I’m doing another webinar that might be of interest given where this blogpost lands. It’s called Making Your Own Entertainment. It’s at 6pm UK Time til 7.30pm on Thursday 10th October. It’ll be pay-what-you-like and you’ll be able to book from next week. More details to follow. And here’s why you should think about coming along:
In the last couple of weeks, we’ve thinking about how times are hard in the scripted comedy world and what, if anything, to do about. Last time, we looked at carrying on writing sitcom scripts regardless. But we also thought about packing it in altogether, or at least stopping writing and doing other things for a while.
Here are three more suggestions to think about:
#3 Try Writing in a Different Genre
Half-hour scripted comedy is pretty brutal at the moment but there is still a lot of television being made: drama, police procedurals, murder mysteries and thrillers. Have you thought about writing for any of those? It could be another string to your bow.
Ideally pick a genre you actually like. For me, it was murder mystery. I’ve watched hours and hours of Jonathan Creek, Miss Marple, Elementary and Castle. So when the chance came to pitch for an episode of Shakespeare and Hathaway a few years ago, I grabbed it with both hands.
Although I had twenty years of experience writing sitcoms and sketches for TV and Radio, a 45-minute daytime murder mystery is something else. I had to learn a whole new set of skills. Murder mystery looks easy, but it is really, really hard. After a lot of hard work and a bit of luck, I managed to get an episode greenlit and I wrote one. And then, just my luck, the show did not return. But I managed to hop onto Death in Paradise for a bit and discover that murder mystery was even harder than I had previously through, but it was a great experience. And I got paid. And it’s on the CV.
Father Brown and the Sister Boniface Mysteries are often looking for new writers and BBC Studios are, to their credit, using them as training grounds. There’s also the Eastenders/soap opera route. Maybe movies are a better bet now than they have been for a while. Writing for children or pre-school is also something look at. I did that while I had young kids and really enjoyed writing for them.
Although there are no large doorways and fast tracks to a regular writing income, your chances of success in a different genre might be better. Why not decide to focus your time and energy on that?
#4 Try Writing for a Different Medium
An awful lot of TV was originally a book, like Slow Horses or Bad Monkey. If you read a lot of fiction (and you should), why not try writing it? Or some non-fiction? Kindles and e-readers have transformed publishing, and now you can access readers directly much more easily. You could become an independent fiction author. Or a published fiction author.
The money isn’t great either way, but some indie authors are going pretty well and have a greater sense of control of their own destiny. Listen to the Creative Penn podcast or the Novel Marketing podcast for hours and hours of great advice.
You could try writing play scripts. Your local theatre might have opportunities there, and some produce their own works that need to be written by someone. Or there are afternoon plays on Radio 4. Or local radio.
There’s blogging. This Substack ecosystem is pretty good. And at this point we’re getting into the final option which is:
#5 Write and Produce your own stuff
This is essentially what independent publishing is. You are creating a finished article to be read and enjoyed by a reader. Or you write and produce your own fringe play that is performed in front of an audience. Or you make your own audio and get it onto Audible or podcast apps. Or you could write a regular funny blog. Or start a YouTube channel.
And here we could remind ourselves of John Bunyan, who was restricted to paper, pen and extended allegory by imprisonment and censorship. How about writing and producing your own TV comedy – but embracing the limitations? It would be really hard to produce something that looks and sounds like a regular BBC single-camera half-hour sitcom that costs £250k an episode. But what could you write that is much simpler to produce?
Look at series like Staged or Marion and Geoff or Help or Peter Kay’s Car Share or Roger and Val Have Just Got In. Embrace the restrictions, the lack of budget and the fixed camera and write to it. That is pure sitcom.
And who says it has to be 28 minutes? Or 24 minutes? It could be 12 minutes. Or 37 minutes. Or 51 minutes.
It could be audio. A really good example is a lovely show called Leanne’s Spare Fridays by JY Saville. It’s a monologue sitcom (with occasional cat noises from Parkin). Have a listen. Could you do something like that?
Just make it good and funny. Focus on the characters. And relationships. Make it about small things – and big ideas. People are used to watching content made on phones for Instagram. Why not make a show using that medium or idiom?
And once you’ve done that, do it again.
And again.
And again.
And before you know it, you’ve made your own sitcom. And the moment you’ve cut the big boys out of the loop and don’t need them anymore, that’s the exact time they’ll come knocking and want to make your show and pinch your audience.
Isn’t that annoying? But a nice problem to have.
It’s tough out there. Good luck, everyone. But if you need some advice from someone who’s been there, done that and had the loss-making T-Shirt printed, get the date for the webinar - Making Your Own Entertainment - in your diary right now. You’ll be able to book from next week.
More info on Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays:
Here’s that post about how John Bunyan shows us the advantages of restrictions:
Thanks for the mention :-) Embracing the limitations can really make you get creative. I would never have written Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays the way I did if I hadn’t been trying to make it practical for me to make it at home. And episode 1 is way funnier than the original ‘proper script’ version I wrote.