We’ve spent some time merrily plotting our sitcom episode ideas. We have characters doing things that make sense to them and creating problems in their own lives and in the lives of those around them. What are some of the pitfalls of this process?
1. Impatience
As I’ve been trying to emphasise in previous pages, get used to the idea this process takes time. If you manage to plot your way to a funny scene, that’s great. But spend another half an hour seeing if that plot can be improved, be made more natural, more in character, and get you to an even funnier scene. Turn off the internet and do it again.
2. Lack of Confidence
You might have thought of some key jokes in that funny scene and aren’t all that confident you’ll think of new jokes if you change things too much. Jokes are just jokes. Don’t get trapped with the ‘No Joke Left Behind’ policy. The plot has to be right or the jokes won’t matter. The stories have to be faithful to the characters. Jokes are the icing on the cake. You need lots of brilliant icing. But you need cake. Don’t worry. If your characters and plots are working well together, the jokes will come – if you take the time to work at them. (Again, you may need to turn off the internet and concentrate)
3. Meandering
Does your story escalate, or meander? Your hero needs a proper quest with escalating calamity, rather than a series of events. Your hero’s attempts to achieve their quest shouldn’t merely fail but make things worse. The protagonist has to steal something back to achieve their goal – but they don’t just fail to steal it. They are arrested and locked up for the night, making the quest a hundred times harder. Also, who stands to lose if your character succeeds and how do they try to stop your character succeeding? We don’t just want catastrophe but conflict. If you’re struggling for complications and catastrophes, maybe the goal is wrong. Maybe they should succeed fast and face the unintended consequences of that – like in a plot see-saw.
4. Third Act Magic Wands
Your plot solution at the end of the show to your character’s problem should not involve new characters, new themes, new elements, even a new object that we haven’t encountered before. The ingredients to your plot resolution should have been there almost all along. Your character needs to climb down, change their mind and/or do that thing they didn’t want to do which, surprise surprise, turns out to be not as bad as they expected. Or worse, but with a positive side-effect.
5. No Clear Moment of Success/Failure
What’s your clear toss? I mention it again because it really is important. (See Chapter 2.6) How does the audience know our character has succeeded or failed? Your character wants something – what is it and how do we know they’ve achieved it? There has to be a critical moment, a swift reveal of something tangible – ideally a hot prop. It could be an object of significance that is handed over, or destroyed. Or something broken is fixed. Something lost is found. A form of words said to someone – an apology, a proposal or involuntary verbal response. We, the audience, need to know in advance what that is.
An example of this is Hank Kingsley in The Larry Sanders Show (Season 1, Episode 7). Hank is holding out on his contract because he wants to be taken seriously by the studio. He demands a golf cart that he can drive around the set as part of his new deal. ‘I want a golf cart’ is the key. When we see him in one, we know he’s won - except there's a nice twist. He gets the cart, but we discover he's paid for it himself to save face. When you’re plotting the show, ask yourself, what’s your golf cart? And can we all see it at the end, please?
6. Too slow
Comedy is fast. And your plot can be escalating and have a golf cart ready to go, but can you get there faster – and go one better, one bigger after that? When plotting Miranda, we would try and think what the huge set-piece scene for the ending would be, and then how to get there half way through the show rather than spin it out to the end. So we would deal with the fall-out from that big scene which would lead to an even bigger one. In the episode of Miranda I mentioned a few posts back with Miranda reading ‘Mein Kampf’ to children and punching a vicar, there is a whole first act in which Miranda has to give a eulogy to a full church at a funeral for an unknown person and falls into a grave. Say what you like about Miranda, it’s not slow.
That’s 6 potential problems. But your script could have way more or others. You might be trying to buff it up before sending it off to the BBC Writersroom. Why run this 14 point diagnostic check on it? 14 Problems with Your Sitcom Script will identify some common weaknesses in many pilot sitcom scripts. So why not give it a look?
