no and to block it. So you have to fight your instincts and say, yes, and.
So that's one of the things that I think you should, be aware of the chaos of what writing is and embrace it rather than fight it. That's really good, yeah. One other thought, again, is, you know, when you think about something, be decisive about it. You may be wrong, but before you commit down and think, right, that scene's going there, now maybe it might work better there and just play around with it and see where it goes and just think, I can't quite decide, okay, I'm putting it here.
I put it here, I've decided that now, it's there. Someone might pick up on that and say, I don't like it there, okay, I'll move it. So, but at least I've looked at various options of what to do with it before I've committed myself to that. Yeah, that's helpful.
I think, yeah, just making choices and acknowledging that when you're rewriting something, you're going to have to cut stuff that you like, you're going to have to introduce stuff that you don't know whether it's going to work or not, you know, but you do have to make choices. And there's a chapter in my book about it, there's a bit on my blog about one of the worst things I did as a writer was deliver a script that was 9,000 words rather than about 5,500. And the producer was sort of quite disappointed and angry because I was effectively saying, there's a script in here, can you please find where it is? And that's not his job, that's my job, and I should have delivered a script that was the right length with what I thought would work rather than sort of say, I don't really know what works, so I've put it all in.
That's a good way of writing for yourself, where a long time ago we spoke to Mark Evans on this podcast and that's how he writes, but he doesn't then deliver a 55-page script, he'll deliver a 40-page script or whatever it's meant to be for his format. So you do have to make choices, and if you want to write and you want to be a writer, then you need to act like one, and man up, woman up, and make choices. First and up. Last point that I would like to make, in conclusion, this sort of ties in with the script that we looked at at the beginning, prepare, just prepare.
Always put lots of work in before you write a word, prepare, think about your characters, think about your stories, and just go into a lot of detail and get to the sort of comic root of what your characters are, and that way, again, that's going to help you more if someone asks you when they're giving you notes, what's this supposed to mean? I don't know, it's not the right answer. It's, well, I thought this character. So prepare, prepare, prepare, which I think is a reasonable place to...
Yes, and I think you can prepare yourself mentally to get the notes, but also prepare the script before you send it off to make sure, is this the best it can be? And I recently blogged a thing about how to take one last look at your script before you send it off, and if you do have the time to set it aside for a couple of days, come back to it. One thing I've found is just making a new outline of what you've actually written compared to the outline that you work from, and sometimes when you do that, you discover that the decisive moments that are in the script happen too late, too early, and fix them now so that you don't have them pointed out to you, and hopefully your draft one will be stronger and more like a draft two by the time you deliver it. But then, in itself, that will expose things that you hadn't spotted.
So it hurts every time. You know, you just get beaten up all the time in note form, and if you don't want that, then that's fine, but being a writer is not for you. So lots of great sound advice there. You can read all of James' blogs on the Sitcom Geek blogspot, and I've got a blogspot that I'm just working on my new website, so I can't tell you much what it is yet, and I think it's a WordPress thing, so that's me being very disorganised.
But we'll put some notes that will appear on the British Comedy Guide and we'll make sure they're there. We are also operating a Patreon scheme if you want to know more about that. If you would like to subscribe and get extra things behind the scenes and extra podcasts and notes and newsletters and things, we'll give that more coherent thought. You'll find that on our Facebook page, Sitcom Geeks.
And go and look for us on there. But hopefully that's enough we're going on with, and speak to you again next time. Thanks very much, bye. I'll see you then.